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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS j Tax Body Asks Higher Postal Rates; ! Coal Miners Offered New Pay Boost; Nazis Strengthen Defenses in Italy As Allied Forces Gather in Corsica (EDITOR'S VOTE: When opinion are expressed la these columns, they are those f Western Newspaper Union's news analysts and not necessarily of this newspaper.) j I Released by Western Newspaper Union. j ,. - : , - i w 4 s - &- f :. ;. n& ; ;- Labor leaders who conferred with President Roosevelt on wages and prices included, from left to right in front row, William Green, AFL president; presi-dent; A. F. Whitney; Mrs. Anna Rosenberg, social security board; Philip Murray, CIO president, and Julins Emspak. Back row from left to right: George Meany, Daniel Tobin and R. J. Thomas. ITALY: Dig In With the Nazis solidly entrenched in the mountains running across Italy 100 miles south of Rome, there were reports that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was assembling forces In Corsica, possibly for a landing, at the Germans' rear in northern Italy, or on the French Riviera. The mountains in which the Germans Ger-mans dug in form a double ridge and rise to heights of 2,500 feet along the sector occupied by Lieut. Gen. Mark Clark's Fifth army. Because most positions blend well into the landscape and the heights are rugged, rug-ged, experts saw little use of airplanes air-planes to bomb defenses effectively or armored formations to break up concentrations. The continuing flow of German reinforcements in northern Italyyn-dicated Italyyn-dicated that the Nazis intend to pin down the greater bulk of the Allied armies in that country, and make It the principal battleground of Europe. Eu-rope. HAWAII: Commander in Contempt When the army's commander of the Hawaiian department refused to produce two Geres' Ger-es' "N. man-American citify citi-fy " zens in court and , show cause why the army should con-I con-I - tue old them v . VF on precautionary f I J grounds, Federal k ?j Judge Delbert E. I- .. " s v Metzger charged the ? j commander with x V contempt and fined 8 him $5,000. " " But when Judge Judge Metzger Metzger learned that the army had released the two citizens, he dismissed dis-missed the order to produce them, and cut the commander's fine to $100. However, he refused to dismiss the contempt charge entirely. Under martial law in Hawaii, the writ of habeas corpus, requiring authorities to show cause why a suspect sus-pect should be held, had been restricted re-stricted to use in certain civil cases, although Judge Metzger had demanded de-manded its full application. At present, pres-ent, habeas corpus stands suspended in military cases, but can be utilized in strictly civil suits. LABOR: Raise for Miners Trimming the United Mine Workers Work-ers proposition for a $1.50 daily wage raise with compensation for underground travel time, the War Labor board offered John L. Lewis' UMW a $1.12 boost. Under the WLB offer, miners would not be paid for underground travel, but would receive time and a half for 45 minutes of work over the regular 7-hour day. According to the WLB, the miners' earnings would increase $1.66 daily for a six-day, six-day, 84 hour day. Meanwhile leaders of 20 railroad unions were preparing a strike vote among their 1,350,000 members, to decide on a walkout over dissatisfaction dissatis-faction of the government's award of wage increases of four cents an hour for the operating unions, and Economic Stabilization Director Fred Vinson's refusal to grant the non-operating unions an eight cents an hour boost. TAXES: Ash Higher Postal Rates With congress opposed to further Increases in income taxes, the lawmakers law-makers looked to other possible sources of revenue to help raise some of the 10 billion dollars requested by the treasury to bring total receipts to 50 billion dollars annually. Congress' advisory tax staff proposed pro-posed increasing the local postal rate to 3 cents; air-mail to 10 cents an ounce; money orders 10 to 37 cents; insured mall 10 to 70 cents, and COD mail 24 cents to $2.40. The advisory staff also suggested raising the liquor tax to $10 a gallon; beer to $8 per barrel; wine to 5 cents to $1 a gallon; electric elec-tric light bulbs and tubes to 15 per cent of retail price; general admissions admis-sions to 3 cents for each 10 cents; bowling 20 per cent of charge, and billiards $20 a table. t In all, congress hopes to raise Vh billion dollars from the new levies. RUSSIA: Nazis Fight Entrapment Their Dnieper river line smashed below Kiev, the German high command com-mand strived to pull hundreds of thousands of their embattled troops out of the huge noose charging Russian Rus-sian forces were drawing about them. In this sector, the Dnieper turns sharply from a southerly direction and runs almost 200 miles eastward to Dnepropetrovsk. The Germans established a line along these 200 miles of river front, and then organized organ-ized a defense from Dnepropetrovsk southward some 125 miles to the Sea of Azov. By slashing through the German lines along the eastern course of the Dnieper, the Russ threatened the whole Nazi line strung to the south from Dnepropetrovsk. To escape entrapment, en-trapment, the German high command com-mand began withdrawing its troops. DRAFT: Would Take Dads Last Moving to draft dads last, congress con-gress passed a bill which would require re-quire Selective Service to induct all single and childless married men throughout the entire country first before fathers would be called by any board. Incorporated in the same bill which went to the senate for consideration con-sideration were provisions which would: 1. Eliminate the War Manpower commission's classification of "essential" "es-sential" industries offering temporary tempo-rary deferment; 2. Require all deferments defer-ments to be reviewed by appeals boards within the district where the employee works; 3. Establish a medical commission to consider change of army and navy physical standards. 'HELLCAT': Navy's Neivest Latest American plane to sweep the Japanese before it in Southwest Pacific skies is the navy's Grumman Grum-man Hellcat fighter plane. Powered by a 2,000 h.p. motor, the Hellcat travels over 400 m.p.h., can climb to 35,000 feet and has a range of over 1,500 miles. With a wingspan of 42 feet, 10 inches and an overall length of 33 feet, 6Yt inches, the Hellcat is a single sin-gle seat, low wing, aU metal, folding wing monoplane, designed to operate from an aircraft carrier or land. |