Defence Export Services Organisation

The Defence Export Service Organisation (DESO) is a UK government department within the Ministry of Defence which promotes arms exports by arms companies based in Britain.

The DESO has traditionally been headed by executives of defence companies who are officially seconded from their employer and continue to receive their salary. A third of the DESO's 500 staff are involved in support of the Al Yamamah contracts with Saudi Arabia. DESO is involved in the Defence Systems & Equipment International exhibition.

Gordon Brown announced on 26 July 2007 that DESO would be transferred to UK Trade & Investment from April 2008, and will be called the UKTI Defence and Security Group. Nevertheless, the Al Yamamah contracts will stay within the remit of the Ministry of Defence

History

The organisation was founded in 1966 by Denis Healey, the Secretary of State for Defence at the time. In January of that year he informed Parliament that "while the Government attach[es] the highest importance to making progress in the field of arms control and disarmament, we must also take what practical steps we can to ensure that this country does not fail to secure its rightful share of this valuable commercial market." From being called the Defence Sales Organisation, in 1985 the organisation was renamed the Defence Export Services Organisation.

List of Star Wars characters

This is an incomplete list of prominent characters from the Star Wars franchise, sorted by last name. Many of the characters listed below created for the original extended universe now called Legends. These are no longer are considered part of the Star Wars canon but remain on this list. While it's commonly considered that C-3PO and R2-D2 are the only Star Wars characters to be in all 7 movies, Obi-Wan Kenobi also appears in all of the films: during The Force Awakens, Ewan McGregor's voice can be heard saying the newly recorded dialogue "These are your first steps" while via archive recordings Alec Guinness says "Rey", both occur during a flashback caused by Rey's touching Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. Before The Force Awakens, Anakin also appeared in all of the films, and was planned to make an appearance as a force ghost in The Force Awakens, but was removed in later versions of the story.

Table of major characters

Please note that this table includes Special Edition changes such as Boba Fett in A New Hope or Ian McDiarmid replacing Clive Revill in The Empire Strikes Back. Also though David Prowse portrayed Darth Vader in the original trilogy, the character's voice was provided by James Earl Jones, and was replaced by Bob Anderson for the lightsaber duels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi

International Civil Aviation Organization airport code

The ICAO (/ˌaɪˌkeɪˈoʊ/, "IK-KAY-OH") airport code or location indicator is a four-character alphanumeric code designating aerodromes around the world. These codes are defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization, and published in ICAO Document 7910: Location Indicators are used by air traffic control and airline operations such as flight planning. They differ from IATA codes, which are generally used for airline timetables, reservations, and baggage tags. For example, the IATA code for London's Heathrow Airport is LHR and its ICAO code is EGLL. ICAO codes are commonly seen by passengers and the general public on flight-tracking services such as FlightAware. In general IATA codes are usually derived from the name of the airport or the city it serves, while ICAO codes are distributed by region and country.

ICAO codes are also used to identify other aviation facilities such as weather stations, International Flight Service Stations or Area Control Centers, whether or not they are located at airports.