CABLE BREVITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 14, 18 January 1898, Page 5

CABLE BREVITIES.

Victorian Customs returns show that imports last year totalled £15,454,000, and exports, £ 16-739,000.

_, Prince Hohenlobe, the German Chancellor, contemplates the introduction of stringent legislation to prevent abuses by labour combinations.

A truce has been proclaimed between the Basotuland Chiefs Lerothodi and Masupha, and the terms of peace are being arranged. Thirty Australians have arrived at San Francisco en route for the Klondyke goldfields. They report that others are following.

Sir Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner of South Africa, is forwarding to Mr Chamberlain an address, drawn \ p by the Afrikander Bund, declaring the urgent necessity for the construction of an allBritish deep-sea cable.

The Government has decided that if sealskins can be proved by the wearers or owners to have been purchased before December 30th last, the recently-passed pelagic law shall not apply to them, and they will not be confiscated.

Hobbs, a confederate of Jahez Balfour in the notorious Liberal Building Society frauds, who was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, has been released owingu to ill-health. , - '^a Sir Herbert Kitchener has greatly mo:lJ& fied his restrictions on the journansts""a> conipanying tbe Sbudan Expedition. Mr C. P. Villiers, member of the House of Commons for Wolverhampton, commonly known as the " Father of the House," is dead.

At a public meeting held in Melbourne, £1,000 was subscribed toward the sufferers by the Gippsland fires. The Government are taking steps to give relief in more urgent cases.