NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21344, 19 November 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

A Saturday half-holiday is now compulsory in Argentina.

Three tons is an average load for an adult elephant to carry on its back. Nearly 400,000 exhibits were added ±o the British Museum collections last year.

Thirty streets in Berlin are named Bismarck, and twenty-six Wilhelmstrasse. The Harrow Council recently refused to fell 12 willows to make way for electricity wires.

Broadcast appeals made over the •wireless in Great Britain lasE year brought in £65,647 direct. Countess Fortunata Bracci, the last grand-niece of Napoleon, has died in Italy in her 91st year. It costs Britain, on an average, £6O a year for • every person sent to a prison or similar institution. Britain's national stock of fowls and ducks is increasing, but the country has fewer geese and turkeys. Statistics in Britain show that in the matter of adoption girls are four times as popular as boys with foster-parents. Some new sources of petrol suggested by scientists are a certain variety of seal the wood of plane trees and cotton-seed oil. An English farm labourer of 74 has gone for a Mediterranean cruise with three-penny-pieces saved during the past 19 years. Britain is now exporting tinned peas, loganberries and strawberries. In respect of the latter fruit, it is now ahead of the Americans. Even in these enlightened days there are said to be over 4,000,000 persons living in a state of slavery in various parts of the world. Mrs. Jane Tanner, of Cheltenham, England, who celebrated her 100 th birthday, is the second centenarian member of St. James' Church there. On the roll of honour of the London County Council schools, are the names of 430 children who have saved, or made heroic efforts to save, life. Three hundred Methodists lunched a few weeks ago in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, where John Wesley dined as an undergraduate 212 years ago. Agricultural produce sold from farms in England and Wales in 1930-31 was valued at £197,400,000. This was a ' drop of £18,830,000 on the previous year. Eain falls only once in about every 30 years on long stretches of the coast of Chile, the northern region of that country being as arid as the desert of Sahara. When the King and Queen.travel on the Royal train, about forty . persons accompany them, including ten mechanical experts ready to tackle any break-down. Excise licences for the private brewing of beer in Britain. are held by 12,435 people, who pay a total sum of £3,957 to the Excise annually for th© privilege.

Smoking is forbidden to drivers of motor vehicles in Czechoslovakia, as many recent road accidents are said to have been caused by drivers smoking at the wheel. Foreign visitors to Britain in July, spent over £2,000,0(50; more than one-third of these visitors were Americans, followed by French, Germans, Dutch, and Belgians.

Cycle-stealing is becoming so prevalent, in Capetown t,hat the police want machines to be taxed and officially stamped with "ft" tftrilrber to aid in identification.

Three men travelling in Spain without tickets on the rodf of • a carriage of the Seville express, were lately decapitated by the framework of a bridge over the river Ebro.

By the recent union of the Methodist churches in Britain, 5842 ministers, 1,000,000 church members, and 1,250,000 Sunday-school pupils became part of the one Church.

" Gumaan," a mysterious type of driftwood cast up on the beaches of Pacific Islands is half the weight of balsa, the lightest known wood. Its origin has not been traced.

Hay made by passing hot air through grass in a new apparatus has three times the protein content of the naturklly-dried article. It is thus three times as good for feeding cattle. Tibetan mastiffs, of which there are specimens at Whipsnade, are said to be tha worst-tempered dogs in the world. Keepers appoach them in pairs, so nasty / are their dispositions. Local authorities in the metropolitan district of London are prohibited from making by-lays by a Police Act of nearly 70 years ago. All these districts are dealt, with by the Home Office. Apparently there were 'many headaches in the gaol "in the Tarrant County Texas, last year. The bill for medicine for 1931 revealed that 42,000 aspirin tablets were purchased for the 150 inmates.

Of the electric current supplied in Britain by authorised undertaking, about 60 per cent was sold for power use, 30 per cent for lighting and other domestic purposes and some nine per cent for traction. Because the church bells at Ottershaw, Surrey, were under repair there was no wedding peal for Miss Emily Sleet, one of the ringers, but she was promised a special peal when the repairs are completed.

During a harvest festival service at St. Cuthbert's Church, Durham, on October 2, , the vicar, the Rev. William Glynne, who had recently undergone an operation, collapsed and was later reported to be "very weak."

It is estimated that the total number of divorce cases brought this year in England and Wales will exceed 4000. Nearly 90 per cent of the cases are being brought by poor persons under the special facilities provided.

Whipsnade has had nearly 90.000 visitors more during the recent summer than in the corresponding period of last year. The total for June, July and August in 1931 was 214,636; for those months this year it was 294,929. Out of 6500 unemployed boys and girls recently examined by the British Ministry of Health, 93 per cent of the boys and nearly 94 per cent of the girls had no physical defect. Over 84 per cent cf th® total had good health. There are now more than 4000 public telephone-boxes, including kiosks in shops, in the London area. Thefts from these have been costing the telephone service more than £3OO a month in lost receipts, without reckoning damage to instruments. Among the new " gangster" words officially adopted into the American dictionary by one expert are: "pineapple,' a bomb " racket," any occupation, whether legitimate or not, in which monC is made; and "racketeer," one who is engaged in an illegal occupation, such as rum-runniiag.

By ballot vote members of the National Union of Kailwaymen in Britain have elected Mr. Frank Bailey to be secretary of the approved society section of 125,005. members, in succession to Mr. J. H. Thomas. M.P. Mr. Bailey has been manager of the society for 18 years, and its acting secretary fdr five years.

The 20-vear-old Duke of Northumberland and his mother, the duchess, went to sea in the Seahouses lifeboat on October 1 to pay homage to the memory of Grace Darlingf Among the crew were - ants of those who manned .he lifeboat i 1838, when Grace Darling and her father rescued wrecked seamen from a rock • duke and duchess_sat in. <he st fierce north wind was blowing and th - was very rough. mM Jb t- MBBm JT