NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20560, 10 May 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The British motor industry .employed about 270,000 people last year. Tho Native Affairs Department of South Africa • has appointed experts to teach natives farming. The Chelsea Corporation has been sum- | moned for allowing dust to be collected in open receptacles. Lithuania is issuing a stamp in honour of the 500 th anniversary of its national hero King Vytautas. 1 In the recent gales a big tnrkey oak, said to bo 150 years old, was uprooted in Kew Gardens, London. ' i Of the women of the Irish Free State between the ages of 30 and 35, over 40 per cent, aro unmarried. A number of streets in Cologno are tc| bo set apart a3 playgrounds for children, no traffic being allowed in them. The Minister of Labour for South Africa has prepared a schemo for using the labour of unemployed men to make roads. The National Institute for tho Blind printed nearly 700,000 copies of Braille books, newspapers, and magazines last year. Tho Plymouth Corporation has given a birthday cheque to the bathing attendant at tho Hoo in recognition of his saving 50 lives. The birthplace of Robert E. Lee, the Southern Commander in the American Civil War, is to bo bought and kept in his memory. Dover now has tho largest and most powerful motor lifeboat in tho world* She is fitted with wireless and has cost over £IB,OOO. The British Post Office showed a surplus of nearly £10,000,000 for tho year ended March 31, 1929; this is tho biggest surplus on record. England has . 5250,000 foreign visitors every year. Germany receives eight times this number, while six times t'hq number go to France. Tho earnings of tho Kenya and Uganda railways and harbours in J. 928 were over £2,500,000, yielding a gross profit of over £1,000,000. Duiung a severe storm at Kergadrier, near Lorient in Brittany, a flock of wild ducks in flight was struck ty lightning, . which killed 20 of them. Painted or embroidered decorations in the form of garlands round the ankles are to be seen on the smartest silk stockings being made in Paris. Writing 120 words a minute in Braille shorthand, Miss A. M. Swift, a blind student, recently passed tho London | Chamber of Commerce test with distinction. Nearly £2,000,000 " conscience money " was received in income tax during 1929 from taxpayers in England who have admitted frauds {.gainst the Inland Revenue. Britain's bachelors, at the last census, ■ numbered 296,000 from 30 to 34 years old> and 375,000 from 35 to 44; the spinsters in tlie same classifications were 394,000 and 548,000. The bald eagle, the national emblem appearing on American coins, is said to be dying out through ruthless slaughter, 70,000 having been killed in Alaska in the last twelve years. Speeches made by Mr. Lloyd Georga during the British Parliamentary session which ended on December 24 fill 128 columns in the official report. He holds tho record for thß year. Sir Austen Chamberlain's son Joseph, who has adopted a military career in preference to politics, is in the Coldstream Guards. His brother officers have nicknamed him "Baby Austen." Among the property of the British troops which recently returned from the Rhine were 152 dogs, 31 cats, one civet cat, and one Teopard. These were to remain in quarantine for a period. " Les Noveaux Messieurs" has been selected as the best film of the year in a list compiled annually by a German trade organ. This is the first, 1 time this honour has come iio a French film. At a dinner of a group of Esperanto speakers in Pari 3 a conversation took place with comraces in Holland in order, to demonstrate the possibility of the exchange of international conversation. Divorce by letter or telegram is now possible in Mexico at a cost of £4OO. These divorces are granted for " mental cruelty," which means practically anything, and are valid in the United States and France. Half a twopenny green and carmine stamp used in 1894 on the Niger coast was sold at Harmer's, Old Bond Street,. London, a few weeks ago, for £IOO. It! was one of the rarest of the Niger coast provisional stamp's. Luntiy Island, the " island kingdom,"' in the Bristol Channel, with 40 inhabitants, has' issued its own coins and stamps'; only two varieties of each are available—a halfpenny and a penny—and are only legal on the island. The skeleton of a Roman soldier which has lain buried fo:r about 1700 years and was recently dug up in the 40ft. deep excavation on tho site of the new Thames House, Millbank, has been presented to the Royal College of Surgeons. Air taxis can bo hired for as little as fiveponco per mile; for journeys to remote parts of Europe, such a means of transport is cheaper and much quicker than , a complicated boat and train trip, which • often involves hotel expenses. The strangest game of ping-pong was played on the top of Ben Nevis, when the* snow, was 7ft. deep and tho temperature 18 degrees Fahrenheit. The table was a solid block of frozen snow covered with green baizo and the players two of . the meteorologists in charge of the observatory. For seven years 2400 workmen have been digging away at a railway tunnel in Japan. It is six miles long, and lies under mountains along the railway from Tokyo to Niigata. A curious thine about the tunnel is that.it was finished nearly a year eai.ier than had been arranged by the engineers. Mr. Lloyd George completes his 40th' year im Parliament this month. He has represented the Carnavon Boroughs through* out this period. People in the constituency recently decided to present him with' a memento, and it was suggested that the celebration take place in Carnavon's Eisteddfod Pavilion, which seats 10,000 persons. Estimates of the population of the United States give the total as 122,000,000. Tho birth and the death rates are becoming balanced, and if the present restricted rate of immigration continues, the population is expected to become stationary at 150,000,000 in 1960.The population o:i tho British Isles is about 47.150,QU0. Motor tyres, always a source of fun. in the water, are being used in tho United States to give divers an extra thrill. The tyre is carried to the edge of a springboard, where the diver kneels inside it, bracing himself with feet, knees, and shoulders against the innor of the tyre. The tyre with the diver inside then is rolled off tho springboard. Mr. F. Topas, pilot of a Dutch aeropiano from Batavia, who recently arrived in Calcutta, reports the discovery o£ threo active volcanoes in Si am which hitherto havo not been marked on anyj map. He says that ho was passing over Ensada when he saw the volcanoes in fuU eruption, emitting flames of bluish bril* lianco, volumes of fiulphurouai fumeaj,, an«|t, streams* of» lava* . I' < ■