CABLE FLASHES.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVIX, Issue 2997, 8 December 1896, Page 2

CABLE FLASHES.

• The Italian Government has decided to •send a punitive expedition to Somaliland, the scene of the reverses of which news was roooivod last weok.

Mr Conyngham Greene, formerly Secretary to the British Legation in Teheran, and who succeeded Sir Jacobus de Wot as British Agout in the Transvaal, has declined to receive from the British residents ah address; as hd Objects to an expression coil buried tllereid to -tile effect that tho fijenloridlrsts hope he will assist in maintaining the supremacy of the Empire. Some of the Unionist papers in London condemn the action of Mr Greene. Mapleson’s Opera Company has collapsed in New York. Its season’s losses amount to J!23,000. Several Europeans have died in Bombay from the bubonic plague. The Brest marine artillery, in celebrating a saint’s day, attacked the fort artillery with stones and sabres. Many men of both companies wore wounded. An enquiry has b?«n ordered'. . ; . ; A movement wqs started in the United States to present Mr Bayard, the American Minister in Great Britain, with a national Christmas gift, but, at his own request, was abandoned. Two military officers who insulted a party of citizens in Olmutz, Austria, were afterwards waylaid and severely maltreated, Lord Braasey proposes to visit New Zealand at; the end of the Parliamentary session, and will be absent for about six weeks. Since the commencement of the Soutli Australian drought on the Ist July, the rainfall reported at the Adelaide Observatory has been 3'B4lin. The general average for tho same period of the previous 67 years was lc)'ls3in. As the Customs launch was crossing from Port Melbourne to Williamstown, a heavy sea swept the vessel from atom to stern, taking a Customs officer and his wife overboard. The officer was drowned, but his wife was rescued in an exhausted condition.