DOMINION ITEMS.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 December 1930, Page 6

DOMINION ITEMS.

MISS MERCEDES GLEITZB.

i By Telegraph—Per Press Association.!

WELLINGTON, December 19,

Miss Mercedes Gleitze proposes to beat her endurance swimming record (of 42 hours, established at Dublin) at the Boys’ Institute, Baths, starting on December 31 and swimming the Old Year out and the New Year in.

No further plans have been made for the...Cjook Strait swim, , but on Christmas Day sire 'will go out with a boatman, Mr Tajt, to consider a possible starting point, .....

UNIQUE COURT CASE IN

DUNEDIN

DUNEDIN, December ID

A test case of interest to flying clubs and companies throughout the Dominion was heard in the Police Court today when Captain White "a pilot of New Zealand Airways, was charged with working at his calling on a Sunday. It was contended by the defence that aeroplanes, were exempt from the operation of .the. Act as they came under the definition »f “any carriage or cab.” The Magistrate differed from this view and held that, as the Act was passed as recently as 1927, aeroplanes would have been especially' exempted if the legislature intended that they should be. ■

A conviction without penalty was entered.

The Magistrate agreed to state a case for appeal.

POLITICAL FUSION.

WELLINGTON, Dec. 20

' Resolutions in support of fusion of the Reform and United parties were unanimously passed at a meeting oi the committee of the New Zealand Political Association.

It was agreed, on general principles, that no insurmountable difficulties ex-

ist between the two, parties, that t

gravity of the existing, economic conditions demands stable government, and that in the. interests of flic country as a whole United and deform should abandon party differences and thus conform with a generally-express-ed desire of . the public.

TOWNSEND’S SENTENCE. COMMUTED TO LIFE. WELLINGTON, December 22. The Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, presided' at a meeting of the Executive . Council today, and acting on the advice of his Minister, committed to imprisonment for life the sentence of death passed on Alexander Townssend for the murder of his wife, Cora Alice Townsend, at Fitzroy. Townsend was sentenced to death at New Plymouth by the Chief Justice Sir Michael Myers, on November . 19. The trial lasted four days. The defence advanced was that accused had committed the crime /while in a state of insanity. The body of Mrs Townsend was found in a house at Fitzroy, after several visits during the night, of Townsend, who was separated from his wife. (: