NEWS IN BRIEF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21100, 6 February 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Bankrupts in Britain have increased in ten years from 2016 to 5900. About £11,000,000 a year is spent in public cleansing in England and Wales. The British Post Office surplus for the year IS3O-31 is estimated at' £9,133,000. New telephones have been installed in Britain at the rate of 800 a week recently.. Human beings to the number of 3COG are killed by wild beasts in Inciia every year. The weekly consumption of petrol of the London General Omnibus Company is 600,000 gallons. There were 7137 fewer persons proceeded against in the Scottish "criminal courts in 1930 than in 1929. Many London head teachers are warning parents not to send their children to school if suSering from colds. '• London's chief source of water is the River Thames, which supplies the metropolis with 166,000,000 gallons a day. There are 13,846 Europeans in Northern Rhodesia. This is an increase of 10,212 over the figure at the census of 1921. Prisoners on remand in Brixton Prison are not allowed to smoke, although they are still regarded legally.as " innocent." The silk of spiders' webs is used in most scientific instruments where infinitesimal but accurate measurements are required. In Italy, where the cost of a wireless licence is high, there are only 200,C00 licences among a population of 40,00G,Q00,. Out of 300,000 identifications by fingerprints made by the police experts, ia Britain no two prints were found to be alike. The public vehicles, including taxis, buses, coaches and trams, licensed by the London Metropolitan Police number 18,663. More than 7,000.000 men and women served under the British flag during tha Great War; of these 4,500.000 are still living. Insurance premiums are paid on London property valued at over £2,300,000,000 Last vear fire did damage to the extent of £696,800. An admiral in the Royal Navy receives £5 16s a day pay, an Admiral of tha Fleet getting 16s 6d. a dav more or £6 12s 6d in aIL High stools are provided in some American film studios so that the actresses may rest without letting their long skirts touch the ground. Finger-prints could be put to many business uses, such as confirming signatures in banks and as receipts, as well as identifying criminals. Twenty-two bridegrooms and 699 brides who were married in Britain in 1930 were aged sixteen, the lowest age at which marriage may take place. The Nautilus, the submarine in which Sir Hubert Wilkins attempted his under the ice trip to the North Pole, was sunk in Bergen Harbour, Norway. Free passes for the municipally owned tramcars in the London metropolitan area are to be issued by West Ham Council to all blind persons in the borough-. The oldest pneumatic-tyred bicycle in the world is still preserved in a private collection in Croydon. It was used for racing in 1359, and is insured for £SOO. Mr. George Fox, whose song s * Over the Garden Wall" was half a century ago the most popular ditty of the day, has died at Brighton, England, at the age of 76. The record for the lowest expenses in a contested election in Britain up to 1931 is held by Mr. James Maxton, whose expenses in 1929 were £75, less than one penny per vote. The secrets of making fire and of making utensils by chipping them out of stone were known to mankind in China over one million years ago, according to soma recent excavations. One of the most extraordinary results of the depression has occurred in Bucharest, where the central pawnshop, which is under partial State control, has filed its petition in bankruptcy. In the number of wireless licences issued, Britain is almost equal to Germany, both countries having about 4,000,000. People in Britain pay 10s a year for theirs, while the fee in Germany is 245. Receipts on the London County Council tramways from April 1, to November 4, last year, were £2,510,924, compared with £2,575,691 in the corresponding period of the previous year. Cocoa is apparently superseding beer as the national beverage of Germany. The consumption of beer is 38 per cent, below the figure for 1913, whiler'cocoa is up 70 per cent, over the same period. Eleven acres of glass are used in the wails and roofs of one wing of a new factory nearly completed at Beeston, Nottinghamshire. When finished, this factory will be the largest in the world. Child marriages are increasing so rapidly in New York that the authorities are alarmed. Ia 1930, 552 school children were married, one husband being 14 years of age and one wife two years younger. Out of every hundred married couples in France, twenty-three have no fam:ly, twentv-five have only one child, and twenty-two have two children. Less than three "per cent, have .seven children or mere. An " electric finger" capable of measuring the thinnest piece of material has been devised. It will be employed to detect fraudulent reproductions o£ stock certificates, historic documents or costly textiles. Littleton Reservoir, on tha outskirts of London, is the largest body of" water made bv men in the world. It measures some four and a-half miles in circumference, and would provide anchorage for a fleet of battleships. Coffee growers of- Sao Paulo have proposed to the Brazilian Government to destrov 18,000,000 sacks of old crops which are guaranteeing a £20,000,000 British loan and liquidate it by continuing to collect a 10s per sack tax for four years. Children in Salford, England, are provided with playgrounds in the most crowded areas in 102 streets, which are closed to motor traffic. The result is that the number of fatal street accidents t,o children have been cut down to almost half. A United States Government scientist' predicts that dust from tobacco, coal, and grain, which is highly explosive under certain conditions, may be employed for fuel in motor vehicles and aeroplanes. Dust has already been used to drive a Diesel engine. Portraits of Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald and Lord. Snowden, which for nearly 25 years have hung in the rooms of tha North Edinburgh branch of tha Independent Labour Party, have been removed from the walls and sent to the North Edinburgh Unionist Association. Britain will have paid out about £1,000.000,000 in war pensions by March 31, next. Although their numbers are decreasing tlirougfi various causes—deat, I remarriage of widows, etc. 1312 I pensions were granted last year ! and motherless children of men who died as a result of their war disabilities. London's most treasured civil as it is the oldest, is probably tha ba.on, eighteen inches long,, cut from puia crvstal and inlaid with gold, which each ' Lord Mavor holds m his hands for a few minutes once a year as a frnUA oi his authority. There is no record showing how old it reMy is, but the workmanship is of the Anglo-Saxon period.