[tor-relays] In which countries are relays needed, disallowed?

I tried to set up a Tor relay in the UK today and was told that UK law prohibited anonymous Internet traffic. My tentative UK ISP told me that they must be able to provide identification of users if presented with a court order. Hmmm...

The topic of country-specific conditions raises 2 questions in my mind:

1. Does the Tor Project keep a list of Tor-hostile countries? I understand that such a list over time would vary in reliability, but it would be nice to know.

2. Given the ability to set up a Tor relay in any political jurisdiction, which ones would be recommended? I'm thinking of both local political conditions and the distribution of relays from a topological perspective.

I'm inclined to want a non-US relay because the highest bandwith relays locations are skewed toward the US, which biases the Tor traffic though that jurisdiction. (Today's Tor Metrics report shows 17.55% of traffic coming from the US.) Is this a reasonable approach?

Thanks.