NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20922, 11 July 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

English civil servants have an average age of about 38 years. A first-class dance band in Britain may cost upwards of £SOO a week. Scholarships are held by 19,361 pupils of various types in London schools. Motor-cycles to the estimated number of 700,000 are in use on British roads this year.

Britain makes about 850,000 bicycles a year. In this trade she is 30 years ahead of Germany.

Britain spent £11,560 in* 1929-30 in guarding against anthrax in imported wool and hair. An Oppidan at Eton College is a scholar not on the foundation, but who lives in the town. There were 84 murders known to the police in Britain in 1929, and executions followed in five cases. During the year 1930 there were 46 fatal accidents, involving 64 deaths, in the Royal Air Force in Britain. Persons reported missing last year in New York city numbered 25,000, including 3500 boys and 2450 girls. The poultry population of Canada is stated to be six .times greater than the number of human inhabitants. Bread to the weight of about 14 tons is consumed by the average healthy, human being who lives 70 years. A rhododendron, bearing small red flowers and less than lin. in height, was shown at a recent flower show in London. The highest lake in the world is Lake Titicaca, op the Bolivian and Peruvian frontiers. It is 12,645 ft. above sea level. ,

The annual expenditure by the world on armaments services, which amounted to £110,000,000 in 19123-24, is £156,000,000 to-day. In 1929 the number of vacancies filled through Labour Exchanges in Britain was 1,536,271. In 1930 the number wag 1,732.144. ...

" Fortune-telling" by means of astrology, tea-leaf reading, crystal-gazing and the cards is enjoying a great " boom - in New York.

During the year 1929-30, the British Government-owned licensed houses in Carlisle and district,, made a net profit of £66,689 7s 9d.

Only people -who are teetotallers, noilsmokers and vegetarians will be allowed to settle in a new town to be built near Prague, Czechoslovakia. On January 31, £2,193,956 was standing to the credit of the Millers' Welfare Fund, of England and Wales.. The amount paid out during 1930 was £1,361,466. Unemployment is less prevalent in London than elsewhere in Britain; of the | 2,255,620 insured workers in the metro-: polis, 87 in every 100 have jobs. Beach stands at Brighton, recently sold, by auction, brought in £4163, 'as compared with £3991 last year, although tlid actual number of stands was less.

" Baby " cars are being turned out at. the rate of 100 eveiy working day, in addition to 200 larger cars every week, from one Birmingham factory alone. Business has been so bad in some of London's smartest restaurants that really well-dressed people are sometimes given free meals just to fill up the tables. Wireless transmitting and receiving seta will be installed in a chain of lookout towers being built-in the forestry areas of Canada to guard against destructive fires. London's alien population is slowly :da« creasing. In 1929 thefe were 136,762 foreigners resident in the metropolis, coiQ-' pared with ! 167,495 in the previous year<

Ice l£in. thick will support a man; 4in. thick it will support cavalry; siu. : thick it will support an 841b. cannon;; 18in. thick it will support a railway, engine. : • '

. The four main causes of crime, are lust, greeft, vanity, and jealousy, according to Mr. Justice McCardie. _ He says drink and poverty have very little to do with crime.

Under the control of the London County, Council are 40,000 beds for the treatment of the sick, 20,000 beds for the mentally, afflicted, and another 20,000 beds in Poor, Law institutions.

Every year more than three thousand* childiess couples in England legally adopt children, nearly ten thousand boys and girls having thus found new homes in the last three years.

Edinburgh, with 1000 accidents last year, lias decreased its number of street accidents in five years by 40 per /tent., while the rest of the country shows an increase of 33 per cent.

Soldiers and airmen living in billets in Britain may be supplied with meals by their landladies at the following rates: Breakfast 7d; 4d. The billeting charge is 10d a night. A new form of smuggling, where small tradespeople bring in frocks, etc. as for their private use, and afterwards resell them, is said to cause the British revenue a loss of about £300,000 a year.

Lindbergh, America's famous airman, : received 1943 gifts after his famous solo flight across the Atlantic in May, 1927.1 Most of these took the form of medals, plaques, and other " mementoes."

In England the number of street acci-* dents increased from 50,000 ia 1919 to over 150,000 in 1929. In London alone in 1929 1000 adults were killed in street! accidents, compared with 500 in 1919. Replacing the existing wooden fences of the London and North-Eastern Rail* way Company, a job which is now in; hand, will call for 12.000 miles of wire,. 50,000 tons of concrete and 2,500,000 posts.

The International Labour Office of tha League of Nations recently reported that it was estimated there were 11,000,000 unemployed workers in Europe, and 20,000,000 in the industrial countries of the whole world.

A motor-car bought in 1900 and in the possession of a Plymouth doctor until this year was unsaleable, nor would the local museum accept it. So the owner decided that the only thing to do Avas to give it a " decent burial."

The contracts placed by the Central Electricity Board, England, up to a recent date amount to £18,250,000. This figure is made up of £3.750,000 for underground cables, £6,250,000 for towers and overhead lines, and £8,250,000 for transformers and other equipment. At the end of last year the tonnage of

merchant vessels under construction in

the world was 2,326,086. The proportion under construction in Great Britain was 39 per cent. The nearest competitors were America with 10 per cent, and Germany with 9.4 per cent. After being used as a tithe barn in" Kent for over three centuries, a fifteenth century oak building has been dismantled, carried across the Thames, and rebuilt at New Barnet, Hertfordshire, where it is to be used as a church in connection with a college. /

A recent census of the homeless of London showed that 60 men and 18 women were living in the streets, 14,970 people were found in licenced common lodginghouses, and 1057 men, 137 women and 17 children in shelters and labour homes not licenced as lodging-houses. At the end of last year the tonnags of merchant vessels under construction in the world was 2,326,086. The proportion under construction in Great Britain was 39 per cent. Britain's nearest com-' petitors were America with 10 per cent and Germany with 9.4 per cent.