Word: queene
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...wasn't long ago that Long Beach, Calif., was the place your luggage turned up when the airlines made a really big mistake. The working-class seaside city has been known as home to oil wells and refineries, the mothballed Queen Mary ocean liner and, until a few years ago, Howard Hughes' eight-engine flying monster, the Spruce Goose. Hardly anyone meant to fly there...
...Thai army platoon fanning out around the village of Wiang Haeng in northern Chiang Mai province was expecting a routine patrol. That overcast afternoon in late March, the soldiers were securing the area for a special visit by Thailand's Queen Sirikit. But along the Thai-Burmese border?where insurgents, smugglers and drug dealers hold sway?little can be taken for granted. Suddenly, the Thai troops were under fire. The enemy: a unit of the United Wa State Army, a tribal force from Burma. Allied with the government in Rangoon and notorious for its dominance of the narcotics trade...
...gratitude is flowing. The crowds greeting the Queen in her recent tours of the country are big and kind: 20,000 in Falmouth, 30,000 in Newcastle (including a streaker with "Rude Britannia" painted on his pale buttocks). Partly this is sympathy for a woman who has just lost her sister, Princess Margaret, who died at age 71 in February, and mother, who died Easter weekend at 101. Perhaps, after the throngs that lined London's streets for the Queen Mother's funeral, it also represents a surprised rediscovery that the royal family-not just charismatic black sheep Diana...
...course, she has her critics. Mark Leonard, co-author of the pamphlet Modernising the Monarchy, argues that "there is a perfectly rational case for simple abolition." Indeed. The Queen's formal powers, which include picking the Prime Minister and dissolving Parliament, are flagrantly undemocratic. Some 68% of Britons think the royal family is out of touch with ordinary people, according to a MORI poll; only 39% believe the monarchy will last another 50 years. But that is not the only conundrum built into the Queen's role. She keeps her job only if she doesn't exercise...
...combination of introversion and rigidity came as close as anything has to destroying her reign. The catalyst was the death of Diana, whose publicity-soaked campaign to become Queen of people's hearts resonated on levels Elizabeth had never contemplated. Courtiers could not initially persuade the Queen to fly the royal standard at Buckingham Palace at half-mast (it had not been lowered when her father the King died) or to make any convincingly warm gesture toward the memory of Diana-who had been leaking viciously against the Windsors for years. Angry crowds, furious commentators and smart advisers persuaded Elizabeth...