NEWS OF THE DAY

Manawatu Times, Volume 68, Issue 160, 8 July 1943, Page 4

NEWS OF THE DAY

Escapee from Defaulters’ Camp Another case of escape from the military defaulters’ detention camp at Whitanui, near Foxton, has been reported to the police, and at present there are four men out of the camp, the three who escaped on June 24 not yet having been traced. The latest escapee is Neii Henry Trail, aged 25, who is described as being sft 9in tall, of good build, with fair hair, and wearing Borfetal grey clothes.

Driving Car at 91 A man aged S 3 applied to the traffic department of the Auckland City Council for a driver’s license the other day, but Auckland cannot claim the record for the oldest driver in New Zealand, a distinction which probably belongs to Timaru, for the other day a man aged 91 applied for —and obtained ■ —a driver’s license there. Cases ot people in their 70’s obtaining drivers' licenses are not uncommon in Auckland and elsewhere. Medicinal Plants

The production of medicinal plant material in New Zealand, undertaken under the supervision of the Department of Agriculture at the request ol Britain, when the normal producing countries in Europe were overrun by Germany, is not to be continued, Britain having found other sources ot supply. New Zealand has given valuable assistance over a critical period, and Britain will fulfil the agreement to take all the material produced in the past season. No further plantings are to bo made, however.

Miniature Bottles of Liquor Some spirited bidding was provoked in a Wellington auction mart on Tuesday morning when a collection of 776 miniature bottles of liqueurs, brandies, whiskies, gins, cocktails and wines, together with six wall cabinets for their display, was put up for sale. Every sample in the collection was different. Bidding opened at £IOO and rose steadily to £195, equal to a fraction of one penny less than 5s a bottle, at which figure the lot was knocked down to the licensee of a well-known city hotel. These miniatures used to come into the Dominion once or twico a year in case lots as samples, but of late years were imported as a selling lino. A few minutes after the lot had been knocked down to him, the purchaser refused an offer of £250 for it from a Palmerston North resident who had arrived too late for £he sale.

Motorists Find Stickers Useless “Absolutely useless” was the description applied by the secretary o 1 the Automobile Association (Taranaki), Mr. V. Duff, to the new relicensing stickers for motor-cars. They were entirely unsatisfactory, he added, some members having reported that the green stickers had disintegrated within 24 hours of being affixed to the windscreen of vehicles. Others were m holes, and the lettering was already illegible. “We have been smothered with complaints from all parts of our district,” continued Mr. Duff. All tha. remained of a sticker on the car of one member of the Association, he added, was a small coiner strip. It was obvious that the complaints about the stickers, which are issued by the Government, were general, Mr. Duff .u, because he had received a telegram from the North Island Motor Union asking for a report on the experiences of the Taranaki Association with regard to the stickers.