NEWS AND NOTES

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4956, 16 February 1937, Page 1

NEWS AND NOTES

Lord Nuffield has announced that he will give £25,000 to hospitals and charities in Queensland.

A theatre, built of wood and plaster, and crammed with 1500 people, caught fire at Antung, Manchuria. Hundreds, mosty women and children, were burnt to death or trampled down and suffocated. So far 658 bodies have been recovered.

The suitability of Hull as a distributing port for New Zealand produce was emphasised by speakers at a civic dinner given in honour of the Dominion’s High Commissioner, Mr. W. J. Jordan. They urged Mr. Jordan to help develop the trade.

A Gibraltar message states that, by permission of the military authorities, a correspondent visited Malaga and found a tenth of the city destroyed and gutted. The total damage is estimated at £20,000,000.

The Czechoslovakian Cabinet has authorised an increase in the strength of the standing army from 150,000 men to an unlimited number, in view of the “extraordinary tension in Europe.”

The Netherlands Government has informed Germany that it appreciates her good intentions but does not desire to conclude a treaty with another country regarding Holland’s integrity.

S.O.S. calls were received from the steamer Shousing (4920 tons), which is believed to be drifting hopelessly with a broken rudder in a cyclone between 700 and 800 miles east of Cairns. It is believed to be north of Hampton Reef, beyond Willis Island.

Orders to strike on Monday and Tuesday have been issued to 4000 employees of six principal hotels in New York, including the Waldorf Astoria, the Commodore and the Biltmore. The men are demanding increased wages. The hotel managements say they anticipated little difficulty as the unions are not sufficiently well organised.

An indignant speech was delivered by Dr. Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, to 20,000 Nazis, in the course of which he contemptuously referred to France, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Britain. He said: “If we compare the political life of the so-called democratic France and Britain with that of Germany, we find that we savages are fine fellows after all.

The Nazim of Hyderabad, reputed to be the richest man in the world with an income of £1,500,000 a year, has begun his Silver- Jubilee celebrations, postponed last year, Vwing to the death of King George V. Although the city is illuminated and there are many festivities the Nazim is'devoting large sums which could have been spent on spectacular decorations to works of public utility and charity.

The “Sunday Graphic” forecasts that the White Paper on defence will disclose that Britain is completing 150 warships of various types, including 11 super-dreadnoughts, in the next five years, and deliveries of 3000 aircraft containing secret improvements in 1938 and onwards.

The British engineering firm of Ransomes and Rapier, Ipswich, has secured from the Egyptian Government a contract for construction of sluice gates on the new Mohammed Ali barrage, which is being built at a cost of £2,250,000 at the junction of the Nile north of Cairo. Ninetyfour pairs of sluice gates and six power-operated machines of special design for use with the gates, are to be built. The work will extend over three years and will be begun within , the next few months.

During a period of six weeks 288 Alsatians, or part Alsatians, homeless and unwanted because of the £2 10s additional registration fee imposed by the Victorian Parliament at the end of last session, have been painlessly killed at the dogs’ homes and animal hospital, Melbourne. This is an average of eight a day, which is more than double the usual number of dogs of this breed consigned to the lethal chamber. In the last few months only two Alsatians have been sold by the home. Officials of the home expect that there will be a further increase in the number of dogs taken to the home by their owners or by the “dogcart,’’ which picks up dogs turned out to stray in the streets, when the increased registration fee becomes due on March 1.