GENERAL TELEGRAMS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 23 August 1919, Page 5

GENERAL TELEGRAMS.

OTIRA TUNNEL

(by telegkaph—PßESS association.) CHRISTCHURCH. Aug. 22. A meeting of the Arthur's Jfa_s Tunnel League carried the following resolutions: ''That members of this meeting are surprised and concerned to learn that the miserable housing accommodation still obtains at Otira, an_ that women and children are consequently suffering not only in comfort but health, and urges the Minister for Public Works to f ui_il the promise made and at once have these conditions remedied; that this meeting urges on the Government the necessity of increasing the wages of the workers at the tunnel to a minimum of 20s a shift." It wag also agreed to ask the Minister for Health to station a medical man at the works, and to wait on Sir William Fraser in connection with tunnel matters generally.

AN APPLICATION GRANTED

WELLINGTON, Aug. 22. Mr W. G. Riddell, S.M., heard an application to strike out the name of the Hon. G. W. Russell, Minister of Public Health, in the marble bar case heard on August 14. Mr Macassey, who made the application, said the order closing the premises was not made by tho Minister, but by the district health officer. Assuming the order was ultra vires the plaintiff had no right of action, as he should have ignored an illegal order. Th c order, however, was perfectly valid, as it was necessary to prevent the spread of the epidemic. His Worship granted the application, and ordered the Minister's name to be struck out.

PRESSMAN INSPECTS NAPIER GAOL.

NAPIER, Aug. 22. A representative of the press to-day obtained permission to make an inspection of the Napier gaol. The re^ porter found that the whole establishment was in a most clean condition, as clean probably as any hotel or boarding-house in the Dominion. Everything was in "apple-pie" order. The building is old, certainly, but the timber is all sound, and no possible exception could be taken to any portion of the building or any of the arrangements. Nothing was found that could possibly be construed in support of such statements as have recently been made by Rev. J. K. Archer.

YOUTH PLEADS GUILTY OF THEFT.

CHRISTCHURCH, Aug. 22. Claude Thompson. 16 years of age, pleaded guilty in the Magistrate's Court to-day to a series of charges Involving thefts of postal packets, druggists' sundries, electrical equipment, and also forgery and arson, and wai committed for sentence.