Local and General

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 12, 5 October 1945, Page 4

Local and General

Telegraphic Service Restored The. Postal Department advises that telegraphic service lias now been restored to the whole of Italy and to Shanghai, All classes of telegiams may now be accepted at rates shown in guide. Sea Scout Crew The first meeting of boys interested in the formation of the new Sea Scout Crew in Whakatane takes place in the Commissioner's home, 11 Douglas Street on Tuesday evening next at 7!30 p.m. Recruits will be addressed by their prospective skippers and details of 'watches' titles scarves etc. will be discussed. 'J Wast Ruapehu Responsible According to travellers from Lake Taupo last Tuesday, the heavy murk which stretched across the centre of the island had its .source at Ruapehu which was violently active and had screened "the whole neighbourhood lor hundreds of miles with a dense black cloud giving the appearance of a very stormy sky. Called His Bluff "How about a packet of cigar, ettes?" inquired a naval rating of the proprietor in a suburban tobacconist's' shop the 1 ' other morning. "Not one in the place/' replied the shopkeeper. "Go on, you've got plenty under the counter/' protested the sailor'. "Not one; you can have all you get there/' declared the proprietor. Over the counter jumped the caller to find a carton of cigarettes with which he made off. followed by the indignant tobacconist. Some distance down the street the sailor awaited his pursuer and made a deal by which he got a packet of for the return of the tonEarth Safe i Many people had been rather concerned over the possibility that the explosion of atomic bombs would start the disintegration of all adjacent atoms and .so on, until the whole earth exploded in one tremendous blaze of atomic energv " '9 remarked Mr C. D. Ellyett, m an address to a meeting of the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Happily this was a very remote possibility. The process occurred only with the very heavy thorium, .propoactinium and uranium the atoms of which were unstable. In nature they settled down eventually into the stable and prosaic element lead. Cost of Pencillin Commenting on the production of ; pencillin Mr D. Sandvs Wunsch i «- ■, a member of the New Zealand Industrial Research Council said at t Hawera that it was now being pro- i duced in greater quantities, al- ' though it would be some time yet j before it was on the commercial i market in New Zealand. With the : increased production the cost of ;■ manufacture had been substantially 1 reduced. "In fact " be added "even. I tually the price of the bottle and 1 the selling expenses of penicillin <. will represent half the cost of manu- ( fact urc." i

All-Plastics Car "If the automobile world suddenly decided that plastic ears were actually here and tried to swing into production, it would put the chemical industry in an impossible situation/' said Mr George K. Scribner president ol' the National Society of the Plastics Industry and of the Boonton Molding Co. one of the first American plastics in a recent interview with the New York Herald Tribune.. He stated that tlio annual output of plastics was only 135 000 tons compared with an annual steel production of 90 000,00!) tons. He thought that 9 plastics and metals would be colla-t borators rather than 'Competitors in the post-war world and that the areas of overlapping would be found to be comparatively small.