AMERICAN ITEMS.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 March 1925, Page 3

AMERICAN ITEMS.

AUSTRALIAN AN!) N.Z. CAULK ASSOCIATION MORE L’.S.A. SCANDALS. WASHINGTON, March 11. How hundreds of millions of tax payments are alleged to have l>con evaded by the big corporations was described before- the Senate Committee. Senator Couzens, who started the enquiry, is now himself being investigated on a charge that he still owes the Government ten million dollars of overdue taxes on huge earnings from Ford stock. Couzens immediately replied by calling Secretary "Mellon to explain why the United States Steel Corporation were allowed to use the amortization scheme which saved them twenty-seven million dollars and the Aluminium Coy. a third of that amount. Couzens promised another Teapot Dome scandal which itself is in Court again, the Government having opened an action in tho Idaho courts to recover the great oil properties leased by a former Secretary, Air Fall.

.MICHAEL PUPiN. NEARLY BARRED AS “ UNDESIRABLE.” WASHINGTON. January 3. The largest and most representative association of natural scientists in the United States has named as its head a man who was nearly rejected from entry into America some fifty years ago as an undesirable alien. With the election, just announced, of Professor Michael T. Ptippin ns president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at its seventy-ninth annual meeting, to bold office for the year 1925, the association’s executive committee yesterday crowned the romantic career of an inventor and physicist who could not speak English when he came to the New World as a young emigrant. The announcement of the new national officer was an outstanding incident in to-day’s sessions of the association, which were largely devoted to executive meetings of the various affiliated o rgnnisations. Professor Punin was reared in the little town of Idvor, in Banat, Hungary. He retains the association of his birthplace in his middle name, which is Jdvorsky. An emigrant aid society is said to have assisted him in his mission to the United States, when there seemed strong possibility of his being rejected as an “undesirable” because of his lack of knowledge of English.

Professor Ptinin ciime of poor parents, and only l>y dint of the hardest labour ivas he able to work his way through Columbia University, New York, where he was graduated in 1883. Shortly afterward ho started teaching there, as assistant in the electrical engineering department in 1880. Sinco that time he lias steadily progressed in his field till the fame of his accomplishments has gone around the world.

THE CROWBOnOUGH MUROER THOU NIC ON TRIAL. [Reuters Telegrams.l (Received this day nt 11.25 v.m.) LONDON, March 12. The Sussex Assize Court was crowded at the opening of the trial ol Thorne who pleaded not guilty.

Sir Curtis Bennett, prosecuting, dealt with the intimacy between Thorne and .Miss Cameron, who in November last year mistakingly throught that she was enceinte and pressed Thorne to nta)rry 'her. The iprosccution alleged that Thorne murdered Miss Cameron because she stood it the way ol his marrying Miss Cadlicott. The police tests indicated that .Miss Cameron could not have hanged hernell as Thorne alleged.

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