U.S.A. AFFAIRS

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 October 1945, Page 5

U.S.A. AFFAIRS

INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES NEW YORK, October 4. Shipping in the New York port area was brought to a standstill when the three-day old wharf labourers’ strike spread to about, 60,0ut) stevedores and affiliated union workers. The strike halted the loading and unloading of more than 100 ships. . The White House has announced that the Government is taking over all strike-bound refineries and other installations of 11 of the Unitea States’ largest oil companies. Earlier it was announced that 10 days’ negotiations had failed to bring any progress towards settlement of the dispute. The spreading coal strike m the United States is keeping more than 100,000 miners away from the pits.

ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY WASHINGTON, October 3. President Truman, in a message to Congress, asked for the speedy enactment of legislation for the St. Lawrence seaway project, which would open the Great Lakes to ocean navigation and develop 2,200,000 hydroelectric horsepower. Mr. Truman called the seaway one of the world’s .great constructive projects providing employment for 1000 men. He backed up his argument by asserting that the Tennessee, Columbia, and Californian Central Valley River schemes had shortened the war by many years. Without power from those rivers, he said, the goal of 50,000 planes a year would have been impossible and the atomic bomb could not have been developed. Canada was participating in the project, of which the United States share was estimated before the war as 277,000,000 dollars.'

STERLING VALUE NEW YORK, October 5. It is learned by the New York ‘Herald-Tribune’s” correspondent at Washington that the British Government will withhold its attempt to devalue the pound sterling to the vicinity of three dollars 70 cents. This decision was reached after the United States’ Government had informed the British Government of its opposition to such action. ALTITUDE RECORD. (Recd. 11.50 a.m.) NEW YORK, Oct. 4. Bell Aircraft Corporation officials have disclosed that a jet-propelled | Airacomet set an unofficial American | altitude record of over nine miles, with the greatest height of 47,700 feet. The plane carried a full military load. The official American record is 43,166 feet.