NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Nearly 40,000 wireless licences were issued in India in 1935, against 20,000 in 1933.

Gas mains cracked by the frost caused the gassing of families at Blackburn and Earl Shilton, Leicestershire, last month.

A beautiful marble plaque of the Queen is to be carried by the liner Queen Mary.

The 50 per cent, surtax onSimported Canadian goods into Japan has been officially withdrawn. A Finnish Red Cross detachment of five members sailed from Hamburg last month for Abyssinia.

Four spare propellers, each weighing 35 tons and 20ft. wide, have been made for the liner Queen Mary. London is consuming more British beef according to the statistics for 1935 at Smithfield Market.

An Under-Secret ariat of State for Exchanges and Currencies has been created by Royal decree in Rome.

The first international amateur billiards match between-France and Germany was held recently at Cologne. Unknown persons recently placed dynamite under the Geneva War Memorial and fired it, but did no damage. It is announced that 1500 new pilots will shortly be admitted to the Italian air force by competitive examination. The Egyptian Government is contributing £20,000 toward the clearance and dredging of Alexandria Harbour. A trade pact between the United States and Holland for mutual tariff concessions became effective on January 1 last.

Personal estate in Britain and Canada valued at £5134 was left by Mr. George Barclay, labourer, of Old Meldrum, Aberdeen. „

After having been blind since birth Miss Madge Brewer, aged 25, of Calne, Wiltshire, has had her sight restored by an operation. A cormorant bearing a ring, inscribed "Witherby, High Holborn, London," was caught last month by fishermen off Roscoff, Brittany.

Nine more oil prospecting licences have been issued in Britain, covering 1508 square miles in Scotland and the South of England. The European ice sailing championships will be contested on the Schwenzait Lake at Angerburg, East Prussia, from M arc h 1 to 8. Two inhabitants of Bruchsal, near Karlsruhe, have been sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment for blackmailing and ill-treating a Jew. , A tin of rice on a shelf in a lodginghouse at Milton Regis, Kent, has been found to contain Bank of England notes amounting to £BO.

Bombproof defence to magazines and vital control stations will be a feature of new British battleships which are to be laid down this year.

Two persons were killed and 10 injured last month when a runaway lorry dashed into a crowd of choppers at Mngny-en-Vexin, France. The new Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu, of 10,050 tons, with turbines of 60,000 h.p. and a speedjof 30 knots, was recently launched at Isfflre.

A statue of Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish President, is to be erected on the shore at Istanbul at a point visible from all parts of the Bosphorus., The Witzleben television station, which was put out of action by the big fire at the Berlin Wireless Exhibition, has resumed transmission.

The Comedie Francaise Theatre, Paris, is providing apparatus to enable deaf persons to hear by means of vibrations transmitted through the head.

Between Mavch and December, -1935,

Signor Mussolini distributed marriage bemuses and large family prizes to the value of £667,000 to State employees.

The annual report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, recently issued in London, shows how science is helping nearly every British industry. A Roman Catholic priest charged at t Cologne with attempting to smuggle banned newspapers into Germany was recently sentenced to five months' imprisonment.

To escape the attention of photographers 'after her recent wedding in Paris the Hungarian film actress, Kate de Nagy, left the Town Hall in a Red Cross ambulance.

Several tons of iron are reported to have been presented to Signor Mussolini by Mr. Charles Henry Fowler, formerly of Leeds, who has lived in Italy for some years. A five-years' plan for rearmament of the Portuguese Army was approved by the Government recently. The total cost will be £5,000,000, of which £1,500,000 will be spent this year. Mr. C. I. Salaman, an English barrister, who directed in his will that he was to have a private funeral, stated: "Wreatli3 are a vanity and funeral coaches an abomination."

Germany has concluded agreements with Holland and Denmark for the purchase in increased quantities of agricultural products, chiefly butter, eggs and cheese, during this year. The most leisurely railway service in the world is believed to be that between Buenos Aires and Tuburucuaya, a distance of forty miles. The fastest.train takes eight hours to complete this journey.

The Aberdeen lifeboat was nearly dashed to pieces recently when attempting to rescue the crew of a trawler which was thrown by heavy,seas against the North Pier and sank in the harbour.

The rare event of a seal having ventured so far into fresh water as Emmerich, on the German-Dutch frontier, over 100 miles from the sea, was recently reported by crews of Rhine steamers.

Baron Waldemar von der Pahlen has been appointed interpreter at the Wiesbaden courts for English, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Serbian and Bulgarian. Many churches in Driffield, Yorkshire, started the New Year with a clean slate through the generosity of an unknown man. Through a bolicitor he offered to pay the debts of all the religious institutions in the town.

In an empty room of a tourist agency, which has its offices in a Hungarian town hall, a glass water-jug was turned into a lens by the sun, which set fire to a piece of paper lying beside the jug. The blaze spread over the pamphlets and advertisements on the table and to other parts of the room before it was discovered.

The railway journey between Germany and Sweden will be speeded up by three-quarters of an hour as the r<> suit of work now being pushed forward for completion of the which will replace a ferry boat ystem of transporting trams by a long> b™dge with a short lifting span to admit the passage of ships. It is that the new railroad connection will be opened in August tnis year*