NEWS IN BRIEF

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 13, 16 January 1932, Page 14 (Supplement)

NEWS IN BRIEF

It. is calculated that the ravages of rats cost Britain £60,000,000 every year. Local telephone calls made by mem bers of Parliament from mo House of Commons alone represent a cost to the country of about £3lO a year. Influenced by Communist propaganda, over 1000 schoolboys recently went on strike at Cologne, Germy.ny, as a protest against, school roßtrictJons. Prince George has been elected a member of the Jockey Club. The Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Gloucester are already members. According to the latest statistic!, two-thirds of the population of Portugal are illiterate. In Lisbon, of some 5,000,000 inhabitants, 4,250,000 are illiterate. Helmets worn by the London police in winter weigh half an ounce heavier than their summer headgear, as cloth, is substituted for the serge ©f the lighter type. Three brothers, Alfred, Walter and Charles Thomas, have an aggregate of 139 years’ continuous service at Clobb > Farm, Beaulieu, Hampshire, Alfred having served 49 years and each of the others 45. Motor-car accidents caused 32,500 deaths last year in the United States, where the population is 120,000,000. In. Great Britain, with a population of 44,500,000, deaths through street accidents numbered 6696. England’s most sober large town, judging by convictions for drunkenness in proportion to population, is Walsall, where only seven convictions took place last year. Rutland was the county with the best record. Gunmen entered the dining room of a New York grape merchant and, in the presence of his two children, fired four bullets into his body, leaving him dead. They then escaped amid the screams of the terrified children. A golf ball struck a motorist of Fulham, London, as he was driving over Epsom Downs, smashing his spectacles and causing glass to enter his eye. He pulled up tho car without injuring anyone. The council of the French Rugby Federation has decided that clubs shall be required to furnish a medical certificate for all Rugby players, and that parental consent must be obtained by players in League matches under 20 years of age.