“FLYING CIGARS” IN FRANCE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27499, 5 November 1954, Page 8

“FLYING CIGARS” IN FRANCE

Successful Tests Reported ■ Press Association—CopyHght) PARIS, November 3. rne French Government Aircraft Engine Research Group has announced that it has successfully flown wingless “flying cigars” and “flying ba 4Z els durin fi secret tests. - ey “ a challenge to the British flying bedstead” because they, too, can make vertical take-offs and landings. The announcement has set off a new whirl or excited controversy. For six days the whole of France nas been talking about strange objects flymg around the skies. IJe Government announcement says that a German rocket scientist, Helmut de Borovsky, working with French and German experts, has perfected a jet-propelled flying cigar and a short, thick barrel-shaped jetpropelled machine. . Models of both types have taken off and landed vertically and flown horizontally under radio control at high speeds. wind tunnel tests have shown that full-scale models should be able to climb vertically to 60,000 feet in two minutes.

RIGHTS OF THE PRIESTHOOD

Views On Moral And Social Problems

(Rec. 8 p.m.) VATICAN CITY, Nov. 2. The Pope, in a speech released today asserted the right of the Roman Catholic priesthood to pronounce on social and political problems, which, he said, “undoubtedly come within the moral sphere.” War, conscientious objection, totalitarianism, secular schools, and the secular State are such issues, he told an assembly of cardinals and bishops yesterday. The Pope said: “We must take an open and firm stand against the error of trying to restrain the Church from all undertakings and business which concern life as it is really conducted.” Among the problems on which the Church and clergy have the right to speak with authority for all Roman Catholics, he said, are: (1) The morality of War “waged as it is today, and whether a conscientious person may give or withhold his co-operation in it.” (2) The moral relationships which bind and rule the nations. (3) The so-called totalitarian State, on whatever principle it is based. (4) Complete secularisation of the State and public life, and of schools. (5) Relations between the individual and society. (6) The purpose and limits of temporal authority. The Pope said that to maintain that these and like problems were outside the field of morals, and the influence of the Church, was to contradict common sense and truth.

Bankrupt M.P. Owed More Than £160,000

LONDON, November 3. Captain Peter. Baker, aged 33, a Conservative member of Parliament, was alleged at a London bankruptcy meeting today, to owe between £160,000 and £170,000 to 25 creditors. Six proofs of debt had been lodged with the Official Seceiver for a total of something like £32,000, it was said. The Official Receiver, presiding at

a meeting of Baker’s creditors in the London Bankruptcy Court, added that all the captain claimed to possess was a few items of furniture. His debts were- the result of guarantees' he had given ’to various companies which had gone into liquidation, and whose assets he had described as having been sold at “catsmeat prices."

His personal debts were no more than £l5OO. the receiver said. Baker had a serious breakdown last year. Still a sick man under treatment, he was said today to have given all the help he could in the bankruptcy investigations. He was being supported by his father. No resolution was passed at the meeting and the matter was left in the hands of the Official Receiver.

DUKE SEES NEW FIGHTER

(Rec. 7 pjn.) LONDON, November 3. The Duke of Edinburgh today saw Britain’s top-secret P.l jet fighter—the country’s first plane to reach supersonic speed in level flight—put through its paces at Warton, Lancashire. The Duke was paying a short visit to the aerodrome of the English Electric Company, the makers of the new interceptor fighter. ■ •