Word: britains
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Erect, soldierly Georges Revers had had a brilliant military career. As chief of staff and the army's top officer, he had won the respect and trust of professional soldiers of Britain and the U.S. But he had a great weakness: he liked to dabble in political intrigue, often used professional informers to get inside stories on matters of interest...
...better part of a century, London has been the world's diamond capital. There the British-dominated diamond cartel has held the famed "sights" at which it sells its uncut stones. Last year Britain re-exported ?35 million ($98 million) worth of diamonds, more than half of them to the U.S. But due to currency controls, the diamond merchants had to resort to sharp practices to stay in business...
Many London merchants sold their gems not at the pegged pound rate, but for cheaper pounds in the free money market in Tangier, thereby losing Britain many dollars. But the dealers had little choice. If they had sold their gems at the official rate, Dutch and Belgian dealers would have undersold them...
Last week the London-Tangier diamond trade, which had enabled U.S. dealers to get gems for one-sixth under their London price, received a mortal blow. In London's Clerkenwell Court, I. Hennig & Co., Ltd., one of Britain's most respected diamond merchants, was convicted of customs evasion and violation of exchange controls. The prosecution charged that I. Hennig shipped ?76,254 ($213,511) worth of rough diamonds to Tangier and attached false invoices to make it appear that the gems were consigned to a Tangier merchant. Actually, the gems were bought by U.S. merchants, among them Manhattan...
Since the war, bloodstained melodramas full of brutality and violence have been especially popular on the U.S. screen. Last week Britain's Board of Film Censors sternly warned Hollywood-and producers elsewhere-to mop up the gore or have offending films scissored to bits and possibly banned outright...