But honorary consuls are not all based in grand buildings with flags flying outside as one might expect.

BBC: The honorary consul who may be down your street

With flags flying at half-staff and ambulances racing through campus streets, the telltale signs of the tragedy still were evident more than a week after Katrina devastated the area.

CNN: Classes resume at LSU after Katrina

Tuesday was declared a national day of mourning after the tragedy, the worst to hit Nigeria's biggest city for a decade, with flags flying at half mast at government offices across the country.

CNN: Inquiry begins into Nigeria blasts

Bennett said Dame Thora "goes down with all flags flying, game to the last" in the drama, which was recorded nine months before her death.

BBC: NEWS | Entertainment | Dame Thora's swansong is aired

"At the finish Thora goes down with all her flags flying, game to the last, " the playwright said.

BBC: NEWS | Entertainment | BBC 7 goes 24 hours for birthday

Video shot from the border showed the home -- with two white flags flying on the roof -- crumble to the ground as the bulldozers plowed into its side and roll over the debris.

CNN: Israeli strike kills at least 1 aid worker, U.N. says

It calls for proposals to be developed for "a regulatory process for dealing with the flying of flags".

BBC: Northern Ireland peace walls should 'come down by 2022'

While there's growing consensus about the need to deal with flags carrying the symbols of illegal paramilitary groups, the flying of national flags remains - as the Belfast council dispute illustrates - difficult terrain.

BBC: Northern Ireland

Several municipal workers in full Nazi uniform, one of them with an Adolf Hitler moustache, drove a jeep flying swastika flags through a central boulevard as a tasteless reminder of the German occupation of Athens in the second world war.

ECONOMIST: Greece and Germany