BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Vienna was named world’s top city for quality of life Vienna is the world’s best city to live in; Baghdad is the worst, and London, Paris and New York do not even make it to the top 35, according to international research into quality of life. German-speaking cities dominate the rankings in the 18th Mercer Quality of Life study, with Vienna joined by Zurich, Munich, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt in the top seven.
Paris has tumbled down the league, falling 10 places to 37th, just ahead of London at 39th, almost entirely because of the city’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks.
The study examined social and economic conditions, health, education, housing and the environment, and is used by big companies to assess where they should locate and how much they should pay staff.
US cities perform relatively poorly in the study, largely because of issues around personal safety and crime. The highest ranking city in the US is San Francisco, at 28th; Boston is 34th.
Vienna benefited enormously from the fall of the Berlin Wall, becoming the gateway to eastern European countries that often have historic ties to the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.
According to the World Bank, Austria has one of the highest figures for GDP per head in the world, just behind the US and ahead of Germany and Britain.
Vienna has long been overlooked by tourists, who instead flock to Barcelona or Berlin and tend to think of Austria as somewhere for skiing, lakes and mountains.
Auckland in New Zealand was the highest ranking English-speaking city in the survey, in third place, followed by Vancouver in fifth. Australian cities also perform very highly in the survey, with Sydney 10th and Melbourne 15th.
War and political unrest are behind all the worst-ranked cities in the world.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s win was
the most tweeted Oscar moment ever
DiCaprio’s win for his performance in The Revenant, after missing out on a golden statue on five previous occasions, set social media ablaze and led to 440,000 tweets per minute, beating out the previous record of 255,000 tweets per minute set in 2014 when Oscar host Ellen Degeneres tweeted a star-studded selfie that broke the Internet.
Aside from DiCaprio’s long-awaited triumph, the evening’s other top tweeted moments included Spotlight’s surprise win in the best film category and Mad Max: Fury Road picking up the award for sound mixing, its sixth Oscar of the night.
Compiled by Usama Rasheed
