Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Senator Edward Moore of Oklahoma had given a long, fiery speech on the Senate floor against continuation of OPA price control, contending that it was the darling of the CIO PAC to force economic collapse and the overthrow of the Government so the Commies could take over. Senator Moore further charged that Economic Stabilizer Chester Bowles was likely being supported by PAC and was using public funds to further his political ambitions, that he would likely be on the Democratic ticket in 1948.

Senator "Pappy" Lee O'Daniel of Texas was ready to begin his promised filibuster of the bill to extend OPA. Unless the bill would pass before Sunday at midnight, OPA would expire. If it did lapse, however, the victory would only be symbolic as the Senate could then approve the legislation afterward.

Pass the biscuits and the danged fertilizer and let's go have a ball.

Cotton prices rose above 31 cents a pound for the first time since 1923.

Mr. Bowles announced a three to four cents per pound rise in the price of coffee.

The four-power foreign ministers, meeting in Paris, agreed to provide to Greece the Dodecanese Islands, provided they would be demilitarized. The Western nations rejected an alternative proposal by Russia that Trieste be made an autonomous district under the sovereignty of Yugoslavia or that it be placed under joint sovereignty of Yugoslavia and Italy. Russia had turned down the French proposal that the port be internationalized. The three Western powers found the Russian plan unworkable and contrary to the principle adopted by the foreign ministers during the London conference the previous September, that dominant ethnicity would determine sovereignty. Trieste was predominantly Italian.

In Belgrade, grave diggers testified at the trial of General Draja Mihailovic, charged with treason by collaborating with the Axis during German occupation, that they had witnessed the execution and burial of 20,000 Yugoslav citizens.

In New York, Herbert Evatt declared that he would raise the proposal to abolish the veto of the Big Five on the U. N. Security Council, after the Russians had exercised the veto three times the previous night regarding the question of continued diplomatic recognition of Franco's Spain. It was the longest and bitterest session yet of the Security Council, lasting nearly six hours.

President Truman stated that the world food crisis was not over but that the United States was now meeting its goal of grain shipments overseas for the first six months of the year, six million tons. The final shipments, however, to meet that goal would not leave American ports until after July 1. All save 500,000 tons had been shipped.

Great Britain announced that it would ration bread and flour the following month, avoided during both world wars. The ration, to begin July 21, would allow nine ounces of daily bread for the average person and 15 ounces for manual workers, 11 ounces for female workers and expectant mothers. Meat rations were raised to allow the purchase of 28 cents worth per week, up from 24 cents.

George and Paul would receive but two ounces daily, while John and Ringo would be able to gorge themselves with eight ounces, maybe an ounce or so toasted, with a crumpet on the side. The Stones, being bad, of course, would be left without, being afforded only porridge.

Rationing would be based on units, a one pound, twelve ounce loaf of bread being four units and a pound being three. A pound of flour would consume two units. Units would be interchangeable to enable more consumption of bread by heavy bread eaters and less for those who wished to exchange their units for something else.

Winston Churchill wanted to debate Labor on the imposition of rationing without proper explanation of the reasons. Labor voices in Commons drowned out his speech.

The Army placed the toll of dead and missing Americans of World War II at 308,978, a fatality rate of 2.98 percent of the more than ten million men and women who had served in the Army. The numbers covered the period from May 27, 1941, the point at which President Roosevelt had declared a national emergency, through January 31, 1946. The missing were down to 1,424, the remainder of the formerly listed missing having been declared dead after a year. It was unlikely those remaining on the list would be found alive.

Of the dead, 363 were from Mecklenburg County. Their names were provided on two inside pages of the newspaper.

The Josiah Wedgewood arrived in Haifa with 1,300 illegal Jewish immigrants aboard. They were transferred to a clearance camp after disembarking. Twenty had sought to escape by boat the previous night and were arrested, believed to be crew members of the ship.

Hal Boyle, still in Berlin, tells of American housewives being short of bobby pins for their hair in recent weeks, causing a minor crisis. One wife stated that she had a thousand-dollar rug and a $600 china closet, but no waxed paper, mop or cleansing powder. Many of the requisitioned houses were well-furnished, but without curtains or table lamps, and in need of plumbing and window repair.

Berlin still stood in ruins for the most part, causing the American children to gape in amazement.

The Americans had plenty of food, able to purchase fresh steak, bread, and butter in the Army commissary, enabling them to be better off than when they were in the United States.

In Chicago, the police stated that the prints found on the ransom note provided by the kidnaper and presumed killer of six-year old Suzanne Degnan the previous January, did not match those of Richard Thomas who had confessed to the crime in Phoenix. That plus other discrepancies in his story had caused the police to dismiss his confession as bogus.

In Gunn City, Missouri, a four-year old boy had been slain after being battered and beaten. His body had been discovered in the stock pond of his parents' farm. A blow to the head had killed him. He had gone missing the previous Friday and was discovered on Saturday morning. Small V-shaped marks, about the size of a small hammer or heel of a shoe, were found on his face. The Sheriff still had no leads on who the murderer was.

The Post Office announced that it would issue a special cancellation stamp on the atom bomb test date at Bikini, stating "atom bomb test, Bikini". It was expected that 200,000 pieces of mail would be sent and that they would become collectors' items.

On the editorial page, "Two Ways to Skin a Cat" comments on the effort of the housewives of Bitomto, Italy, to do something about the poor quality of the bread. They went to City Hall and beat up the Mayor.

"The Show's the Thing" begins by saying: "The poured honey of the NBC accent may in time remove the delightful burry talk of the Carolina hills, soften the jargon of the Coastal Bankers, and doom Gullah to intelligibility."

"Bringing a Judge Up to Date" comments on Judge J. H. Clement having been shocked to find the absence of so many defendants and witnesses during his term of court in Mecklenburg, so many that he wound up without any cases to adjudicate at trial. The piece seeks to bring him up to speed on the history of the county's jurisprudential record and that what he found was typical. It ventures that only a new solicitorial district, with a smaller calendar for Mecklenburg only and a solicitor from the county, would make a difference.

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "How're You Gonna Keep 'Em..." discusses the ongoing censorship of information in Moscow with regard to the United States, including a refusal to print the whole of the Baruch Plan for sharing the atomic secret for peaceful purposes. The Russian press had condemned its provision to abolish the veto as premised on an imperialistic motive. The Soviet appeared to be utilizing obfuscation and anti-Western propaganda to keep the minds of the Russian people off their low standard of living.

Drew Pearson discusses an uncomfortable session had between veterans groups and Jack Small, the Civilian Production Administrator, regarding his agency's approval of the Monmouth, N.J., racetrack and a 250-room addition to the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. The veterans thought those materials should have been diverted to housing for veterans. Mr. Small sought to explain the Shoreham addition by saying it would serve foreign relations, and the racetrack, by the fact that it was already in the works before the stop-orders were placed in November on non-essential construction.

Marquis Childs discusses President Truman's unraveled nerves having been shown by his abrupt reply to a telegram from Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire pleading for grain for poultry farmers of his state, saying that it could be released without hampering overseas shipments to the hungry.

Peter Edson reports of the lack of judicial experience by the sitting Supreme Court Justices. Newly sworn Chief Justice Fred Vinson had the most judicial experience with but five years, four on the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia, and another as chief administrative Judge of the Emergency Court of Appeals for Price Control. While there were no complaints, his juridical career had been undistinguished.

A letter from Republican candidate for the House seat in the district, P. C. Burkholder, provides some detail of his trip to Grandfather Mountain in Western North Carolina to attend the singers convention in an open field amid "natural rock", and conveniently intermixes his political points with the travelogue. Mr. Burkholder joined the group from Morganton on the rock to sing his own version of Rabbie Burns's "A Soldier's Return".

Read at your own risk. Something about mica and the corruption of the New Deal, we think. During the winter of 1945, a man had come to him in the Sears shrubbery department to buy some shrubbery and it turned out that he was a mica mining engineer driven from the business to shrubbery by the throat-cutting New Dealers. The mica mines had been shut down after providing wartime mica for the war effort because cheaper mica could be obtained from India where the laborers were paid "six-cent a day" rather than the 60 cents per hour in the mica mines of Western North Carolina. And, on top of it, the Federal Government had accused the North Carolina mica mine owners of monopolistic and price-fixing practices and taken them to Federal Court.

He was going to "fight tooth and toe-nail to get the Government out of business; playing around in other people's business where they have no business; wasting our money and resources." The fate of America depended upon it.

He was pleased to see that The News was on the newsstands in the mountains and that he could wear his ten-gallon hat without being arrested.

Maybe he was understudy to Tom Mix, or something like that. Or Gene Autrino.

Well, mica was valuable for radio equipment and microphones, for which the country paid dearly.

At least he did not work in the buttermilk crisis in Mecklenburg this time.

The editors respond to another letter seeking the return of Eric Brandeis's column, informing that it was back.

A letter from the president of the North Carolina Federation of Business & Professional Women's Clubs thanks the newspaper for coverage of its recent convention, especially thanking reporters Freck Sproles and Harriet Doar.