Will they go or will they stay? That's what the entire world is asking Scotland. Richard Branson himself weighed in on the important subject and had some interesting things to say.
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Last November, the Flag Institute, which manages the United Kingdom's national Flag Registry, conducted a survey on the future of the Union flag if Scotland becomes independent.
The national flag of the United Kingdom, better known as the Union Jack, combines the crosses of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
In the survey, respondents were asked questions like: "If Scotland becomes independent, do you think the Union flag will or will not change?" (56% said it will change) and "If Scotland becomes independent, do you think the Union flag should or should not change?" (64.8% said it should change.)
Along with the survey responses, loads of people also sent in their suggestions for what the new British flag might look like if Scotland cuts ties with the U.K. in the upcoming Sept. 18 vote.
"It should be noted that the Flag Institute is not recommending any of these designs," Flag Institute chief executive Charles Ashburner said in a statement. "However as the UK's national flag charity the role of the Flag Institute is to facilitate and inform any national debate about its flag — nothing more complicated than that."
Some of the suggested designs appear below. Have a favorite? Let us know in the comments.
This is one of the most popular of the suggested designs, according to Ashburner. Basically, it just removes the blue Scottish bits and replaces it with the black of Wales' cross.
This one includes black as well as gold from the Wales' St. David flag.
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This flag has a similar theme.
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This flag removes the Scotland part and replaces it with elements of the Welsh Dragon flag.
The Welsh-oriented suggestions are less popular, says Ashburner.
A dizzying cross-based design submitted by John Yates and titled as "United Britain" really stands out from other flags already out there.
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A lot of designs just stitch the flags of the remaining home nations together.
The two flags below are rather intricate.
In this design, the blue has been replaced with black and there's a border of flowers that represent the different home nations.
SEE ALSO: Everything You Need To Know About Scotland's Vote On Whether To Leave Great Britain
Don't Miss: 49 Wonderful Gifts That Scotland Gave To The World
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London (AFP) - Prince Harry celebrated his 30th birthday Monday with a beer after the closing concert of his inaugural multi-sport event for wounded troops, and in the knowledge he will now receive a fortune from his late mother Diana's estate.
Harry, fourth in line to the British throne, can put his feet up after organising the four-day Invictus Games for injured veterans, which was deemed a success.
As the Games closed, 26,000 revellers chanted the prince's name.
As he enters his fourth decade, a beer for Harry these days is more likely the reward for a job well done rather than a prelude to the sort of high jinks that had senior royals cringing when he was in his early 20s.
But there is still an element of royal rebel about Prince Henry of Wales -- it is hard to imagine too many members of the House of Windsor appearing on stage at a rock concert in a fleece jacket and jeans, launching a Mexican wave and embracing long-haired rockers as Harry did Sunday.
An army captain who served two tours in Afghanistan, Harry has taken the cause of wounded service personnel to his heart and said a successful Games would be his birthday celebration.
The ginger-haired prince is still a bachelor after breaking up with girlfriend Cressida Bonas in April, though the society beauty was spotted in the crowd at the concert lending her support.
Anticipating the birthday milestone, Harry said: "On the birthday side of things, I'll be chuffed to bits when I'm having a beer with Dave Henson, captain of the Team GB team -- we turn 30 at exactly the same time, on Sunday night.
"We're really looking forward to being 30, both feeling quite old about it."
He said he would feel a sense of mission accomplished when the 400-plus competitors from 13 nations were taking their flights home Monday with smiles on their faces.
"It kept me out of the office, kept me off a desk job," he told BBC television.
After the strains of flying Apache attack helicopters in Afghanistan in 2012-2013, Harry's job now is to organise commemorative army events in London.
The younger son of Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, and the late Diana, princess of Wales, Harry will be pushed further down the line of succession next year by the birth of his elder brother Prince William's second child.
Turning 30 means Harry is entitled to the inheritance left to him by his mother, who was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997. It is estimated to be worth £10.7 million ($17.4 million, 13.4 million euros).
William and Harry also now inherit Diana's wedding dress and other personal items that have been held in trust by her brother Earl Charles Spencer.
The Invictus Games saw wounded warriors do battle across nine sports on the Olympic Park in London, scene of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The closing concert was headlined by the Foo Fighters, backed up by the Kaiser Chiefs, Bryan Adams and former army captain James Blunt.
Harry set off a Mexican wave, saying "always wanted to do that," and read a message from "granny" -- Queen Elizabeth II -- praising the courage and determination of the competitors.
The prince has suggested the event could be staged again in Britain next year, before moving to the United States in 2016 and Canada the following year.
Glancing at his notes as the crowd chanted his name, he said: "It says here: crowd surf, question mark?" before shaking his head with a cheeky grin and introducing the Foo Fighters.
Lawrence Dallaglio, the World Cup-winning former England rugby union captain who presented the Games' peer-voted award for greatest effort, backed plans to keep the event going.
It's been an amazing few days. All credit to Prince Harry and all the team that got behind it," he told AFP.
"It's hopefully something that's here to stay."
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When choosing a business school, there are several key factors to consider, from class size to location and on-campus resources.
But one important factor is easy to overlook: what the school provides post-graduation. A strong alumni network can make all the difference in making connections and landing interviews at top companies.
"Networking is important because the peer, faculty, and alumni support and influence is a major asset while in school and for the rest of a graduate's life in the job market," says Harvey Berkey, chief operating officer of Graduateprogams.com, a website where students can review graduate programs.
To determine which schools offer the best networking opportunities, Graduateprogams.com pulled the business schools with the highest scores for "Value of Network," one of many categories in which over 70,000 students review their schools on the site.
Here are the 20 schools that came out on top:
SEE ALSO: The World's 50 Best Business Schools
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Around 90% of deaths from cancer are caused by metastasis - when cancer cells change and move to other parts of the body. This finding could suggest promising new directions for cancer researchers.
Produced by Reuters and Matt Johnston
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This video is sponsored by Spark Business from Capital One.
Since its founding in a tiny kiosk off New York's Union Square in 2009, Num Pang has grown into a thriving chain of sandwich shops. Known for its creative Cambodian-style sandwiches, Nam Pang inspires fierce loyalty from its customers. But did it take more than a great sandwich to help co-owners Ratha Chaupoly and Ben Daitz succeed?
To find out, we interviewed Chaupoly and Daitz as part of our Fast Track Q&A series, in which we ask various small business owners the same 11 questions about their professional and personal inspirations. Watch the video to see Chaupoly and Daitz talk about the "different languages" they need to speak to be successful — and how picking tobacco leaves definitely isn't easy. Read more in the series »
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The mighty MIT, which monopolized our Best Colleges list for the last four years, now yields to a new No. 1: Stanford University.
For our sixth annual list of the Best Colleges in America, we conducted a survey that asked thousands of professionals around the world to rank the best colleges in the U.S.
While more than 7,000 people took the survey, we filtered the results to include only the 1,500 professionals who said they make hiring decisions at least occasionally.
Participants rated colleges based on how well they prepare their students for success after graduation on a scale of 1 ("very poorly") to 5 ("very well"). The top 50 schools made it into our final list, ranked by their average scores. Where scores were tied, tuition was used as a tiebreaker, with a lower tuition pushing a school higher up in the ranking.
Nearly 94% of survey-takers said they had a bachelor's degree.
Respondents work in a variety of industries. The majority (28.7%) work in finance, while technology (18.3%) was the second-most common industry. The remaining 53% were divided between a number of other industries:
More than half of survey participants reported being in the workforce for 10 or more years; another near-quarter of survey respondents are new to the workforce, having three years of experience or less:
Eighty-nine percent of those who took our survey said that a job candidate's college major is somewhat or very influential to the hiring decision. When asked which majors will bring graduates the most success, almost 30% said business and 26% said engineering. Liberal arts came in third, followed by computer science and communications:
In response to the question of what is the most valuable asset college provides, the majority of survey participants said that they think academics is most valuable. Brand value/reputation was rated second-most valuable, while network, workplace skills, and social experience followed third, fourth, and fifth, respectively:
SEE THE FULL LIST: The 50 Best Colleges In America
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Oh, how the mighty have fallen. After a four-year reign atop our annual list of the Best Colleges in America, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) slipped to second place.
For the first time in years, Stanford University took the top spot on our list. In fact, schools with strong tech and engineering programs reigned over our list, with Cal Tech rounding out the top 3 schools.
For our sixth annual ranking of the Best Colleges In America, we surveyed over 1,500 people who said they had hiring experience in a variety of fields, from finance to tech. Respondents rated top colleges across the country based on how well they prepare students for success.
Click here to go to a one-page list of the top 25 colleges »
Read the full methodology for this list »
Illinois – Urbana-Champaign scored a 2.95 out of 5 on Business Insider's rating.
Tuition and fees: $30,362
Situated about 140 miles south of Chicago, University of Illinois debuts on this ranking at No. 50. The flagship U of I institution is home to one of the largest public university collections in the world, with more than 10.5 million volumes across 37 departmental libraries. The school ranked high on our list of party schools worth the money.
Business Insider's rating is scored out of 5 and is based on the results of a survey that asked over 1,500 professionals with hiring experience how well colleges prepare their students for success after graduation. Tuition was used as a tiebreaker, with cheaper tuition pushing a school to a higher spot.
Colgate scored a 2.96 out of 5 on Business Insider's rating.
Tuition and fees: $50,485
Colgate may cost a lot to attend, but evidence shows that it’s worth the investment, with graduates making an average mid-career salary of $126,600. And for those who can’t afford the cost of tuition, the Central New York college accommodates 100% of admitted students who demonstrated financial need.
Business Insider's rating is scored out of 5 and is based on the results of a survey that asked over 1,500 professionals with hiring experience how well colleges prepare their students for success after graduation. Tuition was used as a tiebreaker, with cheaper tuition pushing a school to a higher spot.
BU scored a 2.98 out of 5 on Business Insider's rating.
Tuition and fees: $48,984
BU "is no small operation," with more than 33,000 undergrad and graduate students and 10,000 faculty and staff. With over $375 million in research funding last year, each member of the community has a chance to grow and incite change.
Business Insider's rating is scored out of 5 and is based on the results of a survey that asked over 1,500 professionals with hiring experience how well colleges prepare their students for success after graduation. Tuition was used as a tiebreaker, with cheaper tuition pushing a school to a higher spot.
Back in 2012, photographer Seth Casteel became a sudden, global hit when he published a set of photos of what dogs look like when they're diving under water.
The water pulls on dogs' fur, ears and lips, making them look both ludicrous and vicious at the same time.
Now we have a sequel. Casteel is publishing a new book, Underwater Puppies, which is exactly what you think it is: Amazing shots of what puppies look like when they're scrabbling for a tennis ball in a swimming pool.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has retained its top spot in the QS World Universities ranking, which the education networking company says is the world's most widely read university comparison.
This is the third consecutive year QS has rated MIT number one. The QS World Universities ranking assesses more than 3,000 schools on six criteria— academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, international student ratio, and international staff ratio.
Here are QS' top 20 universities in the world:
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2. University of Cambridge
2. Imperial College London
4. Harvard University
5. University of Oxford
5. University College London
7. Stanford University
8. California Institute of Technology
9. Princeton University
10. Yale University
11. University of Chicago
12. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
13. University of Pennsylvania
14. Columbia University
14. Johns Hopkins University
16. King's College London
17. University of Edinburgh
17. Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
19. Cornell University
20. University of Toronto
And a closer look at how the top 10 changed between 2013 and 2014:
The list is dominated by universities in the US and UK, with many schools that emphasize STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) rising in this year's ranking.
On Business Insider's new ranking of the best colleges in America, tech-focused schools also dominated. We asked professionals with hiring experience to rate how well schools prepared students for success after graduation, and Stanford took the top spot, followed by MIT and Caltech.
Check out the full QS World Universities ranking here >>
SEE ALSO: The 50 Best Colleges In America
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Decorating becomes a challenge when you live in a tiny home, studio apartment, or dorm room.
You'll want to find ways to maximize space and comfort while keeping clutter to a minimum.
These 15 tips will help you outfit your small place to the best of your advantage.
SEE ALSO: I Spent 3 Days In A 'Tiny House' With My Mom To See What Micro-Living Is All About
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A gorgeous Cape Cod home belonging to a retired tech executive will be put up for auction on October 18.
The owner is Edward Breslow, who formerly held an executive position at data management and IT storage company EMC Corporation. He retired in 1998, and he and his wife are looking to spend more time in Florida.
The home was previously listed for $13.9 million, but it failed to find a buyer. According to Platinum Luxury Auctions, the previous listing price has no bearing on what the home will fetch once the bids start.
It has a home theater, five bedrooms, and a private dock leading to the Atlantic, among other amenities.
Foot binding, the practice of crushing young women’s feet into tiny “lotus” feet, was widespread in China for nearly a thousand years.
Long seen as a crucial way for women to elevate their status and wealth, the practice was finally banned in 1912. In recent decades, foot binding has been all but eliminated thanks to strict enforcement by the Communist Party.
Despite the ban, some women continued to bind their feet in secret. These women, mostly hidden or forgotten in tiny Chinese villages, are the last remaining survivors of the practice.
British photographer Jo Farrell has spent the last eight years traveling all over the Chinese countryside searching for these remaining women with bound feet. Despite the stigmas that currently surround foot binding, the women that Farrell met openly showed their "lotus" feet to her and revealed their stories.
Farrell has shared some of her work with us here, but you can see more on her website, Living History. Farrell recently raised nearly $15,000 on Kickstarter to create a book of the project. You can contribute to the project or purchase a preorder of the book here.
If you're a New Yorker who's into Donald Trump's preferred big and shiny aesthetic, this may be a sad moment for you.
The lender in Trump Soho, the hotel Trump unveiled on his show The Apprentice, has decided to foreclose on the property, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Real-estate investor CIM Group, which holds a junior loan on the property, is taking control of the building through a foreclosure process and his hired brokerage Eastdil Secured to auction off the property.
The hotel opened in 2010 and quickly became a hotspot for upscale bottle service. But as with many NYC nightlife destinations, its popularity has waned.
Trump has a licensing deal with the property, not an equity stake.
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The state of a country’s well-being says a lot about its prosperity and progress.
That’s why Gallup and Healthways team up to produce the annual “State of Global Well-Being Index,” which this year analyzed 135 world countries in five elements, including financial stability, social relationships, community safety, physical well-being, and sense of purpose (i.e. contributing to society).
The researchers culled results from over 133,000 surveys taken in 2013 and ranked the countries with the highest and lowest well-being in each element, as well as those who thrived in three or more categories.
Here are the countries with the highest and lowest well-being, with darker countries doing better:
Panama had by far the best well-being ranking in the world, with 61% of its population thriving in four of the five well-being elements. Gallup and Healthways researchers claimed that Panama's cultural positivity, relative political stability, and growing economy contributed to its high ranking.
But the Central American country was not thriving in terms of financial well-being, and struggled with a high poverty rate. Researchers noted this was especially prevalent for women and that ample work was needed to help women achieve financial stability on par with men.
Costa Rica followed Panama in a distant second place, with 44% of its population thriving in three or more elements, followed by Denmark, Austria, and Brazil rounding out the top five.
The U.S. came in #12 in the overall ranking, with high marks in social well-being and purpose.
Gallup noted that the Americas have the highest overall well-being among the world's regions: a full 33% of people surveyed were thriving in three or more of the five well-being areas.
Meanwhile, Syria and Afghanistan fell to the bottom of the ranking, with only about 1% of each of their populations thriving in at least three areas. Respondents in both of these countries were described as war-weary, with little certainty about their country's future.
Haiti (3%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5%), and Chad (5%) also made the bottom five.
For more details on the results and countries, you can read the full Gallup and Healthways survey results here.
The above map was made using an underlying file from thematicmapping.org.
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Marriott hotels recently announced that it will be placing envelopes in hotel rooms to encourage guests to tip their maids.
While Marriott certainly isn't the first hotel to place envelopes in rooms, this has brought up a debate as to whether or not to tip maids.
A surprising number of people don't tip hotel maids.
Michael Lynn, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, told the Associated Press that “30 percent of people stiff the maid” in hotels.
Let's be clear: You should always tip the hotel maid.
Hotel maids make an average $9.21 per hour, which means that they rely heavily on tips from guests. They also work really hard scrubbing toilets, changing linens, and cleaning up the mess from hotel guests. They deserve a tip.
The American Hotel & Lodging Association suggests leaving $1 to $5 per day for housekeepers, depending on the type of hotel and size of room. For a basic room at a budget hotel, $2 is acceptable, but $5 is appropriate at a luxury suite in a 5-star hotel. And of course, if you left a big mess or if the maid went above and beyond to make the room more comfortable for you, you should tip more.
It's also important to note that you should leave a tip every single day since housekeepers often change shifts and a different person may clean your room on a given day.
Envelope or not, tip your maids. It's a small addition when you're already paying top dollar for a hotel room, and it goes a long way.
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France was recently named the most-visited country in the world with over 84 million visitors in 2013 — and for good reason.
Millions of people go to France each year to stroll along the quays of Paris, lie on the gorgeous beaches of the French Riviera, and sip wine in Bordeaux.
Here are 35 places all travelers should go in France.
As New York subways continue to become more crowded, one company is looking to the sky.
Real estate firm CityRealty has unveiled a proposal for an urban gondola system, known as the East River Skyway, that would connect Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
The design was presented at the Massey Knakal Brooklyn Real Estate Summit by Daniel Levy, president of CityRealty, and was inspired by the efficiency of high-speed gondolas in London, Rio de Janeiro, and Germany.
According to CityRealty, the proposed gondolas would span the East River, be safer than buses and subways, and reduce travel time by an estimated 20-30 minutes for Brooklyn residents commuting into Manhattan.
The gondolas would travel 12-17 miles per hour over New York and be able to carry more than 5,000 people per hour in each direction. According to CityRealty, the gondolas would also have zero emissions and be eco-friendly.
The first phase of the project would connect Williamsburg to downtown Manhattan, South Williamsburg, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Later phases would possibly extend the system to Greenpoint, Long Island City, Midtown East, DUMBO, and South Street Seaport stations, among others.
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“New York City is a natural fit for cable transit systems given its severe topographical challenges,” Steven Dale, president of Creative Urban Projects and Cable Car Consultants, said in the press release. “New gondola technology would be an effective means to address the ever-increasing traffic in Manhattan, Brooklyn and perhaps even farther afield.”
The initial plan would cost around $100 million to implement, according to The New York Daily News. That's small potatoes compared to the Second Avenue subway, which could eventually cost $20 billion when all is said and done. And with the MTA reporting subway ridership is at its highest since 1949 with over 1.7 billion rides in 2013, the city could use a transportation revamp.
SEE ALSO: New York City's Subway System Is Facing An Unprecedented Bedbug Problem
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Being a war photographer is dangerous, grueling, and emotionally taxing work. It puts you on the front line with the soldiers, witnessing pain and violence while documenting it all, making the horror of war that much more difficult to shake off. But many war photographers hope that their work will help people to confront and understand the gravity of conflict.
After covering the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars for years, Ashley Gilbertson, one of journalism's most respected war photographers, started to think that maybe that understanding wasn't happening as he'd hoped. "I realized people in the United States weren’t really engaging with what was taking place there," he tells Slate. After returning to the United States, Gilbertson began looking for a new, potentially more effective way to depict the losses sustained during war.
It was Gilbertson's wife who came up with the idea to photograph fallen soldier's bedrooms, many of which had been preserved by the soldiers' grieving families. "I felt I was in some historic memorial. I would never touch anything. I would rarely even touch the light switch. I felt bad putting my tripod on the carpet because I felt I was disturbing something," Gilbertson says.
Gilbertson photographed 40 rooms — the same number of soldiers in a platoon — in the US, Canada, and Europe, creating a body of work which later became the book "Bedrooms of the Fallen," published this year.
The soldiers whose rooms Gilbertson photographed ranged in age from 18 to 27. Many Gilbertson had never met, though some he did. He dedicated the book to Marine Lance Corporal Billy Miller, a soldier who was escorting Gilbertson in Fallujah when he was shot at close range by an enemy. "I came home…Billy Miller didn’t. I needed to photograph his absence,” Gilbertson said to Time.
Gilbertson decided to document the rooms in black and white to minimize distraction created by color, allowing the viewer to notice all the details, like the posters and teddy bears, signs of the soldier's age at the time of deployment. "That is who we send to fight our wars for us, our children," says Gilbertson.
All photos courtesy of Ashley Gilbertson, all rights reserved, from "Bedrooms of the Fallen", published 2014 by the University of Chicago Press.
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A 23,000-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills with views of Malibu Beach and downtown Los Angeles has been listed for a staggering $85 million.
The real estate listing warns: “be prepared for an overwhelming sensory experience unlike any you've felt before." It’s not exaggerating.
The two-level home, which was completed by the firm’s creative team this month, has eight bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, an underground garage, wine cellar, and even a movie theater.
Located in the elite neighborhood of Trousdale Estates, the home looks like a showroom with two fully stocked bars, a gym, game room, and infinity edge pool.
The property last sold in August of 2012 for $12.65 million, according to Zillow. The over-the-top house is listed by Ben Bacal Realty.
