erman arms exports to the Gulf region are on the rise. Critics say Germany should not be supplying countries with such questionable human rights records.

The German government approved weapons exports worth about 817 million euros ($1.84 billion) to six states in the Gulf region in the first six months of 2013. The data was provided by the German Economics Ministry in response to a query by Left Party member of parliament Jan van Aken.

This year could set a new record for Germany, the world's third-largest arms exporter. In 2012, the Federal Security Council - which meets clandestinely - approved shipments worth 1.4 billion euros to the six states of the Gulf Cooperation council, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Qatar with its two million inhabitants has been earmarked to receive the bulk of shipments this year, worth more than 635 million euros. Jan van Aken is critical of German export policy

Officially, the federal government announces details on approved weapons exports in its annual arms exports report a year later. But according to media reports, Qatar is set to receive 62 Leopard 2 battle tanks and 24 self-propelled guns. According to armaments manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, the deal is worth 1.9 billion euros.

David Cameron has personally intervened in the row with Spain over "unacceptable" delays at the border with Gibraltar after days of increasing diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

Downing Street said Spain's prime minister had agreed to reduce delays at the border after Cameron rang his Spanish counterpart, Mariano Rajoy, to make a formal complaint. Cameron tweeted afterwards: "Constructive call with Spain's PM Rajoy. I made clear my concerns re Gibraltar and that our position on sovereignty won't change."

A statement issued by the Spanish government made no reference to any such concession on reducing delays and insisted procedures at the frontier were proportionate.

Despite Cameron's intervention, drivers trying to enter the British overseas territory faced the worst queues for several days with a four-hour wait in high temperatures.

It's been five years since the war between Russia and Georgia, and many people displaced from South Ossetia during the brief conflict are still living in settlements funded by the Georgian state. DW takes a look.

Along the road between the Georgian capital Tbilisi and Gori are row upon row of small white houses with red and blue roofs. These are the settlements for Georgia's "internally displaced."

They had to leave their homes in South Ossetia during Georgia's conflict with Russia in August of 2008. Back then, Georgia had lost control of the breakaway region. Moscow had already recognized South Ossetia's independence and had stationed its own troops there; to this day, Russia and Georgia both blame each other for instigating the conflict.

There are twelve displacement camps in Georgia. In the Shavshvebi settlement, located 70 km (43 miles) from Tbilisi, there are 560 people. At first glance you can see people standing around in front of the newly-painted buildings; some are playing backgammon. When the conflict broke out, these people initially fled for Tbilisi. Later in 2008, they were given homes here in Shavshvebi. Each family was given a home with approximately 63 square meters (670 square feet).

Godfrey Bloom, a senior Ukip politician, has expressed "sincere regret" for any "genuine offence" caused by his use of the phrase "bongo bongo land".

Under pressure from the Ukip leadership, Bloom issued a statement saying he had not intended to cause any embarrassment to his party.

It came just hours after the MEP said he had no regrets and would not give a "disingenous" apology about calling for an end to foreign aid going to "bongo-bongo land".

For much of the day, Bloom steadfastly defended his comments, but the new statement said that he "subsequently gathers" the phrase "could be interpreted as pejorative to individuals and possibly cause offence"

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, is to investigate the case of a prosecuting barrister who reportedly described a 13-year-old sex abuse victim as behaving in a "predatory" manner.

His comments follow the prime minister's intervention in the argument over the type of language used by the barrister, Robert Colover, during the hearing on Monday at Snaresbrook crown court, east London.

A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service said: "The word predatory in this context should not have been used and is of real concern to the CPS. It is not consistent with the work that we have undertaken alongside the judiciary and others in the past year to improve attitudes towards victims of abuse.

"We expect all of our prosecutors, including self-employed barristers who act on our behalf, to follow our guidance in these very difficult cases.

Paul Renaudat, mayor of the village of Chavannes, in the central department of Cher, told local police and a radio station he would kill himself if a group of 35 or so traveller families didn't leave the area.

"I would go that far...It wouldn't bother me, and my family has been informed," Renaudat reportedly told local paper The Berry Republicain.

Despite the fact that the 50 or so caravans in question had left the village of Chavannes, Renaudat reiterated his ultimatum to French daily Le Parisien on Tuesday saying he would sacrifice himself for the good of France.

"The next caravan that turns up on communal land, I will disappear," he said ."There have been others who made sacrifices so the Republic could move forward and I am ready to do the same."

The exasperated Renaudat justified his extreme stance by saying he had a "moral contract" with his constituents that he would "defend tooth and nail".

According to Le Berry Republicain, the origin of the mayor's pledge centres around the continued presence of the travellers in a local stadium, and the strong criticism Renaudat had received from some of the village's 200 or so residents.

The UK economy will need to generate around 750,000 more jobs before the Bank of England considers lifting interest rates from their current all-time low of 0.5%, the central bank's new governor, Mark Carney, has announced.

Unveiling a new strategy of forward guidance, Carney said a further boost to quantitative easing was also possible while unemployment remained above the 7% threshold.

On the current trend for unemployment, which stands at 7.8%, it is likely to take three years for the bank to reach its target, comforting businesses and homebuyers who can continue to borrow at low rates until at least 2016.

Carney said this, combined with rising wages, would represent "real improvements in the lives of people across the nation".

Dexia, the Franco-Belgian bank that was one of the biggest victims of the financial crisis, suffered further losses in the first half of 2013, raising fears in Paris and Brussels that the troubled lender could further impact their recession-hit economies.

The thrice bailed-out bank on Wednesday reported a net loss of €905m in the first half of 2013, despite enjoying lower funding costs. In the same period a year ago it lost €1.17bn.

The performance of Dexia is being closely watched by French and Belgian authorities as their governments own most of the residual bank. They two countries were forced to inject €11bn in fresh capital and provide €90bn in state guarantees to save the bank in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Luxembourg also participated in the bailouts but to a lesser degree.

Further losses at Dexia - once the world's biggest lender to municipalities - raises the prospect of fresh capital injections or state guarantees from France and Belgium.

Bank of America Corp.'s traders fought off efforts by the firm in 2007 to include risky Alt-A mortgages in a securitization. That wasn't enough to spare investors from being cheated, according to the U.S.

The Department of Justice accused the company in a lawsuit yesterday of misleading investors about the quality of loans tied to $850 million in mortgage-backed securities. The complaint chronicles friction among bank staff in 2007 and 2008 as they excluded risky Alt-A loans while leaving in wholesale debts once scorned as "toxic waste" by the firm's then-chief.

"None of these loans are suitable for a prime jumbo A-credit securitization," one trader wrote in an e-mail, expressing discomfort with adding the low-documentation Alt-A debts to the pool. "Like a fat kid in dodgeball, these need to stay on the sidelines," another trader wrote, according to the Justice Department's complaint.

The exchanges spotlight the mounting tension within Bank of America as it sought to sell mortgages months before credit markets froze and sliding real estate values sparked taxpayer bailouts of the industry. The Justice Department suit and a related U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claim threaten to hinder Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan's efforts to put the 2008 financial crisis behind the firm.

Wheat fell the most in three weeks after Iraq and Egypt shunned U.S. grain in tenders yesterday, indicating ample global supplies. Corn and soybeans dropped.

Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, bought 60,000 metric tons each from both Romania and Ukraine yesterday, while Iraq purchased 150,000 tons of Australian and Canadian grain.

"Wheat's lower because we missed out on that sale to Egypt," Jamey Kohake, a broker and branch manager at Paragon Investments in Silver Lake, Kansas, said by telephone. "I don't think wheat's going to fall apart completely, but since we missed that sale," investors are selling the grain, he said.

Wheat futures for December delivery fell 1 percent to settle at $6.5625 a bushel at 1:15 p.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade, the biggest decline since July 15. The grain has slumped 16 percent this year amid an outlook for bigger world production.

Consumer borrowing in the U.S. climbed in June after the biggest gain in three months as lenders responded to a pickup in auto sales.

The $13.8 billion increase in credit followed a revised $17.5 billion advance in the previous month that was smaller than initially reported, Federal Reserve figures showed today in Washington. Non-revolving borrowing, which includes auto financing and school loans, increased by the most in four months.

Gains in home prices and stock portfolios are putting consumers in a position to take advantage of historically low interest rates for big-ticket purchases such as automobiles. At the same time, Americans cut back on credit-card use as the effects of a higher payroll tax limited take-home pay.

"Auto credit seems to be pretty widely available and the demand for new cars has been strong as well, and both of those are probably going to continue through the end of the year," said Tom Simons, an economist at Jefferies LLC in New York, who projected a $14 billion increase in credit. "We still see a consumer that is reticent to borrow in order to make purchases other than autos."

Relations between the United States and Russia deteriorated further on Wednesday when Barack Obama abandoned a presidential summit with Vladimir Putin that was due to be held next month, amid fury in Washington over Moscow's decision to grant asylum to the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The White House confirmed that it had decided to snub the Russian leader by pulling out of the planned bilateral meeting in Moscow, but is expected to take part in the broader G20 meeting of international leaders in St Petersburg.

Moscow reacted coolly to the decision, which had been widely expected after Putin infuriated the Obama administration by granting temporary sanctuary to Snowden, who fled to Moscow after the Chinese government allowed him to leave Hong Kong, rather than heed US calls for his arrest.

In a statement, the White House said that it had concluded there was "not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda" to hold a US-Russia summit. It cited a lack of progress on arms control, trade, missile defence and human rights, and added: "Russia's disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship. Our co-operation on these issues remains a priority for the United States."

New US drone strikes reportedly killed seven alleged al-Qaida members in southern Yemen on Wednesday after the government in Sana'a claimed to have foiled a large-scale terrorist attack and the US and Britain evacuated their embassy staff.

Security officials told the Associated Press the latest drone attacks hit targets in Shabwa province, where residents reported seeing two vehicles and several bodies on fire.

The news came as details emerged in the capital of an ambitious plan by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a "franchise" of the global terrorist network, to attack oil installations and towns.

Rajeh Badi, press adviser to Prime Minister Mohammed Salem Basindwa, said the plot involved dozens of fighters in Yemeni army uniforms storming the facilities on Sunday night, and holding them. Yemeni officials spoke of a plan to take control of the Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal, which is run by Canada, in the Mukallah region on the Arabian Sea.

Egypt's interim president, Adly Mansour, has blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for the "failure" of international talks aimed at resolving Egypt's political crisis, and warned supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi that the government will not make any concessions to them.

"The train of the future has left the station," he said in a televised address on Wednesday night, marking the end of Ramadan and the beginning of the Eid al-Fitr holiday. "It's moving forward, and all of us have to catch it."

Earlier, the presidency announced the end of foreign-led efforts to resolve the turmoil, which has been spiralling since the army toppled Morsi on July 3.

In a statement carried on state news agency MENA, it said: "The Egyptian state ... holds the Muslim Brotherhood fully responsible for the failure of those efforts [by foreign envoys] and what may be the consequences of this failure."

A US institute tracking North Korea's nuclear weapons programme says recent satellite photos show Pyongyang is doubling the size of its uranium enrichment plant.

The imagery comes from two sources - satellite companies Digital Globe and Astrium Geoinformation Services - and was seen by The Associated Press.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the photos of the Nyongbyon nuclear complex show construction under way to "effectively double" the size of the enrichment hall. That would allow North Korea to also double the number of centrifuges now enriching uranium.

Revealing the existence of a uranium enrichment programme three years ago, Pyongyang said the plant contained 2,000 centrifuges.

President Obama freezes relationship with Russia's Putin at a most crucial moment in his presidency. Key foreign policy issues are at stake on Syria, ME peace talks, Iran uranium enrichment, and START negotiations. Obama thinks he is tough? Does he lend his ear to new assistent Susan Rice? This will be an embarassment to John Kerry who is doing an immense job to gain achievements on a broad range of issues. Who is responsible to send McCain and Graham on a fool's errand? This effort was counterproductive to the stance taken by Kerry a few days earlier. The promise by Obama to work closely with Putin during his second term can be put on ice ... return of cold war dogma. Putin will not take this snub lightly, it will be personal. Putin could send Medvedev to the G20 summit and avoid meeting Obama fully. Putin was not willing to offer whistleblower Snowden to the pyre of DC mania in the US. I'll give Putin credit for that. [Not for many troubling domestic issues within Russia, which would have been a better argument - Oui]

Kremlin 'disappointed' Obama calls off Putin talks

(RT.com) - By calling off Obama's visit to Moscow, the US has shown it is not ready to build relations on an equal footing, the Kremlin says. The Snowden situation, on which the decision was based, is not Russia's fault, presidential aide Yury Ushakov stressed.

Earlier today US President Barack Obama canceled a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow which was scheduled for September. The move came after Russia's recent decision to grant temporary asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

The White House cited the lack of progress in "missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last 12 months" as the grounds for the move, adding that Russia's "disappointing decision" to grant Snowden asylum was also among the factors.  

Washington's decision showed that the US will readily "sacrifice their bilateral relations with Russia" for the issues of their "internal agenda," said Andrey Klimov, vice chairman of the Federation Council's International Affairs Committee.

"We shall not forget such a behavior, but it can by no means signal a start of another Cold War," Klimov stressed, adding that there are "too many issues" that Russia and the US still need to be working on together.

Obama chooses Sweden as alternate and 'Green' destination

Before traveling to Russia, the President will travel to Stockholm, Sweden, on September 4 and 5.  Sweden is a close friend and partner to the United States.  Sweden plays a key leadership role on the international stage, including in opening new trade and investment opportunities through the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, advancing clean technologies, and promoting environmental sustainability.

G20 financiers agree to keep global economy more predictable

# Biden spoke about the Obama administration's desire to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations

Even before a formal nomination by John Kerry, the Egyptian people will have none of it - #NotoRobertford.

Robert S. Ford, former US Ambassador to Syria and previous tenure as assistent to Negroponte
In Baghdad in 2005 ... death squads and the Salvador Option.

Robert S. Ford Political Counselor to the U.S. Embassy Baghdad (2004-2006)

...
CBS interview with US ambassador to Syria Robert S. Ford

Crossposted from my diary @BooMan - McCain in Egypt: "It's a Coup".

Amnesia and Gaza Genocide

(Reuters) - Highly radioactive water from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is pouring out at a rate of 300 tonnes a day, officials said on Wednesday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up.

The revelation amounted to an acknowledgement that plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) has yet to come to grips with the scale of the catastrophe, 2 1/2 years after the plant was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami. Tepco only recently admitted water had leaked at all.

Calling water containment at the Fukushima Daiichi station an "urgent issue," Abe ordered the government for the first time to get involved to help struggling Tepco handle the crisis.

The leak from the plant 220 km (130 miles) northeast of Tokyo is enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool in a week. The water is spilling into the Pacific Ocean, but it was not immediately clear how much of a threat it poses.

The lab-grown burger taste-tested Monday in London is billed as one way to avert a looming food crisis by freeing up the agricultural resources used to feed billions of cattle each year. Another way to avert the crisis is to stop eating animal products altogether, according to a recent study.

In fact, "we find that doing a complete radical shift away from grain-fed animals, and stop producing biofuels, that you can increase calorie availability enough for 4 billion people," Emily Cassidy, a researcher at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, told NBC News.

She and colleagues examined 41 major crops grown around the world, which account for more than 90 percent of global crop production, to find out how much food is being produced and how it is being used.

They found that 36 percent of the calories produced are used for animal feed. Of those, 12 percent wend their way to the human diet as meat and animal products. Another 4 percent of human-edible calories are used to produce biofuels.

ANNISTON, Ala. -- On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people ate dirt. They called it "Alabama clay" and cooked it for extra flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn't know their dirt and yards and bass and kids -- along with the acrid air they breathed -- were all contaminated with chemicals. They didn't know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.

Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents -- many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. They decided "there is little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges." In 1975, a company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. They ordered its conclusion changed from "slightly tumorigenic" to "does not appear to be carcinogenic."

Monsanto enjoyed a lucrative four-decade monopoly on PCB production in the United States, and battled to protect that monopoly long after PCBs were confirmed as a global pollutant. "We can't afford to lose one dollar of business," one internal memo concluded.

Methane is being emitted from a natural gas field in Utah at a rate of 6.2 to 11.7 percent of production, according to research accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The research adds one important data point to the ongoing question of how much methane, a greenhouse gas with a warming potential 25 times that of carbon dioxide, is emitted in the life cycle of natural gas production, transport and use. It was conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory.

Study co-author Colm Sweeney pointed out the discrepancy between the emissions rate his research team measured and what U.S. EPA has said it estimates as an emissions rate for the natural gas production sector.

"The important point is that we saw something that was a lot larger than these inventory methods that EPA relies on," he said.

Le 10 città più green d'Italia - Pianeta Green

La città più green della penisola è Venezia. Il primato assoluto di questa città è dovuto soprattutto alla sua struttura. Essendo una città che sorge sul mare, la quantità di auto e motocicli circolanti è minima e ciò rende più efficienti e disponibili i mezzi pubblici che si spostano tra i canali. Venezia negli ultimi anni ha adottato politiche all'avanguardia per la gestione dei rifiuti e l'incremento della mobilità compatibile. Ha investito sulla crescita del numero di piste ciclabili, sul trasporto pubblico sostenibile e sull'incremento del verde pubblico, tanto da vantare il primo posto nella classifica per verde pubblico pro-capite.

In the midst of the domestic energy boom, livestock on farms near oil-and-gas drilling operations nationwide have been quietly falling sick and dying. While scientists have yet to isolate cause and effect, many suspect chemicals used in drilling and hydrofracking (or "fracking") operations are poisoning animals through the air, water, or soil.
....
Exposed livestock "are making their way into the food system, and it's very worrisome to us," Bamberger says. "They live in areas that have tested positive for air, water, and soil contamination. Some of these chemicals could appear in milk and meat products made from these animals."

In Louisiana, 17 cows died after an hour's exposure to spilled fracking fluid, which is injected miles underground to crack open and release pockets of natural gas. The most likely cause of death: respiratory failure.
In New Mexico, hair testing of sick cattle that grazed near well pads found petroleum residues in 54 of 56 animals.
In northern central Pennsylvania, 140 cattle were exposed to fracking wastewater when an impoundment was breached. Approximately 70 cows died, and the remainder produced only 11 calves, of which three survived.
In western Pennsylvania, an overflowing wastewater pit sent fracking chemicals into a pond and a pasture where pregnant cows grazed: Half their calves were born dead. Dairy operators in shale-gas areas of Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Texas have also reported the death of goats.
....
Ambient air testing by a certified environmental consultant detected elevated levels of benzene, methane, chloroform, butane, propane, toluene, and xylene--and well testing revealed high levels of sulfates, chromium, chloride, and strontium.

Please remember the authors characterize this as a preliminary study (although peer-reviewed), but notice how the industry responds...

Wait, this deserves a diary, as we begin the fracking series.


"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Scientists have unveiled plans to genetically engineer a lethal strain of bird flu to understand how it could mutate in nature and trigger a catastrophic pandemic.

The H7N9 bird flu virus has infected more than 130 people and killed 43 since it emerged in China in March. The first strong evidence that the virus can spread from person to person appeared in the British Medical Journal this week.

While the closure of poultry markets has brought the outbreak under control, researchers fear infections may rise again in the winter.

As long as the virus is in circulation, it can transform into a strain that is more dangerous, through natural mutations or by mixing with other strains of bird flu in animals such as cattle and pigs.

Broadcaster Stephen Fry has urged David Cameron to support moves to strip Russia of the 2014 Winter Olympics because of its new anti-gay laws.

In an open letter to the PM, the International Olympic Committee and London 2012's Lord Coe, he said Russia was "making scapegoats of gay people".

The government said it was working closely with organisers to ensure the Games were free from discrimination.

In Russia, it is illegal to give under-18s information about homosexuality.

Anti-doping measures will be introduced to German soccer this season following a study that revealed government-backed doping for athletes in the 1970s. There is currently no indication doping is a problem in soccer.

Calls for an anti-doping law are growing louder in Germany after this week's publication of a study that revealed government-backed doping for West German athletes 40 years ago. The government has denied a cover-up.

In the world of soccer, this has led to plans to introduce blood controls in the German Bundesliga.

"It is the right signal that even before we have results that we are implementing blood controls starting in the new season," German Football Federation president Wolfgang Niersbach said on Wednesday, referring to the fact that there is currently no indication that doping is a problem in the world of soccer.

Aug. 6, 2013 -- A reduced caloric intake increases life expectancy in many species. But how diet prolongs the lives of model organisms such as fruit flies and roundworms has remained a mystery until recently. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne discovered that a hormone receptor is one of the links between nutrition and life expectancy in the roundworms.

The receptor protein NHR-62 increases the lifespan of the animals by twenty per cent if their calorie intake is reduced. Furthermore, another study showed that the hormone receptor NHR-8 affects development into adulthood as well as the maximum lifespan of the worms. It may be possible that receptors related to these are also responsible for regulating life expectancy in human beings.

The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans lives only about 20 days. This makes it an ideal research subject, as the complete lifecycle of the worm can be studied in a short time. Also, the worm consists of less than a thousand cells, and its genetic make-up has been extensively analysed, and contains many genes similar to humans. The scientists in Adam Antebi's team at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing use Caenorhabditis elegans to find out how hormones influence ageing. They are particularly interested in hormone receptors that reside in the cell nucleus, which regulate the activity of metabolic genes.

Aug. 6, 2013 -- Dolphins can recognize their old tank mates' whistles after being separated for more than 20 years -- the longest social memory ever recorded for a non-human species.

The remarkable memory feat is another indication that dolphins have a level of cognitive sophistication comparable to only a few other species, including humans, chimpanzees and elephants. Dolphins' talent for social recognition may be even more long-lasting than facial recognition among humans, since human faces change over time but the signature whistle that identifies a dolphin remains stable over many decades.

"This shows us an animal operating cognitively at a level that's very consistent with human social memory," said Jason Bruck, who conducted the study and received his Ph.D. in June 2013 from the University of Chicago's program in Comparative Human Development. His study is published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

So, um, have a nice one.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}