NEWS IN BKIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12260, 2 May 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BKIEF.

Beer production in Austria declined lajsS year by 482,111 barrels. : Tho Korean Government is considering the advisability of introducing universal conscription.

Bedsteads with alarm-clocks as part o£ the headrail are being made for South London early risers. It was made a rule at the St. David's dinner at Rhyl lately that anyone speaking English should be fined. There has died at Brightlingsea an old lady named Death, who lived to her ninetythird year and has left 132 descendant*. In round numbers the frozen rabbits imported into England last year from Australia and New Zealand totalled 11£ millions.

In Paris a youth has been arrested who attempted to kill his father in order that,, as a widow's son, he might escape conscription.

Though a Nottingham baby lived for three days it was afterwards found to have been born with a hole right through its heart. Improved prison dietary is responsible for an addition of £20,300 which appeared on the Prison Vote before the Imperial Parliament. Barley bread is to be given the paupers at Pwllheli (North Wales) Workhouse, the guardians believing that white bread is a cause of cancer. Sir William Stephenson has presented Newcastle, his native city, of which he has been Mayor four times, with a bronze statue of Queen Victoria, Yarmouth Harbour Commissioners have to pay a claim ot £2000 because a steamship got in contact with an anchor which was not indicated by a- buoy, Mrs. Hendrickson, a resident of Brooklyn, said to be worth £300,000, has married Patrick McHugh, an Irish coachman and a widower with six children.

In Berlin a club of the " disengaged" has been formed by young men who, having' broken with their sweethearts, regard marriage as fated to be a failure.

Charged with drunkenness lately a cab-' pnan at Bow-street pleaded that he was' "no more drunk than ninety-nine cabmen! out of 100 were at that time of night."

John Kay, the inventor of the fly-shuttle, who had to flee from Bury on account of the hostility his invention aroused, is to have a monument erected to him there.

Arrested aftei seven years on a charge of wilful damage a man at Eastbourne pleaded guilty; but he had to be discharged because in the interval all the witnesses had died.

Mr. George L. Watson, of Glasgow, joint) designer of Shamrock 111., has been commissioned by Mr. Vauderbilt, of New York,. to build a fast steam yacht of 1400 tons.

Alleging that she saved it out of his earnings a Chester commercial traveller sued his wife for the return of £1300, and obtained judgment against her for £532 17s Id*.

Experiments at Aberdeen University as to tuberculous cows show that until the disease has reached the udders there is no

danger of consumption being conveyed in tho milk.

Mr. Montague Holbein, who is at present} in Coventry, has decided to make another attempt to swim the Channel, probably about the latter part of July or the beginning of August.

In the Peabody Buildings last year the birth-rate was 3.8 above and the "ordinary death-rate 4.1 below the average for all London, while the infant mortality was 43.5 below the average.

11l Cardiff, where for many years, down to two years ago, he had worked as an Anglican curate, the Rev. J. H. Filmer preached his first sermon as a Roman Catholic priest on a recent Sunday.

At Brighton a man who was: picked up on the pavement helplessly drunk was discharged on showing that he was a lifelong abstainer, and had taken ginger wine, thinking it a teetotal drink.

After a separation order had been granted against him a Carnarvon farmer continued to live with his wife as a. lodger. On his failing to keep up his payments the wife had him arrested on a warrant.

To explain being helplessly drunk a Marylebone errand boy, aged fifteen, said he found a flagon of port among the empties* Air. Plowden thought a find of wine in Sahara was more likely, bub the grocer said customers did make mistakes sometimes.

At iSedgley, Staffordshire, a publican was fined £7 18s recently for allowing drunkenness. A man, for a wager, started ta drink four pints of ale an hour for six hour?., At the eleventh pint he was quite drunk.

At the time the White Star Line waa transferred to Mr. Morgan £35,000 was, ift now appears, set aside to be disbursed a* the discretion of the managers among the older employees, both ashore and afloat.

( Though he had never felt any pain a Cheshire labourer has been found with a heart of more than three times the normal i measurement. It weighed 35|oz instead of lOoz, and the valves were a mass of solid bone.

To help an overloaded horse up a hill the vicar of Hope (Staffs) and his wife put their shoulders to the wheel, and at the top gave the driver into custody for cruelty to the horse and using bad language to them. The man was fined 10s.

Going home drunk at one o'clock in the morning a Chelsea tailor, named Pearce, unable to make his latchkey work, kicked' in the panels of the door. "Then he found that it was not his house, but that of his next-door neighbour. Result, 35s or fourteen days.

The body of a man who has just committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a train at Wood-street, Wa'thamstow, came in contact with the , Westinghouse brake apparatus below the engine, and, severing the connecting pipes, caused air to rush into the vacuum. This automatically put on the brake and stopped the train.

Two important orders have just gone to British firms in the face of American and German competition. One is for twelve locomotives for the Central African Railway, given to the Yulcaa Foundry, of New-ton-le-Willows; and the other "for 25,000 tons of steel rails for the Canadian Government, given to Messrs. Kidston and Co., of Glasgow.

While engaged in a practice boxing bout with his trainer, Terry McGoverm, the pugilist, was arrested one Sunday lately, at the Road Driver's Hotel, near New York, for breach of the local regulations against Sabbath labour. The party to the police station, where they'were bailed later in the day by Father McCallen, priest of St. Bridget's Roman Catholic Church.

A huge artificial pond, constructed some time ago by Mr. Samuel W. Ailerton, a Chicago millionaire, has become choked with fill sons of fish. For the presence of these none could account until scientists recovered that wild duck flying to the lake from other parts have brought the larvae of fisn .adhering to their breasts, and the eggs have hatched out the existing tenants of the lake.

A lover, jilted because he lost his employment, retaliated by suing his ex-sweet-heart in the Clerkenw'ell County Court the other day for £3 18s lent to her. The girl's mother, Mrs. Pullen, declared it war a gift, but the youas man, James Nicholas, produced a letter suggesting meeting "so that we can come to a proper understanding about the money I owe you," and got ft verdict.

Some weeks ago an ex-Scottish Borderer was unsuccessfully charged at th. (Southwestern Police Court with robbing Catherine Rich, who had bought him out in South Africa on his promising to marry her. A private in another Scottish regiment, stationed in the Orange Fre;. State, has now written to the Police Court missionary offering to marry Mrs. Rich, 8 widow,; if she can be traced.