CABLE BREVITIES NEW QUARANTINE LAWS FOR AIR TRAVELLERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 July 1946, Page 6

CABLE BREVITIES NEW QUARANTINE LAWS FOR AIR TRAVELLERS

New quarantine restrictions will be applied immediately to all air passengers arriving in Australia. In announcing this, the Minister of Health (Senator McKenna) said that the move was aimed at safeguarding the health of Australia. He added: “The Health Department is very apprehensive of the risks to which Australia- is subjected. Severe outbreaks of smallpox, cholera, and other diseases have been raging in the Far East. The health services, which were well established in Malaya, Burma, and other Eastern countries, have broken down because of Japanese neglect. There is a grave danger of the transmission of disease, as air passengers can arrive in Australia from Singapore and adjoining areas in less than 24 .hours.” Senator McKenna said that instructions had been issued to all quarantine staffs that every person arriving in Australia by air must produce adequate evidence of vaccination. If a traveller had been vaccinated less than 12 days before his arrival he would be ordered into quarantine. — Canberra, July 28A Executions in Greece.

A woman described as a kindergarten teacher was among seven members of an alleged Greek anarchist band executed by a firing squad. —Athens, July 27. Sunspots “Curtain.”

International radio communications were interrupted for the third consecutive day by atmospheric conditions resulting from a sunspot “curtain.” A total black-out of radio communications with Europe is reported.—London, July 28.

Poles for Transjordahla. The Warsaw radio, quoting a Warsaw newspaper, says that agreement has been reached between General Anders and the Transjordan Government under which 10,000 members of the 2nd Polish Corps will be transferred to the service of Transjordania.—London, July 28.

High British Birth-rate. The Registrar-General has announced the highest birth-rate in Britain for 21 years. There were 203,797 births recorded in April, May and June this year. The number of illegitimate births in the first quarter of the year, 14,577, was 3061 below the figure for the corresponding period of 1945. —London, July 28.

Train Plunges Down Culvert, Almost a whole train was derailed and several carriages were turned completely over 75 miles north of Perth when the Geraldton mail train I'jlunged down a culvert washed away by floodwaters. Only five people wore hurt. Screaming women fought to escape through doors and windows. Some carriages hung on the edge of the culvert, and escaping passengers fell into deep water. Deaths were averted by the fact that the engine passed the weakened rads before they collapsed, and the train rolled over relatively slowly.—Perth, July 28.

Food and Clothing Sent G-. B. Shaw. “People are always sending me bundles of food and old clothes. In Australia and America they think that I am in rags and starving,” said Mi’. George Bernard Shaw, commenting on the reproductions of costumes used in his plays, which were displayed at a West End exhibition, in honour of his ninetieth birthday. Dressed in a well-worn but still smart thin grey suit, the nonagenarian visited the exhibition. Dean Inge, opening the exhibition, asked: “I wonder if “Mr. Shaw still believes in his old friends, the Russians? If he does he must have faith to remove the Iron Curtain.” —London, July 26.

Czech War Crime Trials. The Bratislava National Court sentenced to death Anton Vasek, who as a member of the Gestapo and an official of the puppet Slovak State during the war sent about 50,000 Jews to their death. The trial has begun of 750 persons- who are charged with subversive activity in aiding Hungary to annex the Kosice region. Most, of the record number who are being tried simultaneously are Slovaks who were Hungarian nationals before the war. The court yesterday dealt with 46 similar cases. It found 14 persons guilty and sentenced each to five years’ imprisonment with hard labour. —Prague, July 27. Civil Aviation Control.

The United States Senate ratified a treaty to establish the International Civil Aviation Organisation agreed to by <56 nations at Chicago in 1944. The United States is the tenth nation formally accepting the pact which requires ratification by 26 nations. Its major activity will be the supervision and fixing of standards for airways, aerodromes, navigation, ground aids, communications, meteorology,, search and rescue, accident investigation, and the certification of aircraft and personnel. The Associated Press says that this agreement is not related to the International Air Transport Agreement from which the United States yesterday announced that it was withdrawing.—Washington, July 26.

British Major Acquitted. Major Herbert Graves-Morris, of the Worcestershire Regiment, who was court-martialled on July 5 on charges that he ordered the flogging of two jorivate soldiers while serving under Major-General Wingate in Burma, has been acquitted. Major Graves-Morris claimed that General Wingate authorised the use of special punishments among Chindit units because field punishment as prescribed by King’s Regulations could not be carried out under campaigning conditions in the jungles. The defence claimed that one of the soldiers was found asleep on . sentry duty in conditions endangering the lives of his comrades and that he agreed in writing to accept 12 strokes of a rattan cane instead of 28 days field punishment. —London, July 26.

Japanese Society in Brazil. The Rio de Janeiro correspondent of the New York Times reports that more than 1000 Japanese have been sent to gaol in an attempt to check terrorism launched by members of the Shindo Remei Kab Society, a Japanese association affiliated with the Black Dragon Society, which kills any Japanese who acknowledge Japan’s defeat in the war. Members of the organisation are mostly young men, including some Brazilian-born Japanese who do not recognise Brazilian, sovereignty. The police said that as soon as one chief was • sent to gaol another took over. All the Japanese, who were charged with arson or murder, would be tried by a, military tribunal, it was stated. —New York; July 27.

nfantile Paralysis

A leading article in the Lancet on anfantile paralysis is pessimistic on the chances of controlling this disease, but it is more hopeful on immunisation against it. “There are grounds for the view that at present the chances of preventing infantile paralysis as remote,” it states, “and that this tragic disease must be accepted as a risk inseparable from social life in human communities.” It quotes a doctor as saying that control of the disease is impracticable and that the only useful preventive measure is to stop the extraction of children’s tonsils during epidemics. “But,” it adds, referring to immunisation, “it seems reasonable to forecast that the disease will, in the end, be robbed of its virulenee if not its powers of spread.”—London,.July 26.

N.Z. Surgeon Praised. z The Queen praised the guidance and skill of a New Zealander, Dr. A. H. Mclndoe, surgeon in charge of the plastic surgical staff, when she opened the new plastic surgery block of the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead, Surrey. This new block has been given at a cost of £lOO,OOO by the British War Relief Society of America. It has five operating theatres, four of which have students’ galleries, a library; and the most up-to-date X-ray equipment in Britain. Dr. Mclndoe performed the first operation in one of the new theatres in February on an officer of an American Flying Fortress, which crashed and caught fire. The Queen referred to the building as -a “symbol of the love of freedom and humanity which unites our two peoples.”—London, July 26, / s