Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the 42,000 personnel in the vicinity of Bikini Atoll in the Pacific awaited word from Operation Crossroads commander Vice Admiral W.H.P. Blandy as to whether the weather would be appropriate for the scheduled first test of the atomic bomb, Able, set to take place on Monday at 9:30 a.m., Bikini time, 5:30 p.m. Sunday, EST. The test for the aerial detonation could be performed only through July 20. Wind this date was being seen as a problematic factor because of danger to personnel involved in the test from wind-carried radiation.

The test had cost 70 million dollars. The target for the test consisted of fifty warships, including two U.S. battleships and two aircraft carriers. The fission bomb was to be dropped from a B-29 flying at an altitude of six miles.

An artist's conception of the three stages of the blast, compressed into one image, is presented on the page. The mushroom cloud was expected to extend 60,000 feet upward within six to ten minutes following the initial blast, with extremely dangerous radiation levels just below the upper portion of the mushroom at the apogee of its rise. At that point, the cloud would begin to fall and dissipate in what was termed "stratospheric inversion".

President Truman vetoed the OPA bill, calling it "a sure formula for inflation", and the House quickly sustained the veto, meaning that OPA would end as of midnight Sunday. There would be too little time, according to members, to pass an emergency extension bill. A resolution to extend OPA temporarily until July 20 had been blocked by failure of unanimous consent in the House, sending the resolution to the Banking Committee.

The same scenario with regard to temporary extension was expected to play out in the Senate.

The President found that the bill offered no choice against inflation, that it would occur with or without the bill approved by Congress. The bill provided the Government with the responsibility to stabilize the economy but without affording the power to accomplish it. He asked Congress to take immediate action to provide proper legislation.

Economic Stabilizer Chester Bowles resigned the previous night in response to the bill. He praised President Truman for the veto.

Housing czar Wilson Wyatt contended that prices would rise through the roof without a bill, that the bill which Congress had passed would have resulted in a 10 to 25 percent rise in prices.

Britain began large-scale military operations in Palestine to eliminate what was described as "a state of anarchy". Troops occupied buildings used by the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and placed a curfew on large areas. Virtually all of the members of the executive committee of the Agency were placed under arrest based on the alleged cooperation of the Agency with violence against the Government.

In the treason trial of Chetnik wartime leader General Draja Mihailovic in Belgrade, the prosecution read several letters alleged to have been received from Chetnik officers by General Mihailovik urging that collaboration with the Italians was the only way to save Yugoslavia from being overrun by the Soviets. General Mihailovic repeatedly asserted that he did not know whether he received each of the letters being read.

In Chicago, the police announced the arrest of William Heirens in the kidnaping and murder of six-year old Suzanne Degnan on January 7. Nine points of similarity had been established between a fingerprint on the ransom note and that of the seventeen-year old student at the University of Chicago.

Mr. Heirens had been arrested while attempting to flee from police during an alleged attempted burglary on June 26. He had been hit in the head with a flowerpot dropped by police during the escape attempt, was therefore in the hospital recuperating, but was nevertheless being interrogated by police, with no results thus far. The police inspector contended that Mr. Heirens was feigning irrationality.

A report had been published on June 26 that a man in Phoenix, in custody for a sex offense, had confessed to the murder, but his fingerprints did not match the ransom note fingerprint and other parts of his story also did not square with the facts. He had contended that the police had terrorized him because parts of his story were inconsistent with the facts of the crime.

Eventually, Mr. Heirens would confess to the murder, albeit laying it on an imaginary "friend", his alter-ego, and spent the rest of his life in jail, dying in March, 2012. He subsequently recanted his confession, contending that the police had extracted it by coercion, and maintained his innocence to the end of his life.

One of two janitors who had initially been held as suspects contended that, while in custody for two days, he was brutally beaten so badly by the police that he had to be hospitalized, and later received a substantial damage award of $20,000, quite a lot of money in 1946.

As we asked previously, was Mr. Heirens guilty of any of the three murders for which he plea bargained away the death penalty with questionable confessions, likely coerced by police, impelled into the realm of the adventitious, motivated by the need to catch the slayer? especially as the vicious crime again had been brought to public consciousness by the failure of the Phoenix confession to bring forth a suspect, the same day Mr. Heirens was arrested for burglary. The murder of a child or of a young, vivacious woman, or a series of murders thought to be interconnected, always places such public pressure on police and prosecutors to catch the guilty. But not allowing the police and prosecutors space to work methodically to catch the actual perpetrator is an evil as bad as the crime itself, perhaps worse, potentially fixing guilt on the wrong individual, while letting the guilty escape the crime.

And, be sure to duck and cover during the atomic bomb test, which we have on good authority is a "go" for the scheduled time tomorrow, EST; for that dreaded chain reaction could take place in the atmosphere and blow the world to Kingdom Come.

If it does, don't fret. You will be alright as long as you ducked and covered.

On the editorial page, "The Death of OPA" compliments the President for his courage in vetoing the unsatisfactory compromise bill to extend OPA for a year, but without sufficient price control powers to make it effective. The piece finds the logic sound, that it was better not to have a bill than one which could not serve to administer price control. The bill had set forth an impossible array of bureaucracy for continuing price controls, signifying a lack of confidence in the Administration.

"Taking the Curse Off Caste" comments favorably on the War Department's determination to implement twelve of the fourteen recommendations of the Doolittle Board regarding the caste system between enlisted men and officers in the Army. Most of the recommendations involved superficial matters, but nevertheless ones which irritated the enlisted men enormously during the war. Most of the officers would probably receive the changes with approbation.

"Senator Bilbo and the Record" remarks on Senator Theodore Bilbo having many enemies, but none so steadfast as Hodding Carter, the Pulitzer Prize winning editor-publisher of the Delta Democrat-Times of Greenville, Mississippi.

Mr. Carter had regularly inveighed against Huey Long during his tenure as Governor and Senator of Louisiana while working on newspapers in that state. He had vowed not to depart Louisiana until the Kingfish was dead and gone. That having occurred, he now declared his intent not to leave Mississippi at the abrupt invitation of Senator Bilbo until the unreconstructed Senator had met a similar fate.

Recently, Mr. Carter had reminded the voters that the State Senate had once found Mr. Bilbo unfit to hold office with honest men, that he had been informally accused of accepting bribes which had virtually wrecked Mississippi colleges during his term as Governor, that he had pardoned 5,000 convicted criminals, and shown contempt for blacks, Jews, Catholics, as well as Jesus Christ. His divorced wife had accused him of abandonment and taking up with "bad women".

Mr. Carter recognized that such was not the usual editorialization in a political campaign but that to fight Senator Bilbo required some stooping to his level to document his corruption.

The editorial suggests that Mississippians could take pride in Mr. Carter's defiance of Senator Bilbo's threat to "skin him alive and run him out of the state".

For his part, Mr. Carter wrote that the contempt in which Senator Bilbo held his fellow man would continue beyond "that hoped-for and not too distant day when, through the providential laws of nature, Hell shall have gained a noisome adornment and Satan a congenial ally."

He added that when that day would come, he would hopefully still be living where he damned well pleased.

Mr. Bilbo would win the election, but an effort to try to block his being seated in the new Senate sent him back home to die from cancer in August, 1947. Mr. Carter continued to live and work in the State of Mississippi for the remainder of his days, lasting until 1972.

Drew Pearson discusses the voting acrobatics of "namby-pamby" Senator George Radcliffe of Maryland and of Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire regarding the OPA extension bill, during the House-Senate conference to reconcile the varying bills out of each chamber. Senator Radcliffe had bolted from his Democratic colleagues, causing a deadlock for two days on the issue of removal of price controls on meat, poultry, and dairy products. Senator Tobey, a Republican, had broken the deadlock by voting against removal of the controls.

Marquis Childs comments on the failure of the President, in a month since the coal strike and the threat to draft workers if the coal strike continued, to take action in another area where he threatened a takeover of plants unless management negotiated in good faith, that of the farm equipment industry. Seven Allis-Chalmers plants were on strike with 18,000 workers idle and two plants of the J. I. Case Co. were on strike with 5,200 workers out.

Samuel Grafton, reporting from San Diego, back from Mexico, tells of a hotel clerk in Mexico declaring himself for Ezequiel Padilla in the presidential election set for July 7. He said that only the poor were for the opponent, Miguel Aleman, and thus he was for Padilla.

A letter writer, who smashes up his first paragraph pretty badly, finds an article by Burke Davis on jalopies to have been interesting, but states that there was no sense, jalopy or no, for people driving in such a way that they had wrecks. He traveled the roads of North Carolina as few others, he says, and had since 1909. Visiting most of the towns and villages, he had never had a serious accident. He had dodged crazy drivers and run off the road to avoid them. He liked dirt roads, reminding of the good old days when people were "respectable" while driving.

He favors tough inspection laws and fines for failure of safety, and heavy penalties for drunk driving.

A letter from a writer 77 years old urges, "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it will be opened unto you."

"Through intuition and auto-suggestion anyone can cross the bar and return."

His friends and relatives who preceded him gave him welcome as they thought the stork had arrived. He told them that he was only a visitor and had to return, that the world was at war and he was needed for another decade. They regretted that he could not stay and he strolled away.

But wherever he went, they told him that the stork had come with a friend.

In his stroll, he saw in the distance a majestic building marked "Hell's Headquarters". He walked in, but no one was friendly or even courteous, acted very much disillusioned.

No one knew the way out and he looked around for a railroad worker, as they were always telling people where to go. But at the recording office, he was told there was none in hell.

The temperature was so hot that anyone who had taken the gold with him would find it melted.

He did not get out of hell until awakening the next morning.

"My advice: When the stork arrives and takes you across, stay away from that place."

Well, our advice is for him to pay close attention to the advice of the first letter writer.

But, if you were at the Cow Palace in 1976, while being a driving instructor for Sears, you would better understand how it all links together sometimes when you least expect it.

We reiterate that we do not read ahead. It keeps it Magical.

Maybe you read ahead. We don't know.

Maybe, you're a Stork and we're a Teapot.

We cross the bar everyday and bounce right back. We don't care. If you do, you're stupid as hell.

It is called Harrowing.

A letter from the Adjutant of the Independence Post of the American Legion thanks The News for its editorial of June 24, re the exemplary effort of the members in getting the J. A. Jones Construction Company to build 50 houses for veterans of the Post at no profit. The News, he says, had helped in the drive to achieve the goal.