NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1734, 25 September 1917, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

Rice is 20s per lb and sugar 10s pel' lb. in Servia.

Forest and fen fires have caused great damage in Hanover. The River Thames pours 40,000,000 cubic feet into the sea every hour.

During her entire reign Queen Victoria did not wear her crown 20 times.

Professor Gustav von Sehmoller, the well-known German economist, has died at the age of 79.

Tn all our wars we have Avon the splendid average of 82 per cent, of the battles. .This is the world’s record.

Owing to leather scarcity, German authorities are requisitioning the skins of rabbits, hares, and domestic eats.

German statistics ghow that the number of criminals under the age of eighteen was four limes greater in 1910 than 1914.

A Woking shopkeeper gives widoavs or dependents of soldiers or sailors killed in the Avar 121 per cent discount on purchases. Sergeant Elliott, who Avas verger at St. Mark’s, Carabenvell, has taken 073 total abstinence pledges from the men of his regiment.

Of the 5,300 Etonians avlio have been on active sendee, 800 have been killed, 1,000 wounded, whilst honours gained include six V.C.’s.

A French airman who was taken prisoner at Verdun has succeeded in escaping. He reached France after covering 218 miles in 10 nights. Before the Avar freights from the American cotton ports to Liverpool were 20.33 cents per 1001 b.; to-day they are quoted at 300.325 cents. j3cr 100 lb.

A fine of £5,000 has been imposed by the Germans on Antwerp Municipality for disobeying an order to rebuild the quarters devastated by the war.

To deal with the array’s post-bag there are eighty-five officers and 4,000 n.e.o.’s and men, and in London 140 discharged soldiers and 700 temporary sorters.

Eight thousand eight hundred and five artificial limbs have been made by private firms for soldiers at a cost of £127,293, and 7,000 men are still to be supplied.

The Victoria Cross aAvarded to Private William Jones for heroism at Rorke’s Erift in 1879 was sold for £llO at Glendining’s auction rooms in England recently. The British Array in Mesopotamia is noAV running trains between Bagdad and Samarra made up entirely of the plant captured from the Turks in the battle before Samarra.

Krupp’s employees at the end of 1910 numbered 79,000, an increase of 14,000 during the year. The number of women Avorkers increased in the same period from 10,900 to 19,200. The National Congress, the legislative authority of Brazil, consists of a Chamber of Deputies and a Senate, which meet annually, but no Jaws can be passed Avithout the President’s sanction.

The projectile of a 13.5 in. gun (Avhieh, by the Avay, is not our largest naval gun) Aveighs 1,280 lb.—as much as eight 111 stone men —and at a range of OA’er a mile aaJII penetrate 50 in, of Avrought iron. In Siam, some of the women entrust their children to the eai'e of elephant nurses, and their trust is never betrayed. The babies play about the huge feet of the elephants, avlio are very careful not to hurt their little charges.

In consequence of the increasing scarcity of coal and oil in Denmark, theatres will be open only three days a week, and street lighting will be abolished, while the use of oil for lighting Avill be prohibited. It is said that Fnrinelli, an eigh-teenth-century singer, could sing 300 -notes in_ one breath; but the nearest approach to this in modern times that we know of is Campanini’s record of ninety-one notes in nine seconds in one breath.

A hullet travels, roughly, twice as fast as sound, so that if a man is struck by a bullet and instantaneously killed at a distance, say, of 1,000 yards, he is dead a full second before the report of the rifle that fired the bullet could reach him.

In honour of the King-Emperor’s birthday, the Maharaja of Patiala has given a sura of £6,733 for a flotilla of motor-boats for use in Mesopotamia, and Maharaja Bahadur Sir RamesAvar Singh of Darbhanga has given £13,333 for the purchase of aeroplanes.