FIFTY YEARS AGO

Evening Star, Issue 23886, 16 May 1941, Page 10

FIFTY YEARS AGO

■— ♦ ■ FROM 1 STAR ' FILES The New Zealand Government has so far progressed with the drawing out of the new taxation scheme as practically to have decided that the money now obtained from the property tax shall be raised by means of a tax upon the unimproved land, with exemption up to £SOO and a tax on incomes, with exemption up to £3OO. The amount of the latter will be 6d in the £. In the House of Commons a debate took place as to the presence of influenza microbes in the chamber, and the Minister in Charge of Works as to Public .buildings promised to have the House thoroughly fumigated. We have been shown a, letter, the bona Tides of which is unquestionable, in which the writer says that considerable alarm was felt among some ex-Flat residents now in his district on receipt of a bogus report of washing away of the sandhills. One man had a hard day’s travelling and great expense before he learned, at Roxburgh, how he had been hoaxed. * * * * The immigration and emigration reports for the colony for April, 1891, show tinarrivals to have been 1,045 and the departures 1,656, being a balance of 611 against the colony. The life of the Czarewitch is not endangered by a wound which was inflicu.-J on him by a Japanese at Kioto. The Czarewilch’s helmet prevented the fanatical policeman’s sword from inflicting u serious wound. * » « « Baron Gunsberg, a leading Jewish banker at St. Petersburg, has been expelled from the city for offering a million roubles to tbo Minister of the Interior to influence the Tsar in favour of the Jews. * » » • The outcome of the departmental inquiry into the cause of the “leakages” in telegrams that passed through the Adelaideoffice is the dismissal of four operators from the service. It was proved that one operator purchased £40,000 worth of mining stock last year, * * « « The Union Club has suspended for a week one of its players for speaking rudely to the referee during the progress of last Saturday’s match. The sentence was a light one, and was intended as a salutary example to other members of the club. * * « * One hundred and eighty deaths from mlluenza were reported from London last week. * * * * Professor Virchow, of Berlin, declares that not a single cure is being effected by the treatment under Koch’s tuberculine, and that in all reported cases a serious relapse followed. * * * * The ‘ Jewish Chronicle ’ denies that Baron Hirsch is committed to any gigantic scheme for the emigration of any expelled Russian Jews; at present he is awaiting inquiries, with the view of ascertaining if tho Argonline republic is a suitable place.