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Show National News Summary Cosi-Of-Living Latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Sta-tistics show that prices on everyday every-day items people buy today are five per cent higher than in 1920, the boom year following Worjd War I and the end is nqt yet in sigh The peak was reached in June, latest month tabulated, tabulated when the consumers price index: hit 157 over the 1935-39 average, pr eight index points higher than the 149 recorded re-corded in June, 1020, Pensions Starting on September 1, 208,-000 208,-000 Civil and Spanish-American War veterans and their dependents depen-dents will get a twenty per cent pension increase. The increases will cost the government $29,-000,000 $29,-000,000 for the first year but the additional expense will decline rapidly thereafter as, deaths pc-cur. pc-cur. Pensions now ayerage abput $100 a mpnth for Qiyn War veterans vet-erans and $75 for Spanish-American Spanish-American War veterans. Death compensation to the dependents .averages more than ?40 a month. Construction Total construction activity, including in-cluding highway and street building build-ing and publicly-financed educational edu-cational facilities, represented an outlay of $1,300,000,000 in July, or 16 per cent above the corresponding cor-responding month of 1946. For the first seven months of 1947, total construction expenditures had amounted to $7,500,000,000, compared with $5,800,000,000 for the same period in,194. Polio Spurts The recent sharp rise in the Incidence of infantile paralysis cases, following a quiet summer, with Increases noted in 32 states, is still below the average for the lowest year since 1942. The U. S. Public Health Service reported re-ported a total of 2,664 cases up through the week of August 16, compared with 8,841 for the comparable period in 1946 and 1,505 cases in 942. Surplus About $15,000,000 worth of surplus telephone and telegraph equipment has been placed on sale by the War Assets Admln jstratiqn; The sales are beinj held a.t the Army General Depot at Ogden, Utah, and the War Assets warehouse in Philadelphia. Philadel-phia. Army 'Copter A new five-passenger helicopter, helicop-ter, which can rise vertically 450 feet a minute, operate at a top speed of 105 miles an hour, has a cruising speed of 90 miles an hour, and can climb to 13,000 feet, is being tested for use by the Army Air Forces. It was built by the Bell Aircraft Cor-, Cor-, poration. |