CURRENT TOPICS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3445, 19 March 1932, Page 5

CURRENT TOPICS

The following radiogram has been received from the N.S.W. Agent-Gen-eral, Mr. A. C. Willis, by Mr. M. Gosling, Chief Secretary:—"At the House of Commons on Tuesday evening a section of the members interested in Australian affairs held a secret meeting and discussed the Sydney bridge opening. It was stated at the meeting that the movement, led by Colonel Eric Campbell, New Guard leader, intended seizing the Premier and throwing him in the river.

"The Times," in an editorial, says that the reported contract for Soviet timber for importation into Britain produces a disagreeable impression of the exploitation of convicts and political prisoners under which Russian timber is cut and transported. The report .causes the widespread impression that the contract should be completely prohibited.

The bank rate in Britain has been further reduced to Sh per cent, from 4 per cent. The rate is now back to the level of July last year, before the world monetary disturbances were beginning to be seriously felt. The reduction was enthusiastically received, and was considered as a further welcome move to help trade recovery.

It is reported from Moscow that Russian airmen are bombing the icepiled western mouth of the Kuxan River in order to release the flood water which is becoming an elemental catastrophe and causing incalculable losses. The water has ruined thousands of acres of autumn sowings on the rich Caucasian steppe and has destroyed 50 villages. Thousands of Cossacks are homeless.

The first big telephone trunk line in East Africa was opened by the Governor of Kenya, Sir Joseph Byrne. The new service will link Nairobi with Mombasa and Dar-es-Salaam, the capital of Tanganyika, a distance of about 600 miles.

A statement asserting that there was no foundation for the suggestions that the Administration intended to re-open the negotiations for debt settlement was made by the State Department in Washington. This followed a Democratic attack in the Senate against a revision of the British war debt which brought a denial from Senator Reed, on behalf of President Hoover that the subject was not even under consideration.

Grants for the communal feeding of Russia are inpluded in the FiveYear Plan. It is anticipated that 90 per cent, of the industrial workers will be communally fed by the end of the year, thus "freeing them from the cares ,of providing their own food and 'ensuring them of cheap, plentiful'and nutritious fare."

The suspension of the Public Safety Act by executive action at the next meeting of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State was announced by the President, Mr. Eamonn de Valera, in an interview on Thursday.

The tribal menace to peace on India's borders has been removed as the result of recent punitive measures by the Royal Air Force. The rebels have been dispersed and the Bajuri tribesmen have expelled notorious agitators > from their territory.

As the result- of strong protests the Federal Government announces radical amendments in the Broadcasting Bill. The chief ones are the removal of the Broadcasting Commission from political control and the disallowance of any form of advertising in programmes of A class stations.

The High Court of Australia began the hearing of the application of the New South Wales, Government for an injunction to restrain the Commonwealth Government from enforcing the provisions of the Financial Agreement Enforcement Act, and asking for a declaration that the Act is invalid.