NEWS IN BRIEF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22402, 24 April 1936, Page 5 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

Nine new municipal aerodromes will bo opened in Britain this year. A direct weekly air-mail service from London to Hongkong began last month. Herr Hitler's "Mein Kampf" has been translated into Chinese and published in Nanking. All challenge trophies and cups presented by King Edward when Prince of Wales are to be re-named. Fewer men arc applying to join the British Army, the number having fallen from 80,203 in 1934 to 08,061 in 1935. A boys' club, run chielly by the police, has reduced juvenile crime at Norwich, i'rom 100 cases a year to about 12. The first building in Great Britain specially designed for floodlighting is now nearing completion in Piccadilly, London. It was stated at a British Ministry of Health inquiry recently that 215 persons were living in 12 houses at Newcastle. Dressmaking firms and tailors in the West End of London, arty already preparing the robes that will bo worn at next year's Coronation. Passengers travelling by long-distance trains can now, in certain cases, send a telegram from the train to anywhere in the United Kingdom. If the American Federation of Labour is to be believed the unemployed of the United States in January last numbered nearly 13 millions. Miss Norma Shearer has accepted an invitation to play the part of Elizabeth Bennett in a Hollywood version of Jano Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." Field-Marshal Sir Philip Chetwodehas been appointed a trustee of the Prince of Wales' British Legion Fund in the place of the late Lord Jellicoe. ])r. 1). A. Spencer, a director of Colour Photographs (British and Foreign), Limited, has been elected president of the Royal Photographic Society. A blow from the pickaxe of a workman engaged m making a garage at Shrewsbury recently unearthed a hoard of 200 silver pennies, which are 1000 years old. The new direct radio-telephone service between Britain and Kenya lias been opened, and services to other parts of the Empire will bo inaugurated this year. John Dallas, aged 88, stated to be ono of only five Chelsea Pensioners holding the Zulu War Medal, awarded in 1879, died recently in the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. The number of houses built by Scottish local authorities last year constitutes a record. The total was 18,651, which exceeds the previous best for any year by 2836 houses. The Mayoress of Bedford, England. Mrs. H. R. Neate, has received a present of three ostrich feathers from the Mayor of Bedford, South Africa, who visited England last year. Bromley Corporation is to purchase land for the purpose of a motor-car park in a central position adjoining the Queen's Garden. The site forms part of the old Bromley Palace grounds. Expenditure on the Royal Air Force for the next 12 months will be £12,500,000 more than in the financial year recently closed, in addition to the cost of the White Paper proposals. During a recent blizzard an avallanche on the Coeur D'Alene Mountain, in Idaho,- tore a passenger car from the end of a Northern Pacific train and hurled it to the bottom of a canyon. In the nest of one of his black ducks Mr. Alec Kirby, licensee of the White Swan Hotel, Westend, Hampshire, recently found two jet-black eggs. Previously" the ducks had always laid normal eggs. In order to provide suitable wireless entertainment for tho population of Morocco two new broadcasting stations, ono at Fez and the other in the Palace of Sisi-Said at Marrakesh, hare been opened. The stormy winter has given Britain's gallant lifeboatmen unusually hazardous experiences. The boats have been out 283 times, and since September a dozen medals for gallantry have been awarded Over 150 lives were lost at Tientsin recently, when fire destroyed hutments in which 400 paupers were sleeping on straw. Wind fanned the flames, which consumed the light matting structures with terrible speed. Sir Richard Paget, in a recent London lecture, demonstrated a system of signs which ho has:-invented, and predicted that the time would soon come when a universal sign languago would bo used in television. A contrast to the modern tendency toward very large cinema theatres will bo found in Oxford Street, London, shortly, when plans for tho conversion of Cinema House into a two-storeyed cinema theatre are completed. A return issued by the British Ministry of Transport recently shows that tho number of motor vehicles registered for the first time last January was 39,688, compared with 37,160 in tho corresponding month last year. Signor Toscanini has promised to visit Palestine next October in order to conduct the first concert of the Palestine Orchestra, which has- been formed chielly from refugee Jewish talent by Mr. Bronislaw Hubcrman, tho eminent violinist. The suppliers of 9900 tins of sardines that were condemned as unfit for human food in London on 1' obruary 16 havo now boon fined £2OOO by tho Portuguese Fish Board and havo been prohibited from trading in tho samo branch for two years. Of tho 15 new Royal Air Force squadrons which have now been formed toward tho 71 which aro to bo added to Bri rain's homo dcfenco force by 1937, 13 are bomber units, of which 10 aro Regular squadrons and tho others Auxiliary Air Force squadrons. Tho British Museum has accepted from tho Gaumont-British Corporation a copv of tho short pictorial memoir of King George V., which was recently shown in cinemas. Copies of the film are to bo presented to various cities, including Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds and York. The new Masonic temple at Rugby, which has been provided at a cost of £17,000, was dedicated recently by Colonel W. F. Wyley, Provincial Grand Master of Warwickshire, assisted by officers of Grand Lodge and Provincial Grand Lodge, in tho presence of 1200 members of tho Craft. A number of antique weapons were stolen from Aston Hall, one of Birmingham's museums, recently. The weapons included two Italian seventeenth-cen-tury flintlock pistols, an English pistol of the eighteenth century, an English six-chambered revolver of tho nineteenth century, and a sword and scabbard. An anonymous donor has given a further sum of £12,000 for the pay bed block for patients of moderate means now in course of erection at St. Mary's Hospital, London. The benefactions made by this donor toward tho extension fund of tho hospital during the past two years now amount to over £107,000. The Duke of Richmond and Gordon has sold 12,000 acres of. the Huntly Estate, Aberdeenshire, including GO farms and many small-holdings—9ooo acres being arable —and a largo number of houses and business premises, public offices, tho post olfice, hotels and other licensed housos. The rental is about £BOOO a year, inclusive of ground-rents.