Olympics-host Vancouver ranked world's most liveable city

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Vancouver has again topped a list of the top 10 most liveable cities in the world, giving the Canadian west coast city an extra boost as it opens the 2010 Winter Olympics.

In the annual survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Vancouver scored 98 percent on a combination of stability, health care, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure -- a score unchanged from last year.

The city has also topped the index since at least 2007.

In the 2010 ranking, there was little change in the top positions with Vienna, Melbourne and Toronto still taking the second, third and fourth positions and the top 10 dominated by Canadian and Australian cities which took seven of the 10 slots.

Johannesburg, which is hosting the soccer World Cup finals in June, came in 92nd place, the highest score in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Vancouver scores well across all categories in the survey and the forthcoming Winter Games contribute to a strong score in the cultural and sporting events category," said Jon Copestake, editor of the report, in a statement.

"Johannesburg has had well-documented crime problems, but performs better in other categories, with the highest overall liveability rating in sub-Saharan Africa."

The Economist Intelligence Unit survey ranked 140 cities on 30 factors such as healthcare, culture and environment, and education and personal safety, using research involving resident experts and its own analysts.

It said in a statement that these rankings were used by employers assigning hardship allowances as part of expatriate relocation packages.

New York was ranked 56th, two slots behind London which was at number 54, while Los Angeles ranked at number 47.

Zimbabwe's capital Harare scored the least, making it the list's worst city, with a rating of 37.5.

Following is a list of the top 10 most liveable cities as ranked by The Economist:

1. Vancouver, Canada

2. Vienna, Austria

3. Melbourne, Australia

4. Toronto, Canada

5. Calgary, Canada

6. Helsinki, Finland

7. Sydney, Australia

8. Perth, Australia

9. Adelaide, Australia

10. Auckland, New Zealand

The bottom 10 cities were:

1. Harare, Zimbabwe

2. Dhaka , Bangladesh

3. Algiers , Algeria

4. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

5. Lagos, Nigeria

6. Karachi, Pakistan

7. Douala, Cameroon

8. Kathmandu, Nepal

9. Colombo, Sri Lanka

10. Dakar, Senegal

Bollywood film sparks militant Hindu rage in India

Rina Chandran
MUMBAI (Reuters) - Theatres in Mumbai turned fortresses on Friday for release of a Bollywood film whose star is locked in a duel with a radical Hindu group, sparking worries India's financial hub is being undermined by parochial politics.

Most cinemas began showing 'My Name is Khan' by afternoon after initial reluctance for fear of attacks by the hard-line Shiv Sena party.

"This is a slap in the face of the Sena," said a woman exiting a Mumbai multiplex, giving the thumbs-up sign.

The controversy was sparked by the film's hero Shah Rukh Khan's recent criticism that no Pakistani cricketers had been picked for the Indian Premier League.

Thousands of police in riot gear were deployed to protect cinemas with plainclothesmen also inside the halls. Police detained 2,000 Shiv Sena members as a precaution, and beat back protesters outside some theatres.

Protests also spread to some other Indian cities.

Analysts and politicians have warned the Sena's tactics may hurt Mumbai's image as a cosmopolitan city and its efforts to model itself as an international financial center like Dubai or Singapore. Mumbai is also home to the Bollywood film industry.

Shiv Sena, which runs the Mumbai municipality, draws political sustenance from hard-line Hinduism and an ultra-nationalism that includes strident opposition to Pakistan.

"I came to see the movie because it's been so controversial, and because I am a huge fan of Shah Rukh Khan," said Subhash Kandrep who was waiting for the first show at Inox in Mumbai.

"I don't see why a movie should not be shown just because some people are protesting over what Khan said."

The Sena, which upholds the rights of Mumbai's indigenous Marathi community, has in recent weeks also turned its ire on industrialist billionaire Mukesh Ambani and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar for remarks the Sena perceived as being anti-Mumbai.

The Sena's stance has triggered a heated debate across the country, with politicians, film stars and businesses weighing in.

Khan, arguably Bollywood's most successful star, plays an autistic man subject to racial bias in the United States after the September 11 terror attacks.

He kept up a torrent of tweets through the night from the Berlin film festival where his movie is showing. It was ironic, he said, that a film made for peace "has led to so much angst in my own house. My city. My country. Am I political or politically incorrect?"

Trade analysts say about 1.2 billion rupees ($26 million) is at stake, with Mumbai and Maharashtra state typically accounting for more than a quarter of a Bollywood film's revenues.

The skirmish in Mumbai comes as local politics have also rattled other cities in India, including the IT hub of Hyderabad, home to Indian operations of multinationals including Microsoft and Amazon, which has been repeatedly shut down over protests for the creation of a new state carved out of Andhra Pradesh state.

Google to build high-speed Internet network

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google Inc plans to build a super-fast Internet network for up to half a million people, a project that could pressure telecommunications companies to loosen their control of Web access in the United States.

The Internet company has locked horns with the likes of AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc over the issue of net neutrality: Google wants telephone companies to permit consumers to run any Web application they want, while carriers do not want to lose control of networks they have invested billions of dollars to build.

In building the test network, Google wants to demonstrate a carrier could easily manage complex applications that use a lot of bandwidth without sacrificing performance.

Google said on Wednesday it does not plan to build a nationwide network and its goal is only to develop a trial service at a "competitive price" to 50,000 to 500,000 people, offering Web speeds of up to 100 times faster than most consumers get today.

"In a big way, this is about Google wanting to make a case for net neutrality," said PRTM consultant Daniel Hays, adding that Google wants to "demonstrate these services can be provided profitably at satisfactory levels of performance."

In a blog describing the new network, Google imagined a doctor discussing and looking at three-dimensional medical images with a patient far away, students joining a class from various locations in 3-D, or someone downloading a high-definition movie very quickly.

Google said the network would run on fiber optic lines to homes, but declined to give more details.


FCC WELCOMES MOVE

Google asked cities and states interested in joining the experiment to apply to Google by March 26 and said it eventually would build the network in a number of U.S. locations. here th-gig-our-experimental.htm

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski immediately hailed the move, saying "big broadband creates big opportunities." The FCC is about a month away from submitting a national broadband plan to Congress.

Google's "significant trial will provide an American test bed for the next generation of innovative, high-speed Internet apps, devices and services," Genachowski said in a statement.

Google has long argued it can sell more Web ads -- the way it makes money -- by encouraging Internet use.

Analysts said they did not think Google would end up competing directly with carriers as it would cost the Internet company hundreds of billions of dollars to build a nationwide broadband network from scratch.

"If somehow they were able to widely deploy this, it would be bad for the cable and telecom folks. I'm skeptical the economics will work to allow them to deploy it widely," said Hudson Square Research analyst Todd Rethemeier.

A Verizon spokesman described the Google move as a "new paragraph" in the "exciting story" of Internet development.

AT&T declined to comment.

Google has had mixed success in previous attempts to become an Internet service provider. In 2006, it partnered with EarthLink Inc in an attempt to provide free wireless Internet access to the entire city of San Francisco. The plan fell through in 2007 over financial concerns.

At the same time, however, Google built a free wireless network across its headquarter's city of Mountain View, Calif.

Each of those attempts, however, leveraged wireless broadband access. This time, Google is dealing in hard lines.


HOW MUCH WOULD IT COST?

Oppenheimer & Co analyst Timothy Horan said he suspected building out the trial broadband network would cost Google about $1,000 to $2,000 per subscriber if it bought unused fiber lines already underneath many cities.

"They can buy a lot of this stuff fairly inexpensively that's out there already," he said, adding that communications service providers, such as Level 3 Communications Inc, would have lines to sell to Google.

Google said it would pay for building the network itself without seeking financial partners or government subsidies and then charge consumer and business customers.

"We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections," Google product managers Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly wrote in the blog.

Google said it wanted the project to become an open-access network, enabling products such as Internet telephony.

"I think there are a lot of partnership opportunities and we are definitely interested in having those discussions," Ingersoll said.