With the rising price of airline tickets, travel is becoming more expensive, and more of a luxury.
However, frequent flyer memberships are not only making air travel more affordable — they're expediting the booking process and offering many amenities that extend to the airline's partners as well.
The experts at FindTheBest used a Smart Rating scale to find the best frequent flyer deals across all major airlines. Rankings are based on factors including Web Flyer ratings, benefits, upgrades, and airline alliances.
See which frequent flyer deal works best with your travel needs.
11. Spirit Airlines
The Free Spirit rewards program has a Smart Rating of 60 and offers flights to over 35 destinations. Earned miles expire after three months, but with Free Spirit there are no blackout dates.
10. jetBlue
The True Blue rewards program has a Smart Rating of 66 and travel options to more than 65 destinations. True Blue also has no blackout dates and, with the elite program, you have access to a private booking line as well as free same-day flight changes.
9. Virgin America
The Elevate rewards program has a Smart Rating of 68 and over 20 destinations to choose from. Elevate members' points don't expire for 18 months and elite members can check up to three bags for free.
8. Alaska Airlines
The Mileage Plan has a Smart Rating of 73 and offers flights to over 90 destinations. Earned miles last for two years and can be used with any of Alaska Airline's 14 major airline partners. Elite members can earn up to 250% of miles flown.
7. Southwest Airlines
The Rapid Rewards program has a smart rating of 76 and more than 90 destinations available. The Rapid Rewards program features no blackout dates, a two-year expiration date on miles, and you can redeem points at any of Southwest's nine major hotel partners.
6. U.S. Airways
The Dividend Miles rewards program has a Smart Rating of 81 and flights to a staggering 200+ destinations. Dividend Miles members are automatically members of the Star Alliance, meaning you can redeem Awards Miles with any of the 13 major airline partners and the 19 major hotel partners.
5. Hawaiian Airlines
The Hawaiian Miles rewards program has a Smart Rating of 84 and over 25 destinations to choose from. Members enjoy priority security screening, free lounge membership, and no blackout dates.
4. American Airlines
The AAdvantage rewards program has a Smart Rating of 91. AAdvantage members can pick from over 150 destinations, and are automatically part of the Oneworld Alliance, which allows them to redeem Award Miles with any of the 16 major airline and four major hotel partners.
3. Frontier Airlines
The Early Returns rewards program has a Smart Rating of 92 and offers flights to more than 80 destinations. Members receive free same-day standby, and elite members can earn up to 200% of miles flown.
2. Delta Airlines
The SkyMiles rewards program has a Smart Rating of 97 and over 300 destinations to fly to. Members are automatically part of the SkyTeam Alliance, meaning you can redeem Award Miles with any of the company's 22 major airline partners and eight major hotel partners. Elite members can earn up to 275% of miles flown.
1. United Airlines
The Mileage Plus rewards program is the only frequent flyer program with a Smart Rating of 100 and offers flights to over 370 destinations. Mileage Plus members are automatically members of the Star Alliance, meaning you can redeem Awards Miles from any of the 39 major airlines and eight major hotels that United partners with. Elite members can earn up to 350% of miles flown.
Spotted on The Daily Mail, it's essentially a padded suit made out of nylon, polyester, and polyethylene that doubles as a blanket. The outfit also includes a separate air mattress with pump.
The suit itself resembles a big puffy onesie coat. It's one-size-fits-all and highly customizable —the legs and arms fold up and it can also become looser or tighter in the neck.
And when you're sick of wearing the bizarre outfit, it all rolls up into a blue bag that you can carry around with you.
Asian breaking news website RocketNews24 believes the invention could be used to help workers who sometimes have to sleep at the office, something that apparently is not uncommon in Japan, according to The Guardian. That at least would explain why the futon mat set is being sold through an office supply company.
Commenters on RocketNews24 also pointed out these might be handy in the case of natural disasters, too.
The whole set retails for about $40 (¥4,500) and is only sold in Japan. Sounds like a small price to pay to sleep wherever you want.
There's an ugly truth about smart watches: No matter which company designs them, they're all hideous.
I haven't spoken to a single woman who wants one. Finding a guy who wants one is difficult as well. I've only seen one in the wild, on a Twitter PR person. Tech investor Marc Andreessen is the only person I can think of who's excited to buy one.
I'm not a fashion snob. I have some cute $30 shoes from Ross. I wear a few rings and things. I also own a stylish gold watch which I was given for Valentine's Day. But I have no desire to replace my Marc Jacobs bling with a gadget that buzzes, blinks or beeps alongside my cell phone.
So, even after Apple unveiled three different smart watch designs, I vowed to never buy a wearable, and certainly not a smart watch.
But while compiling our annual SA 100 list (which comes out tomorrow), I took a closer look at Ringly.
Ringly is a New York-based startup that looks like something you'd find in a boutique, not an Apple store.
It's a chunky gold ring with a beautiful gem in the center. It could be made by Bauble Bar and sold on Gilt Groupe. Instead, it's made by two young founders, Christina Mercando and Logan Munro. It raised $1 million from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and First Round Capital.
But the ring does more than just look pretty — it vibrates subtly when a text message from an important contact comes in or a notification from a favorite app is sent. It also gives a gentle buzz when you get a call from someone you love.
There's a tiny light on the side of the ring. Other than that, it looks like a normal piece of costume jewelry. It's even made out of 18K gold and semi-precious stones.
The price is a little steep at nearly $200. Yet this morning I found myself on Ringly's site with two rings in my pre-order shopping cart.
(My sister, who is far more stylish than I am, has a few rings that look just like it and she never hears her phone when it rings. It'd make a fun Christmas present).
I'm tempted, for the first time ever, to splurge on a wearable for her, my mom and maybe even myself.
The problem with wearable solutions from Apple, Samsung, Google and LG is they make you look like a walking computer. Billie Whitehouse, a fashion-wearables designer in NYC, thinks that's a fatal flaw. She's designed wearables like a responsive sports jersey, the Alert Shirt, and Navigate, a blazer that has a vibrating GPS built into the shoulder pads.
"We don’t want you to be a flashing light," Whitehouse said at a design and idea-centric conference, PSFK. "We don’t want you to look or feel like a computer." Ringly may be the first tech startup that gets this, and understands what women want.
I'm not drawn to Ringly because of the technology. I'm drawn to it because it's a ring I'd actually want to own, with or without the mobile notifications. The fact that it syncs with my iPhone is just an additional perk, not the selling factor.
I haven't bought or worn a Ringly yet. But for the first time ever, I'm excited to hunt down a wearable and try it on.
We've all been there: in deep denial over an unexpected guest or parent's visit, and it looks like the fraternal order of hoarders has been squatting in your apartment. Which means it's time to clean. Fast.
The thing is, when time is limited, the trick is to be strategic about where and how and in what order you do your chores. But before we get into the details: Put on some music. It will help make the cleaning feel less gruesome. Next, tuck a trash bag in your pants. That will make more sense in a sec, but for now just trust us.
You will need:
Scrubbing Bubbles (or a similar foaming bathroom cleaner)
Dish soap
All-purpose cleaning spray, like 409
Glass cleaner
Trash bags
Sponges
Paper towels
Vacuum
Bathroom—1 Minute
Start in the bathroom by removing everything from the sink and tub ledge, and anything perched on the toilet tank. Then spray the tub, toilet, and sink down with Scrubbing Bubbles. Grab any dirty clothes or towels that have been left around, and head to the bedroom.
Bedroom—5 Minutes
First thing's first: Make your bed. Even if you do nothing else, making the bed is the one thing that will make the space look much, much tidier than it actually is. And it'll really take just a minute! If that!
After that, use the remaining four minutes to pick any clothes up off the floor and put them in the hamper (including what you removed from the bathroom). Clothes that aren't quite ready for the laundry can be draped neatly on a chair or at the foot of the bed. On your way out, grab any water glasses or other kitchen items that have made their way to the bedroom. Deposit those in the kitchen and head to the living room.
Living Room—5 Minutes
The living room clean up will be similar, just applied to different furniture. So, start by taking fluffing and straightening the cushions and any throw blankets and pillows. Tidy the coffee and end tables by corralling remote controls, straightening piles of books or magazines, and tossing out any junk mail or old catalogues. This is where that trash bag tucked into your pants will come in handy.
On your way out, grab any water glasses or other kitchen items that have made their way to the living room. Head to the kitchen.
Kitchen—10 minutes
If you do only one thing here, let it be the dishes. Nothing screams FILTHY KITCHEN like a sinkful of dirty dinnerware. If you've got a dishwasher, great. If not, make short work of it by plugging up the kitchen sink, filling it halfway up with hot, soapy water, and allowing the dishes to soak while you take five minutes to put any clean dishes and foodstuffs away, wipe the counters with an all-purpose spray, and toss trash in the garbage pail.
After tidying up the kitchen surfaces, go back into the sink with your sponge or other scrubbing apparatus and wash the dishes while they're still submerged in the hot soapy water. Now drain the dirty water and rinse the dishes, checking to be sure you got them entirely clean and giving them another go-over if they need it. Stick those dishes in your drying rack (you have one, right?) and head back to the bathroom for the final sprint.
Bathroom—Remaining 9 Minutes
The bulk of your hustle is going to happen in the bathroom. But it's important, because guests inevitably want to use your bathroom.
When you get back in there, you'll find that those Scrubbing Bubbles have done a lot of work for you. Take the first four minutes to wipe the tub, toilet, and sink free of the Bubbles, and marvel at how painless that was.
Next up, spend 1 minute using glass cleaner to wipe your mirrors free of toothpaste spittle and to shine up chrome fixtures. Another 2 minutes should be spent straightening hand and bath towels, emptying the wastepaper basket into that trash bag you've been carrying around in your pants (you can take it out of your pants now, by the way) and putting stray and/or embarrassing items away—stash your hemorrhoid cream, dude. Your mom will appreciate it.
Use those final 2 minutes to grab your vacuum and go to town on stray hairs. If you have tile floors, be sure not to use a model with a beater bar, which can cause damage—better switch to a hose attachment in that case.
Got 5 More Minutes?
Guests running late? Grand! Since the vacuum is already out, take those extra five minutes to run it in the living room and kitchen.
Only Got 15 Minutes?
Take one minute to close the bedroom door and pile dirty dishes neatly in the sink, then use the remaining 14 minutes to clean the living room and bathroom. Just skip the tub cleaning portion of the festivities by closing the shower curtain, then pray your guests lack any eye for detail.
Whether it's SoulCycle, Flywheel, Cyc Fitness, or your local gym, spinning classes are 45 minutes of intense, grueling cardio and strength building that can make even the most in-shape among us balk.
And though every class is different, the general tips for getting through your first ride are the same.
Keep reading to see the eight best strategies for cycling first-timers that will make your first class a success.
1. Get there early. Even if you reserved your bike online, you'll still need to change into cycling shoes (SoulCycle and Flywheel have pairs you can rent) and set up your bike.
Plus, if the class is really full and people are on the waitlist, your bike may be given away if you're running late.
2.Reserve a bike in the second row— the first row is usually filled with the more intense veteran spinners who take these classes religiously, and it can be helpful to watch both them and the instructor when you start out.
And even though it's tempting, don't sit in the back. Knowing that riders are behind you and watching your pace can keep you motivated on hills and sprints.
3. Wear sweat-wicking clothes. You will sweat a lot during spinning in that hot little room. It's important to wear breathable clothing that wicks the sweat away from your body and won’t ride up. Women should wear leggings and a tank top and men should wear shorts and a tank top.
4.Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. You'll want to be as hydrated as possible before entering the room or else you won't push yourself as hard. Bring a water bottle too for the (merciful) water breaks throughout the class.
5.Have the staff adjust your bike, but make sure it works for you. Having the seat pushed too far or not far enough forward can make all the difference in your comfort level. Start out with their advice and adjust the seat, handlebars, and height accordingly.
Also make sure everything is properly secured before locking yourself into the bike. Wobbly handlebars or a wiggling seat will take you mentally out of your workout.
6.Focus on your posture. Relax your upper body and hands. Riders tend to clench their shoulders and cling to the handlebars, but your hands should be soft (no 'white knuckles') and shoulders loose with your neck long and back straight.
It should feel like a lot of your weight is in your feet and legs — not in your hands — and that your core is engaged.
7.Go at your own pace and stay in the saddle. Observe the form and pace of the instructor and others around you. Listen to the music, and do the best you can. If you're really tired, bring down your resistance and try to keep up.
8.Stretch! Afterwards, your hips and quads will really be feeling your work out. Take the time to stretch either on or off your bike so that you avoid any future injuries.
A man in Detroit has had a hard time selling his three-bedroom fixer-upper after a few months on the market, so he's resorting to other measures.
According to Fox 2 News in Detroit, the homeowner has offered to trade the house for a new iPhone 6.
"Is this a joke?" Fox 2 reporter Maurielle Lue asked broker Larry Else, who's representing the buyer.
"No, it's a real listing," Else said. "My client is overseas and he told me he would be willing to trade the property for an iPhone 6. It sounds to me like he wants the (iPhone 6+) version, but I think he's willing to negotiate."
The home was initially listed for $5,000, but it's currently on the market for $3,000 after several price cuts.
Though the listing boasts a finished basement and a two-car detached garage, it's definitely a fixer-upper.
There's also an additional $6,000 of back taxes owed on the home, but that, like the payment method, would be open to negotiation.
Else added that the homeowner would even be open to trading the house for a 32 GB iPad.
"He may be willing to take anything, maybe an Android, I don't know," he said.
A jury of architecture experts at the seventh annualWorld Architecture Festival (WAF) named a chapel in Vietnam "building of the year" for 2014 out of nearly 300 projects.
The chapel, designed by a21studio, is a community space located right outside Ho Chi Minh City.
There is a lack of communal centers outside of Ho Chi Minh City as a result of a estate crisis, according to the WAF website. This new building was designed as a place for people of the community to hold weddings and exhibitions, as well as participate in conferences.
The space plays around with natural elements, and encourages members of the community to stay and enjoy "a light coffee and snack."
“Colour and light have been deployed to put people at ease and the architect has found poetry in the mundane,” said Paul Finch, WAF’s program director.
The building is made out of steel frames and metal sheets that were recycled from the owner’s previous projects.
“The judges felt this was a project that embraced history and modernity, and created a dialogue in the process," said Finch in a press release. "It has created maximum effect with minimum materials and has produced an unexpected change of pace in its urban context."The rainbow chapel sticks out from its surroundings thanks to colorful curtains that welcome people from around the community inside.You can check out more designs from a21studio here.
We did a ride-along with Lyft veteran Bouchaib El Hassani in New York City to see what it's all about.
Even amid the bitter war between Lyft and Uber, Bouchaib loves his job. He drives about 50 hours a week, setting his own work hours for when it's most convenient.
"I get to know things that I wouldn't otherwise know about other professions, and other states and cities. I learn a lot in this car," he said to Business Insider. "Plus, the flexibility is great."
Bouchaib has a perfect five-star rating, and he coaches new drivers though Lyft's Mentor program.
Bouchaib is originally from Morocco. He's been driving full-time for a year now and joined Lyft when it first launched in New York City in July. He previously worked at a different ride-sharing company, but he didn't want to name names. "As far as treating drivers, the others don't come close [to Lyft]," he told Business Insider.
Bouchaib, who has a five-star driver rating, is a Lyft Mentor, so he's the first point of contact for many new drivers. He and other Mentors — generally the most experienced and highest-reviewed drivers on Lyft — are responsible for preparing drivers and making sure their cars are in tip-top shape for driving. "Sometimes I'll tell them to go wash their car or just present themselves in a better way," he said.
In San Francisco, where Lyft was first launched in 2012, it's not uncommon to see cars with Lyft's trademark pink mustache attached to the grille of the car. But Lyft had to make some concessions to New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) before it could launch in the city this summer. Lyft can only operate here if it uses cars that have been licensed by the TLC. A giant mustache on the outside of the car happened to be against TLC regulations, so Bouchaib put some mini stuffed mustaches on his dashboard instead.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gets downright emotional when talking about her current favorite Facebook page.
It's called "My Stealthy Freedom" and it shows Iranian women risking severe punishment by daring to take off their head scarfs out of doors.
Sandberg, with her Lean In organization (and best-selling book of the same name), is one of the nation's best-known feminists these days. She mentioned her favorite site on stage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women conference on Tuesday, when talking about her favorite part of her job.
"What drives me, and I'm sure it's true for so many of the amazing women in this room. You want to make a difference. That means making someone else’s life better. What I love about Facebook is that we give people a voice," she said.
She named My Stealthy Freedom, which shows selfies of bare-headed Iranian women, and their stories, as an example. Sandberg got a bit choked up when she talked about her favorite picture on the site, which she had someone translate for her. "The grandmother writes, 'I wanted granddaughter to feel wind on her hair before it goes gray.'"
The page has nearly 670,000 likes and is such a phenom that Iranian-French artist Aiden Nakhlband has started painting women from the photos on the site.
The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, and William E. Moerner on Wednesday morning for "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy."
"The work of the laureates has made it possible to study molecular processes in real time," Sven Lidin, a professor at Lund University in Sweden, said in a press conference.
For a large part of the 20th century, scientists believed that optical microscopes were limited to a maximum resolution of 0.2 micrometers, or about half the wavelength of the light. This made it possible to see whole cells and parts of cells, but still impossible to make out incredibly tiny things, like single protein molecules inside living cells.
Hell, Betzig, and Moerner, working independently, overcame this challenge, using fluorescent molecules to see proton resolution at much smaller scales — kind of like how a flashlight would work to illuminate where really small bits of dust are located.
Stefan Hell, from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, was the first to develop a principle that laid the foundation for a field now known as nanoscropy. In Hell's method, called stimulated emission depletion, two laser beams are used. One light pulse excites the fluorescent molecules and causes them to glow. The other light pulse blocks out all the florescence from molecules that are larger than nanometer-sized.
"Scanning over the sample, nanometer for nanometer, yields an image with a resolution better than Abbe’s stipulated limit," The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained in a statement. (Abbe is the guy who first came up with 0.2 micrometer limit in the late 19th century).
Later, Moerner, of Stanford University, would become the world's first scientists to measure the light absorption of a single molecule. Betzig, from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Ashburn, Virginia, would come up with a method for superimposing images, which produced an even better resolution image at the nanolevel.
In the graphic below, an image of lysosome membranes (left) taken using a traditional optical microscope is compared to the same image taken using single-molecule microscopy (center). See the difference?
The benefit of nanoscroy is that it enables scientists to see how cells work, meaning they can understand disease at the cellular level and ultimately develop better treatments. A press release explains: "They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos"
An amount of $1.11 million will be split equally among the Laureates.
BEING obese is the same as not having an undergraduate degree. That’s the bizarre message from a new paper that looks at the economic fortunes of Swedish men who enlisted in compulsory military service in the 1980s and 1990s. They show that men who are obese aged 18 grow up to earn 16% less than their peers of a normal weight. Even people who were overweight at 18—that is, with a body-mass index from 25 to 30—see significantly lower wages as an adult.
At first glance, a sceptic might be unconvinced by the results. After all, within countries the poorest people tend to be the fattest. One study found that Americans who live in the most poverty-dense counties are those most prone to obesity. If obese people tend to come from impoverished backgrounds, then we might expect them to have lower earnings as an adult.
But the authors get around this problem by mainly focusing on brothers. Every person included in their final sample—which is 150,000 people strong—has at least one male sibling also in that sample. That allows the economists to use “fixed-effects”, a statistical technique that accounts for family characteristics (such as poverty). They also include important family characteristics like the parents' income. All this statistical trickery allows the economists to isolate the effect of obesity on earnings.
So what does explain the “obesity penalty”? They reckon that discrimination in the labour market is not that important. Neither is health. Instead they emphasise what psychologists call “noncognitive factors”—motivation, popularity and the like. Having well-developed noncognitive factors is associated with success in the labourmarket. The authors argue that obese children pick up fewer noncognitive skills—they are less likely, say, to be members of sports teams or they may face discrimination from teachers.
And how did the authors calculate their wacky factoid? An additional year of schooling in Sweden results in a 6% boost to earnings. The obesity penalty of 16% thus corresponds to almost three years of education—the same as a university bachelor’s degree.
Take a moment to think of a few things that show up on your to-do list day after day and never get done. Why haven't they been taken care of?
There may be some good reasons why you weren't able to finish that project or why you showed up late to work. But there's a better chance the excuse you came up with is a lie you tell yourself to rationalize not doing something important.
And if you take the time to analyze the lies you tell yourself and other people each day, you'll start to realize that lying becomes an incredibly easy, and incredibly dangerous, habit to pick up.
Coaches at the New York-based Handel Group who work with high-level professionals at companies like the New York Times and Sony categorize these self-sabotaging excuses into three types:
The Weather Reporter: This is the way things are.
In the same way a meteorologist tells you how the day's going to unfold, you're telling yourself that there are just some things that can't change.
These are statements like, "It's too late in my career to start my own business," or something like, "I'm not a numbers person so I wouldn't be able to understand how my 401k actually works."
You can even bring science into the mix, blaming your genes for your temper or seeming inability to wake up early.
"All of this helps prove your point or position on the topic on which you are reporting," Laurie Gerber, Handel Group president and life coach, writes in a blog post. "But you've conveniently forgotten that you are the one who collected the skewed data that got you off the hook for going for what you want."
The Brat: I don't want to make the effort.
Pushing your career forward often requires doing things that make you frustrated or uncomfortable. If things turn out to be more difficult than you predicted, you behave like a bratty kid instead of putting forth effort.
"As kids we'd whine, whimper, cajole, charm, and even tantrum to get our way, but this would be slightly embarrassing as an adult, so we do it a bit more subtly," Gerber writes.
These can be excuses like, "I missed the deadline for this project because I ran out of time," or, "I should start saving more money, but I don't have enough energy at the end of the day to cook at home."
The Chicken: I'm afraid.
And then there are the excuses founded on fear, namely a fear of failing and being less happy than had you never attempted the challenge at all.
Gerber says that fear is often disguised as blame placed onto someone else, a situation, or some other hurdle.
Examples include, "I think my boss is micromanaging me, but I'll bring it up when I'm not as busy," or, "I'll be ready to start my book after I improve my writing for another year or so."
The Handel coaches recommend writing down something that you've dreamt about for a long time and then follow that up with a list of excuses as to why that dream has not yet been achieved. Then go through each excuse and determine which of the three categories it fits into so as to better understand the mechanics of how you've been using it. Finally, write a counter-statement to each excuse that illustrates a way in which you can immediately start breaking the bad habit.
In the end, it's all about being truthful with yourself.
The wealthier a student's family, the better that student is likely to do on the SAT college admissions test, according to new data from students who took the exam in the past year.
Students whose parents made more than $200,ooo — the highest income bracket — on average scored 1722 out of 2400, almost 400 points higher than students from the lowest income bracket, who scored 1324 on average.
"Given the widespread use of the SAT in college admissions, the implications are obvious: Not only are the wealthiest families best equipped to pay for college, their kids on average are more likely to post the sort of scores that make admissions easy," according to The Journal.
This chart shows the average scores on each section of the test — plus the combined score of the three sections — by parental income:
Atherton, a small town in Silicon Valley, has been named America's most expensive zip code for the second year in a row, according to Forbes.
To determine the rankings, Mountain View-based firm Altos Research calculated the median home listing prices for 28,500 zip codes across the country.
In Atherton, the median listing price was a whopping $9.03 million, landing it at the top of the list.
The town itself is quiet and secluded, and building codes prohibit commercial development. Still, it's not far from the bustling tech-centered towns of Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
"Atherton is drawing a lot of young executives: CIOs, CFOs, and CEOs," Silicon Valley broker Ken DeLeon said to Forbes. "And the international buyers really draw on the prestige."
Several noted tech billionaires, including Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, and HP CEO Meg Whitman, currently own homes here. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also lived in Atherton before she moved into her new waterfall-equipped home in nearby Menlo Park last year.
Even with the best GMAT scores and resume credentials, getting into a top business school is an incredibly competitive process that, to be honest, can sometimes feel like a crapshoot.
College and graduate school ranking authority The Princeton Review just released its 2015 guide to business schools, which includes a list on the toughest B-schools to get into.
The Princeton Review surveyed thousands of current students at top business schools and collected data from business school administrators like average GMAT scores and undergraduate GPAs of the first-year class, acceptance rate, and enrollment rate to come up with this list.
Here are the most selective business schools in the U.S., according to The Princeton Review:
Stanford University - Stanford Graduate School of Business
Harvard University - Harvard Business School
Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Sloan School of Management
Columbia University - Columbia Business School
University of California – Berkeley - Haas School of Business
New York University - Leonard N. Stern School of Business
The University of Chicago - Booth School of Business
Bright Food, a Shangai-based food company, said on Tuesday that it has a bought a majority stake in Italian olive oil maker SALOV, the company behind the famous Filippo Berio brand, Patti Waldmeir at the Financial Times reports.
The purchase reflects the shifting tastes of a rising Chinese middle class, who are moving toward a more European-style diet. According to the FT, Bright said that with the latest deal it “hopes to promote Mediterranean style cooking to Chinese consumers."
This isn't the first time Bright has invested in a foreign food brand. The state-controlled company previously bought one of France's leading wine merchants, Diva Bordeaux, and has a majority share in UK's cereal Weetabix.
The figure of the latest deal has not been disclosed, but in May the company spent almost a billion dollars to buy 56% of Tnuva, Israel's leading food producer. At the time, the FT said that "the move would help to expand in the fast-growing domestic dairy foods market, as foods such as cheese become more popular with Chinese consumers."
Bright Food has made public that it intends to grow its portfolio of international brands, and with the acquisition of SALOV, it seems the company is on the right path.
Richard Branson owns an airline, of course, and within a matter of months he plans to head into space. But beyond that, the CEO of the Virgin Group has set world records in four modes of transport — boating, ballooning, amphibious vehicle, and kite surfing. Yet in his mind not all his adventures are created equal.
And in an interview with Henry Blodget, Branson suggested that people who devote an hour a day to keeping fit may get in an extra two to three hours of very productive work as a result. How can he afford to do this? "By knowing that if my balloon goes down tomorrow," he replied, "I have a fantastic team of people who will keep Virgin on the road."
Branson's love affair with hot-air balloons began in the mid-1980s. With business at Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic booming, Branson began pursuing challenges of a physical and engineering nature. After a successful boating stunt that saw him beat the world record for crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Branson set his sights on another world record: crossing the Atlantic by hot-air balloon.
The journey was far from safe. Never mind that Branson had barely flown a hot-air balloon before — at 2.3 million cubic feet (about the size of a 21-story building), the Virgin Atlantic Flyer was the largest balloon ever made. The journey required the balloon to fly in the jet stream, a feat never attempted before. The jet stream carries winds of over 200 mph, and no balloon had ever flown anywhere over 70 mph.
The first part went off mostly without a hitch. They made the 2,900-mile journey in one and half days, but as the duo attempted to land, they hit difficulties. The mechanism that was supposed to eject the capsule from the balloon failed in Ireland and they were forced to continue flying over the Irish Sea. The balloon repeatedly dipped into the sea, making a clean landing look more and more unlikely. When the balloon was 60 feet above the water, Lindstrand advised that they jump. Lindstrand went first, but as soon as he left the capsule, the balloon rocketed to 12,000 feet. Branson didn’t expect that he would come out alive.
Branson didn’t expect he would come out alive. Channeling crisis moments he'd experienced in business, he calmed himself and used the balloon as a parachute.
He debated skydiving out of the capsule, but a near-death experience skydiving during training dissuaded him.
Channeling crisis moments he’d experienced in his businesses, Branson calmed himself and used the balloon as a parachute, guiding it back toward the water and jumping once he was 50 feet above the water. He and Lindstrand were plucked out of the water by the Royal Navy, though Lindstrand reportedly had to swim for two hours in the cold water.
At the end of the journey, Branson swore off ballooning, but the bug had bit him. Within a few years, Branson was attempting something even more daring.
In 1991, Branson made the second of his record-breaking flights, becoming the first to cross the Pacific Ocean in a hot-air balloon. The trip, this time with Lindstrand and American millionaire Steve Fossett, was an unmitigated disaster that Branson was lucky to escape from.
Everything went wrong. We lost two-thirds of our fuel. We were only 1,000 miles into the trip, with 7,000 more miles to go. We had to average 180 miles per hour in a balloon [to make it across] .... I was facing almost certain death …. We could have just slumped on the floor and accepted our fate or try to fly the balloon into the core of the jet stream and find the strongest winds you can find, stay awake for three days, and do everything you can to avoid what, on paper, looked like a sad ending.
Miraculously, the team found their way into the jet stream and were shot across to the Canadian Arctic, missing their destination (Los Angeles) by 4,000 miles. The team broke existing records for flight duration and distance, reaching speeds of 245 mph. It was the luckiest of outcomes.
Despite the mess of the Pacific flight, Branson refused to back down. Over the next seven years, he made four attempts at achieving the most difficult (and to that point never done) ballooning feat ever: circumnavigating the world. He failed every time, more than once failing in spectacular style.
His numerous adventures, which have raised his profile and the brand recognition of Virgin, have been criticized by many as mere publicity stunts.
His numerous stunts, which have raised his profile and the brand recognition of Virgin, have been criticized by many as publicity stunts.
While he recognizes that his ballooning and boating helped make Virgin a global brand, he has rejected the idea that he did anything for any reason other than pure joy and curiosity at the challenge.
“The P.R. experts actually have said that as an airline owner the last thing I should be doing is heading off in balloons and boats and crashing into the sea…. And they have a point,” Branson told Chris Andersen during an interview with TED in 2007. “When I went over on the Virgin Atlantic Flyer, our airline took a full-page ad which said something like ‘Come on, Richard, there are better ways of crossing the Atlantic.’”
Though Branson has continued his daredevil antics in different ways, these days he devotes more of his immense energy toward pursuing philanthropic and humanitarian efforts, including reform of drug laws, resolution of global conflicts, and environmentalism.
“The ballooning and boating helped put Virgin on the map on a global basis,’’ Branson told The New Yorker’s Michael Specter in 2007. “I certainly regret none of it. But there are quite a lot of important things going on right now on this planet and I don’t really want to kill myself in a stupid way. It didn’t seem to matter as much when I was young. I had everything to lose and I wasn’t reticent to lose it. But if the question is how would I wish to be remembered, I guess I would have to say not as somebody who spent his life in a balloon.”
But as his recent comment indicates, the allure still stays with him: “It's so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you.”
Who Wouldn't Try It If They Could? Watch My Afternoon Spent Flying High Above New York:
The suit itself
Asian breaking news website 
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If you do only one thing here, let it be the dishes. Nothing screams FILTHY KITCHEN like a sinkful of dirty dinnerware. If you've got a dishwasher, great. If not, make short work of it by plugging up the kitchen sink, filling it halfway up with hot, soapy water, and allowing the dishes to soak while you take five minutes to put any clean dishes and foodstuffs away, wipe the counters with an all-purpose spray, and toss trash in the garbage pail.
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Bright Food
The journey was far from safe. Never mind that Branson had barely flown a hot-air balloon before — at 2.3 million cubic feet (about the size of a 21-story building), the Virgin Atlantic Flyer was the largest balloon ever made. The journey required the balloon to fly in the jet stream, a feat never attempted before. The jet stream carries winds of over 200 mph, and no balloon had ever flown anywhere over 70 mph.
