Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the Army had cleared the Garsson brothers combine of any wrongdoing in the manufacture of defective 4-inch mortar shells which had prematurely exploded and killed 38 American soldiers and injured 127 others. The Garsson brothers' companies made only the shells, not the fuses, which were deemed the fault in the premature detonations. The percentage of defective shells was small, 63 of four million. Once the defect had been discovered during training exercises, lanyards had been used during the Battle of the Bulge to permit firing of the shells at a safe distance. In the worst of the explosions, occurring at A. P. Hill Military Reservation in Fredericksburg, Va., one round had exploded killing two officers and wounding nine others.

Meanwhile, Representative Andrew May, chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee, agreed, as soon as his doctor would permit, to testify, either in Washington or at his home in Kentucky, before a subcommittee of the Mead Committee investigating the Garsson brothers combine and Mr. May's dealings with it. He also submitted a statement for the Mead Committee, claiming, as he had previously, that he made no profit from his association with the Garsson brothers.

In Paris, Russian delegate Andrei Vishinsky urged the Peace Conference to reject Italian claims to Trieste and stated that Yugoslavia had the "unquestionable right" to have possession of the port city, but that Russia was supporting, on pragmatic political grounds, the Big Four Foreign Ministers Council agreement to make Trieste a free territory. He said that sometimes, in dealing with political considerations, two plus two equaled five.

In Elko, Nevada, a Trans-Luxury Airlines twin-engine DC-3 crashed at 2:00 a.m. on approach to the airport, killing at least twenty aboard. Only one known survivor had been found, a two-year old boy found in a sitting position 100 feet from the wreckage. The plane had left New York with 24 persons aboard and had as its final destination San Francisco. The company had begun transcontinental flights just two months earlier after two years operating East Coast flights.

UNRRA director Fiorello La Guardia, speaking in Copenhagen at the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization meeting, made a plea to establish a world food board to replace UNRRA, the life of which would expire at the end of 1946. He stated that price stabilization would drive out of business every grain exchange prepared to speculate on prices, from Chicago to Liverpool. He said that 20 million acres of arable land in the liberated countries were not being cultivated because of the loss during the war of 2.5 million draft animals and five million cattle.

In Ottawa, Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King announced the appointment of a new Ambassador to the United States, Hume Wrong, to replace Lester Pearson. The new Ambassador was thought to be the right man at the right time for the job, both at home and abroad. Mr. Wrong had been serving as Undersecretary of State for External Affairs.

In Athens, Greece, the Navy decided to call off the planned air display over the city which had on its program 120 planes from the carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt sky-writing the letters "FDR". The commander of the operation stated that it could not be integrated into the four-day program, but men onboard the ships opined that it was the result of State Department pressure, not wishing to rock the boat with respect to the criticism of the Russians in Paris for the presence of the ships in Greece at the time immediately preceding the previous Sunday's plebiscite to determine the return to the throne of King George II, the overwhelming approval of which had been predicted for some time. Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov had suggested that the ships were present to influence the election in favor of the King.

The President, after returning from his eighteen-day cruise to Rhode Isaland and Bermuda, ruled out the need for calling a special session of Congress before the November elections or even until the new Congress would be seated in January. He endorsed the New York Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Senator James Mead, and the senatorial nominee, former Governor Herbert Lehman.

Some 100,000 members of the AF of L Seamen's International Union and 300,000 other union seamen of both AFL and the CIO National Maritime Union struck at Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf ports beginning at noon. President Truman stated that Secretary of Labor Lewis Schwellenbach was handling the dispute, which was with the Government's Wage Stabilization Board based on its refusal to approve a $27.50 per month increase to which both the shippers and the unions had agreed. The Board had stated as rationale that any increase over $17.50 would be inflationary.

In New York, the stock market rebounded with increases on leading stocks from a dollar to six dollars per share, erasing some of the losses from Tuesday when the market suddenly had one of its most precipitous drops in its history. Volume of trading was above two million shares.

OPA and CCC officials stated that sugar prices had to rise, probably by a cent at the retail end, based on a Cuban-American agreement under which Cuban sugar prices would fluctuate based on changes in the cost of living in the United States. Cuba supplied about one-third of U. S. sugar.

In Chicago, William Heirens, 17, having confessed and entered pleas of guilty to three murders to avoid the death penalty, attempted unsuccessfully to hang himself in the Cook County Jail. He was found at 1:00 a.m. hanging in a noose fashioned from a bedsheet. A guard discovered him before he lost consciousness. It was the third attempt he had made at suicide since his arrest on unrelated burglary and assault charges in late June.

Reed Sarratt reports on the second front page about a Union County election which resulted in the overwhelming passage of a library tax. The election was held under a new law passed by the Legislature in 1945. If the county had been operating under the same rules as Mecklenburg County in its recent bond elections, the measure would have been defeated. Mecklenburg operated under a rule which specified that for a measure to pass, it had to have the support of a majority of registered voters, regardless of actual turnout at the polls; thus, a failure to vote in the election as a registered voter equated to a no vote. Union County followed a simple rule requiring for passage only a majority of the voters actually voting.

In Fayetteville, N.C., the defense rested in the case of Wall C. Ewing, Cumberland County political leader. The defense had sought in vain to present evidence of insanity running in the Ewing family, a ploy to which the prosecutor successfully objected when family members were called to corroborate the notion. Mr. Ewing's youngest brother, for instance, had been asked: "Do you know of your own knowledge that there is insanity in your family?" Believing that the answer would be in the affirmative, the prosecutor had objected and the objection was sustained—presumably because insanity in families is so common that the judge deemed it irrelevant.

The prosecution would be allowed its opportunity next to put on a case in rebuttal, after which the jury would be instructed and allowed to begin its deliberations.

A windstorm, thought to have been a tornado, hit El Rosa, Minnesota, damaging every building in the town.

On the editorial page, "How Influential Is the Military?" comments on the war-time feud between the civilian and military branches of the Government, denied during the war, having been dragged into the open with the publication of Arsenal of Democracy by former War Production Board chairman Donald Nelson. He claimed that while he won the battle to prevent the military from completely taking control of the nation's industry during the war, he had lost the battle to begin reconversion in 1944, in conflict with the insistence of the military to maintain war production at full bore until war's end. The problem, he argued, was at the root of the country's present difficulties during reconversion.

"Spencer Abbott and His Heroes" pays homage to the Charlotte Hornets and their manager for their first Tri-State League penant since 1932, drawing more fans to Griffith Park than any other team in Charlotte's history. While the team had been wanting in some areas of technique, they made up for it with enthusiasm which paid off in the struggle with Asheville for the championship.

"A Tough Season in Education" discusses the lack of staff and teachers in the public schools of North Carolina, one of the worst shortages in the state's history. Even if soon corrected, the problems would persist for years to come because of inadequate instruction of elementary schoolchildren.

Glen Taylor, Senator from Idaho and former cowboy singer, to be the vice-presidential candidate on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948 with former Vice-President Henry Wallace, substitutes for Drew Pearson, urges that there was real need for investigation of war profits, to determine which companies sabotaged FDR's policy of equality of sacrifice and how it would affect the country in the future. He thought it necessary to determine the relationship between industry and the military and who had made procurement decisions with respect to the large corporations.

Douglas Larsen comments that, according to UNRRA officials, death from starvation was difficult, that other diseases would first get the person who was malnourished. UNRRA was attempting to determine the number of persons who had died abroad from both direct and indirect results of starvation during the previous winter. Virtually no deaths had been recorded directly from starvation in the countries where UNRRA had been operating. But part of the reason was the pride of Europeans who believed it a dishonor to have died from starvation. UNRRA was making the assessment to explain to the world its impact on famine relief.

Bertram Benedict points out that until recently the United States had maintained retail prices at about one-third the rate of increase of prices during and after World War I, but that status had been changed by the inflation since July 1 when OPA temporarily ceased existence and then was revived on July 25 by Congress in a weakened state. Presently, price increase rates were nearly that of the period following World War I and were still climbing.

A piece from The New York Times column, "Topics of the Times", titled "Big Town Manners", surtitled "Heart of Gold", suggests that public opinion polls should have long ago examined whether New Yorkers were courteous or exhibited manners deplorable both to themselves and to the visitor. For every letter to the editor remarking on rudeness in the city came a prideful response telling of the good manners of residents. Reporters had conducted sidewalk interviews on the issue, but with a necessarily limited sample.

Among the quotes of the day: "To fail to provide adequate finances at a time when our nation is the most prosperous in its history is the foolhardy type of waste and extravagance. An investment in our schools is an investment in the future of America." –Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey of Minneapolis—who would introduce the civil rights plank into the 1948 Democratic Convention platform, the passage of which prompting the walk-out from the convention of many Southern conservatives led by Strom Thurmond, would that year run successfully to become Senator from Minnesota, would run unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1960, but would become Vice-President in 1964 and the Democratic Party nominee for the presidency in 1968, ultimately losing in a close race to former Vice-President Richard Nixon that year, then was re-elected to the Senate in 1970 where he served until his death from cancer in 1978.