NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15548, 4 March 1914, Page 10

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The occupants of the police cells last evening numbered 12, 10 imen and two women, all of whom were arrested for. minor offences. No less than 240 civil actions were set down for, bearing at the Magistrate's Court yesterday: As usual,-however, many wore adjourned. . Information, haa been received by the town clerk of Onehunga to the effect that Saturday afternoon has been gazetted the statutory half-holiday for Onehunga, as f»om the coming Saturday. It is understood that Mr. W. Wallace, Mayor of Birkenhead, intends to seek Parliamentary honours at the hands of the electors of Waitemata at the forthcoming general election. The' Auckland Diocesan Social Questions Commission has unanimously passed the following resolution:" thw commission regrets, and strongly disapproves of, the pulpit utterances of the Rev. < Jasper Colder,, (as reported in the press) on the betting evil. The shins of the Australian squadron, which have been absent from Sydney uince last October, will return to their moorings in Farm Cove about the end of this week. There were moored in Farm Cove on February 24 H.M.A.S. Pioneer, which arrived from Newcastle on February 22, th© French gunboat Kersaint, and the survey ships Fantome and Sealark. There has been some talk in southern centres of an increase in the price of milk, and it has been suggested in various quarters that an increase might be made in Auckland also. Inquiry made yesterday, however, indicates that there is at present no intention on the part of either the Milk Vendors' Association or the Farmers' Co-operative Milk Supply, to raise tho price of the commodity. Some excitement was provided last night bj a stand-up fight between several men employed in the stokehold of one of lh» oversea steamers at present in port. The trouble started outside the Waverley Hotel shortly after ten o'clock, when several firemen or trimmers set upon another man. A large crowd quickly gathered, and the water police also appeared upon the scene. The police eventually induced the men to go quietly aboard their ship. A special meeting of creditors in the bankrupt estate of Edwards Bros., grocers, of Karangahape Road, was held yesterday afternoon to ' receive an offer on behalf of Mr. G. Edwards to pay into the estate a sum sufficient to raise the dividend already paid to 10s in the £. Messrs. R." Clarke, of Robertson Bros., and Evans, of Brown, Barrett, and Co., were appointed to act with the official assignee (Mr. W. S- Fisher) as a committee to consider tho offer.

Suspicion which fell upon a Maori named Herewina Miliaka of having stolen £30 '10s from a fellow-passenger named James C'arr Queen on the steamer Tuirangi when on the run down the Wairoa River to Helonsville on Sunday night, led to his arrest when he alighted from the Helensville $train at Auckland on Monday. Mihaka was brought before Mr. P. V. • Frazer, S.M., at the Police Court yesterday on a charge of having stolen the- £30 10b, and he was remanded for a week.