"On the world scene: You'll be glad to hear that the survivors of the
wrecked strato-rocket have all been rescued from the top of Mount
Everest, after a difficult and heroic effort by the Royal Nepalese Air
Force.... The results of last week's election in Russia are being
challenged by twelve of the fourteen parties represented on the
ballot; the only parties not hurling accusations of fraud are the
Democrats, who won, and the Christian Communists, who are about as
influential in Russian politics as the Vegetarian-Anti-Vaccination
Party is here.... The Central Diplomatic Council of the Reunited
Nations has just announced, for the hundred and seventy-eighth time,
that the Arab-Israel dispute has been finally, definitely and
satisfactorily settled. This morning's reports from Baghdad and Tel
Aviv only list four Arabs and six Israelis killed in border clashes in
the past twenty-four hours, so maybe they're really getting things
patched up, after all. During the same period, there were more
fatalities in Newer New York as a result of clashes between the
private troops of rival racket gangs, political parties and business
houses.

"Which brings us to the local scene. On my way to the studio this
morning, I stopped at City Hall, and found our genial Chief of Police
Delaney, 'Irish' Delaney to most of us, hard at work with a portable
disintegrator, getting rid of record disks and recording tapes of old
and long-settled cases. He had a couple of amusing stories. For
instance, a lone Independent-Conservative partisan broke up a
Radical-Socialist mass meeting preparatory to a march to demonstrate
in Double Times Square, by applying his pocket lighter to one of the
heat-sensitive boxes in the building and activating the sprinkler
system. By the time the Radicals had gotten into dry clothing, there