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A little off-beat news:

Britain's Royal Mail fumes over stamps of gas-masked queen

BRIGHTON, England (AFP) - Britain's post office is not amused that a hip art gallery in the south of England is selling posters of mock stamps featuring Queen Elizabeth II (news - web sites) in a gas mask.

AFP/HO Photo

"Our legal services have just written to the gallery and informed them that they are infringing our copyright and to please stop," a Royal Mail spokesman told AFP.

But the Artrepublic gallery in the seaside town of Brighton said it had no intention of withdrawing the silkscreen anti-war posters by local artist James Cauty either from its walls or its Internet site.

"We are very surprised by the reaction from Royal Mail," said Artrepublic's owner Lawrence Alkin.

Styled like genuine stamps, with the monarch's head in silhouette and a gas mask over her face, the posters titled "Black Smoke, Stamps of Mass Destruction" come in first, second and third class denominations.

They sell for 470 pounds (767 dollars, 655 euros) each.

"The thing to do is to compare a stamp next to the actual image that James Cauty has done. They're actually completely different," a spokeswoman from the gallery told AFP.

Cauty, former leader of the 1980s rock band KLF, or Kopyright Liberation Front, which in 1987 had an album destroyed after it heavily sampled the ABBA hit "Dancing Queen," said: "I am just an artist doing my job."

More off-beat news:

Hi-tech scanner turns up vodka instead of terror weapons

SINGAPORE (AFP) - A hi-tech scanner deployed by Singapore to screen cargo containers for dangerous weapons that could be used by terrorists has turned up an unusual discovery: Russian vodka disguised as fruit juice.

AFP/File Photo

Custom officials found 23,520 bottles of Starorusskaya Vodka worth 700,000 Singapore dollars (406,976 US) on Wednesday in a container after their suspicions were aroused.

The scanner's image of the cargo "was atypical of fruit drinks," the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said on its website.

"Officers then decided to conduct a thorough check of the container. Upon physical check, the contents were confirmed to be vodka," it added.

The cargo came from the Middle East and was likely to have been meant for sale to the local pubs and clubs here.

Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US and the Bali bombings last year, Singapore has been on a heightened state of alert, beefing up its defences against potential threats to foreign missions, government buildings and other facilities.

Queen in gas mask. Best she has looked for years.

It is time for her to step down & see what her son can do. She is VERY well passed her prime and Charles needs the opportunity to do his thing.

I trust he will be a better monarch than he was husband