News of the Week.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue II, 10 January 1903, Page 90

News of the Week.

An avalanche buried the VeronaMunich express train at Gossensass.

The United States Treasury holds £123,000,000 in gold.

The Clyde trustees are spending £200,000 in widening the river to 650 feet, and also in deepening it.

Russia is establishing a Customs bureau in Dalny, Manchuria, despite China’s opposition.

Thirty Belgian officials are starting to reorganise the finances of Persia.

Two racehorses, valued at £3500, entered to run at Niee have been burnt to death on the railway.

The Emir of Sokoto (West Africa) is dead. His successor is friendly towards the British.

Lord Roberts lias accepted the invitation of the Honourable Artillery Company to visit Boston, U.S.A., in September.

The King of Saxony lies in a critical condition. It is semi-officially announced that lie is unlikely to survive beyond a few days.

Owing to friction between the Arbitration Board and the Miners’ Union, Americans are importing 200,000 tons of British coal.

Bulgaria has notified the termination of her commercial treaties, terminable in 1903. The Government is preparing a general tariff.

Spain is sending troops to Malaga, Cadiz, Alganas, and will reinforce the garrisons at Centa and Melilalo. She is also sending a cruiser to Tangiers.

The Japanese House of Representatives has been dissolved for refusing to compromise over the Government taxation proposals.

The Great Fingal Company has deferred paying an interim dividend pending a scrutiny of the scrip, some of which has been forged.

The earthquakes at Annyan, in Russian Turkestan (where many thousands of people lately lost their lives), are reported to still continue incessantly.

A band of armed Bulgarians at Drenovo fought a detachment of Turkis 1 troops, killing and wounding fifteen. The Bulgarians afterwards escaped. The inhabitants helped them.

The “Standard’s” Rome correspondent states that the Hon. Francis Bertie, Assistant Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs, succeeds Lord Currie as British Ambassador to Italy.

The election for the Newmarket seat in the House of Commons resulted as follows:—0. D. Rose (Liberal), 4414; 11. L. Brassey (Conservative), 3907.

The Dutch forces have captured the Sultan’s family, who were hiding in the mountains in Achin, in the island of Sumatra, Dutch East Indies.

Several Macedonians have been arrested in Bulgaria on charges of plotting an attempt on the life of Count Landorff, the Russian Foreign Minister, who is now in Bulgaria.

The “Times” says that the Publi® Prosecutor has incurred grava responsibility in refusing to prosecute the directors of the London and Globe Finance Corporation.

J. O’Donnell, the Irish Commoner, convicted of intimidating, has had his sentence reduced by one-third, the remaining portion without hard labour.

A pension scheme prepared by a committee of the National Conference of Friendly Societies proposed that five shillings a week should be paid from the Imperial Treasury to those who attained the age of sixty-five, subject to numerous conditions. The rural, urban and municipal councils would be the pension authorities.

The conciergerie of the Humberts’ Paris house and Mademoiselle Eve Maria Humbert, who were arrested on suspicion of complicity in the frauds, have been released from custody.

Six hundred Southern Nigerian troops have been sent to the town of Essen, whencethey start on a punitive expedition against c. chief who persists in imposing a tax on British goods and plundering and setting British authority at defiance.

M. Marchend. a wealthy resident of Dunkirk, lent Madame Humbert nearly half a million sterling. He does not intend to prosecute, saying that the money-lenders compelled her to continually borrow.

The Government of Portugal has arranged for the extradition of Owen, who was arrested in Lisbon in November for embezzling money belonging to the Premier, Sunrise (New Zealand) and other mining companies.

After a fire, which occurred in a shop in Stepney, London, the charred remains of a woman and her five children clinging to her skirts were discovered in a tenement at the rear of the shop.

Persia has granted the Russian Bank at Teheran (Persia) the right to construct a road from Tabliz to Kazvin, stopping the importation of English goods via Azerhijan and Northern Persia.

A force of natives captured Fort Boni, a Belgian station on the Uganda frontier (in Equatorial Africa), killing and eating two officers, Lieutenants Demagnee and Carty.

The War Office has cancelled the dismissal of Major Cotton for surrendering the British garrison at Helvetia during the Boer War, and has placed him on the retired pay list.

Prominent American Senators fear that Germany will insist on a reference to The Hague Tribunal if the United States claims sovereignty over a strip of Colombian territory in order to safeguard the canal. Senator Elkans urges the building of fifty battleships, since a collision with Germany is inevitable eventually.

Commercial Marconigrams between Canada and England (by wireless telegraphy) will be inaugurated in April. The rate for ordinary messages will be 5d per word, and the press rate will be one-half. A French company has been prose-

cuted for establishing a wireless station at La Hogue, iu defiance of the Government’s declaration that the transmission of messages was a State monopoly.

Count Lamsdorff (Russian Foreign Minister) has returned to St Petersburg from Servia. The Russian Panslavists are irritated at his visit to the Balkan States, and urge the impossibility of settling the. Macedonian question pacifically. They prophesy a general Christian insurrection in the spring, supported by the Bulgarians and Servians.

The Hon. Colonel Hay, United States Secretary of State, is embarrassed, suspecting a secret understanding ..etween Colombia and Nicaragua to prevent th. United States using either of the Isthmian Canal routes.

The mutilated bodies of a man named Darby, a grocer at Camberwell, and his wife and infant, have been unearthed in a garden at Leyton. Darby’s furniture was found on the premises occupied by Edgar Edwards, a grocer, who has been charged with the murders. He had bought Darby’s business.

Chapman is a Pole, and his real name is Severino Klosofpke. He is charged. with poisoning, besides Marsh, two women with whom he cohabited successively as wives. The police are enquiring regarding the interment of another of Klosofpke’s supposed wives; also into the disappearance of his original Polish wife and her two children at Whitechapel.

Baron DestoWmelles de Constant, one of the representatives of France < n the Hague International Arbitration Tribunal, has thanked President Roosevelt for removing the boycott of the Hague Tribunal. lie contrasts America’s initiative in regard to arbitration with Europe’s inertness, and says that America’s moral competition will prove more far-reachiug than even her material competition.

The New York correspondent of the “Times” says the Kaiser’s four attempts to inflame Americans against the British have totally failed. The relations between Britain and America are closer and more trustful than ever. Only England’s participation in the Venezuelan war saved Germany from receiving a remonstrance that wou'ld have been equally embarrassing whether accepted or resented.

News from New Guinea gives a gloomy picture of the drought there. The natives in some parts are in great straits for food, living on roots. Dysentery is prevalent, and some of the natives are eating dead bodies.

A number of murders have been reported. In one instance the bodies of a couple of prospectors were found, one man being pinned to the ground with a pick driven through his skull.

The Sunbeam Society of Adelaide entertained 1500 Southwark children at Newington Baths. Sympathetic letters were read from Lord Roberts, the Marquis of Linlithgow, Miss Florence Nightingale, Sir Alfred Austin, Sir H. M. Stanley, the explorer, and others. The society entertains 2500 Stepney children on January 20.

Further alarming volcanic outbreaks in Central America are reported. The volcano of Momotombo, on the shores of Lake Managua, another crater near the town of Granada, in Nicaragua, and a third at Izalco, in San Salvador, are belching forth fire and lava. The people of the country surrounding each of these volcanoes are in a state of extreme terror. Great destruction of property has been caused by the flow of lava and the showers of ashes aud stones. Loss of life is also reported.

The report of the Dublin Corporation scandals inquiry reveals the fact that the subordinate officials absolutely controlled their own wages and time-sheets. In numerous instances pensions were paid in the shape of suppositious earnings to men who had been incapacitated from work for years. Several of the departments were over-manned. In one case there were 56 men where 34 would have sufficed, mostly engaged in inspecting each other’s work.

The Steel Trust is offering 168,000 employees great facilities to acquire shares, and divides the profits after 16 million pounds with the employees, owing to an exceptionally prosperous year. The New York banks are dividing a million sterling amongst their employees. Morgan’s staff is receiving £120,000, apart from his bank’s profits. Mr. Morgan gained six millions, and Mr. Rockefeller much more.

Cardinal Moran, referring to the statement made some time ago that he was called upon by the Admiralty to apologise for his remarks on the late war in Samoa (criticising the actions of the British and American forces), denies that he ever had any communication from the Admiralty. He had not apologised, and never would. Everything he had said about the war had been borne out bv the Special Commissioner sent to Samoa by the London “Times.” This reporter took all authentic reports-, and proved the injustice of the whole proceeding so clearly that the “Times” de-lined to publish his report. The Cardinal obtained a copy of it, and verified all his uterances on the subject.

A terrible colliery disaster has occurred in the Uspenck colliery, at Ekaterimoslav, a town of South Russia. Fire broke out in the mine while a large number of miners were below, and spread so rapidly that the majority of the unfortunate men were unable to escape, and all efforts to rescue them failed. Some terrible scenes were witnessed in the vicinity of the mine, where the wives and

friends of the entombed men had gathered, awaiting news of their fate. Fifty-eight of the miners perished. Eleven others were rescued after having been entombed for three days and 21 after having been entombed for five days. The Austrian and Hungarian Premiers have arranged a compromise over the Ausgleich (the agreement under which the two States are united under a common head). It is believed Hungary is victorious in the matter.

The agreement between Austria and Hungary, known as the Ausgleich, has been arranged for a decade. The duties on grain and manufactured articles w'ill be increased. It is expected they will injure Great Britain more than America. These tw'o countries are respectively the second and third largest exporters to Austria. The Austrian Premier has arranged conferences between the German, Czech, Moravian, and Bohemian sections, with a view to arriving at a national compromise.

Efforts are being made to secure the release from Portland prison of Lieut. Whitton, of the Bush Veldt Carbineers. He has just recovered from an attack of enteric fever.

[The agitation for the release of Lieut. Whitton revivesa terrible story. Briefly, the facts of the Bush Veldt Carbineers are as follows:—Certain colonial officers of the Bush Veldt Carbineers murdered Boer prisoners. It was only when a German was killed that retribution arrived, owing to the insistence of Germany. Lieut. Whitton himself was not proved guilty of any of the murders. Lieuts. Hancock and Morant were tried and shot, and Lieut. Whitton was sentenced to several years’ imprisonment.]