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Show VVEFKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Senate Probes Air Accidents; Feed Grains in Ample Supply; Begin Work on German Treaty I Hpifn DV Western Nfwspapi Untor ,. , , fFDITOIt'S NOTE: When opinions are expressed In thee columns, they are. those of Western Newspaper Luiod'i oea inalybti and not necessarily of this newspaper.) AIR TRAVEL: Probe Wrecks Loss of 18 lives in the crash of an j Eastern Air Lines plane near Galax, I Va., touched off a congressional in-j in-j vestigation of the recent series of i airplane accidents throughout the j nation. As the senate commerce i committee opened hearings by sum-j sum-j moning members of the Civil Aero-I Aero-I nautics board for questioning, Sen- alor Brewster fRep., Me.) declared "public confidence in flying is being j lost," and Representative Rivers j (D., S. C.) asserted "the American people are horrified and scared to i death." Ironically, the senate investigation was launched even as the CAB announced an-nounced a 100 per cent improvement in air safety in 1946 over the preceding pre-ceding year. The passenger fatality fatal-ity rate for 1946 was 1.24 for every 100 million miles compared with I 2.14 in the preceding year. In flying over 6 billion miles in 1946, air lines almost doubled 1945 flights. With attention focused on safety standards for aviation, investigators studied the disablement of the radio ra-dio range director at Winston-Salem, N. C, on the night of the Eastern Air Lines crash. However, CAB experts said that the apparatus was working when the plane was cleared for landing seven minutes before it crashed, 60 miles off its course. POLIO: Isolate Virus Isolation of what is believed to be a nearly pure infantile paralysis virus by two Stanford university scientists marked an important step in the unending fight to control the dread scourge of polio. While Drs. Hubert S. Loring and C. E. Schwerdt cautioned that much remained to be done before their discovery led to development of an Round the World .... PALESTINE: Arab officials rapped Britain's compromising attitude at-titude in Palestine over the Jewish question and demanded that British authorities step up efforts to quell the militant Jewish underground. . . . The Arab action followed bombing bomb-ing of the Haifa police headquarters, with loss of four lives and injury to 62 others. . . . While British diplomats diplo-mats continued to search for an answer an-swer to the Jewish demand for establishment es-tablishment of an autonomous Jewish Jew-ish state in Palestine in the face of bitter opposition of the strong Arab majority, the British Middle Eastern East-ern military command moved to maintain order in the Holy Land by transferring additional troops to the troubled region from Cairo. . . . FRENCH INDO-CH1NA: Reportedly Report-edly strengthened by 10.000 Japanese Jap-anese troops and officers, rebellious French Indo-Chinese natives fighting for the independence of their country coun-try hammered the French stronghold strong-hold of Hanoi and terrorized the white population of 3,000. . . . While native (Viet Namese) artillery under un-der Jap officers poured a nasty fire into Hanoi from the suburban outskirts, out-skirts, snipers and incendiarists harassed har-assed the French from within. . . . Ten persons, including women and 1 children, were reported to have been burned alive in their homes. ." . . Indicative of the fanaticism of the rebels, one native stood in water up to his neck until he could hurl his water-proof grenade at a passing French officer. : POLAND: Virtual civil war raged j in unhappy Poland on the eve of the ! national elections. . . . Gamely i standing his ground, Vice-Premier Mikolajczyk rallied his Polish Peasant Peas-ant party in the face of the Russian-sponsored government's hostility hos-tility to the rightists. . . . The U. S. and Britain protested against the conduct of the Warsaw regime as it was charged with dominating the election machinery, disqualifying rightist voters and candidates and coercing factory workers to vote for the pro-Communist ticket. . . . Although Al-though Peasant party leaders deplored de-plored the use of force, their adherents ad-herents struck back in many districts dis-tricts and were accused of murdering murder-ing pro-government supporters. . . . GERMANY: Start on Treaty Deputy foreign ministers of the Big Four set to work in Lancaster House, London, on the preliminary studies for the German and Austrian peace treaties, to be finally shaped ' by the foreign ministers themselves when they meet in Moscow in March. The German treaty, of course, commanded the most interest. While all four major powers were said to have drawn drafts for an Austrian settlement, they proceeded more cautiously on the subject of Germany Ger-many because of the relative importance impor-tance of that country in the whole European scheme of things and the ; possible impact of any treaty on their own interests. : In preparing the groundwork for the German settlement, the deputies depu-ties will review the recommendations recommenda-tions of 18 Allied nations for territorial terri-torial adjustments at the expense of the reich, reparations, permanent disarmament, the future level of economic activity and the character of the postwar government. Inside Reich There were rumblings of a reviving reviv-ing nationalism within defeated Germany, Ger-many, with economic and political unification the rallying point as the reich remained disorganized 20 months after the end of the war in the midst of Allied disagreement over policy. While the U. S. and Britain have joined to restore economic equilibrium equilibri-um in western Germany by consolidating consoli-dating their two zones, France continues con-tinues to play a lone hand in the Saar and Russia fashions a totalitarian totali-tarian framework in its eastern occupation oc-cupation sector. Even the U. S. and Britain possess differences over the question of socializing German industry in-dustry along patterns laid down by the British Labor party. In the welter of confusion, the Russians continue to make hay. Sure of what they want, they have encouraged en-couraged production from industry in the eastern zone to meet their own needs and those of their occupation forces while at the same time establishing estab-lishing a communistic economy designed de-signed to serve them politically. The Soviet-dominated state has taken a 51 per cent interest in many Industries Indus-tries and distributed the rest of the stock among employees. Dr. C. E. Schwerdt at work on polio virus in Stanford university univer-sity laboratory. effective vaccine against polio, the door has been opened toward making mak-ing a pure virus noninfectious and producing a concentrated vaccine free of impurities. Three steps are necessary before a vaccine could be used by humans. First, the scientists must develop a preventive against a strain of polio to which cotton rats are susceptible; then, another vaccine against a different dif-ferent strain to which mice and other oth-er experimental animals are exposed. ex-posed. Finally, the vaccines must be tried on monkeys, which are susceptible sus-ceptible to all strains of polio. FEED: Good Supply Farmers can count on ample supplies sup-plies of feed grains for livestock through the current feeding year, the Feed Industry council concluded after a comprehensive study. Total requirements of 109,465,000 tons of grains and mill feeds should leave a carryover of 16,620,000 tons ! at the end of the crop year, the council said. A breakdown showed estimated needs of 53,280,000 tons 1 for swine; 24,502,000 tons for poul- . try; 22,323,000 tons for dairy cattle; cat-tle; 14,833,000 for beef cattle; 967,-000 967,-000 tons for sheep and lambs, and , 5,250 tons for horses and mules. In contrast to the adequate supplies sup-plies of feed grains, the council estimated a deficit in stocks of high protein feeds. However, the experts averred that the price situation would tend to balance the supply i and cause a more careful use of ! high quality protein by feeders. While it was estimated that the number of animal units on feed during dur-ing 1946-'47 will be smaller than in the preceding season, the council said favorable livestock-feed ratios might result in increased feeding of hogs and poultry. Dairy cow feeding should remain heavy and beef cattle cat-tle operations should be stepped up. Federal Reserve board figures show that personal holdings of currency were in the neighborhood neighbor-hood of 21 billion dollars on June 30 last year, a fivefold increase since the end of 1939 and the equal to S560 per family. Business holdings of cash also increased in this period, from 1.6 billion dollars at the end of 1939 to 4.8 billion dollars last midyear, according ac-cording to the Federal Reserve! but the amount business has in the till is dwarfed by the total of personal holdings of cash. |