NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1879, 19 September 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

A match trust has recently been formed in Sweden, all match factories having joined in a combine which will be the largest of its kind in the world. The annual output will tje between five and live and onehalf million boxes of matches. The trust has a capital of more than £4,000,000.

Oklahoma Indians are to form an entire regiment for service in France, according to the recently announced plans of the War Department at Washington. Many Indians have already been called up for service under the new law. They will be incorporated in the Lnited Slates Army as a separate unit.

Poker profiteers have been hit by the International Revenue Bureau’s ruling that earnings from the game were subject to the income tax, but losses could not be deducted from income in figuring the tax. Thus there is a tax for the winner, and no relief for the loser, the ruling was given in answer to a letter of inquiry.

Opthalmic surgeons from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland have formed a standing council to act as an advisory body to any State or public department when questions affecting eyesight are dealt with, an increasing need for expert advice on such questions having been shown. A claim recently received by the Air Raid Compensation Committee was for a monkey, which was the only casualty in a house in the London district during a Gotha raid. Russia, with a population of nearly 130,000,000, has only about 19,(100 physicians. The United States, -with a population of about 100,000,000 has over 120,000 physicians, .The Royal Naval Air Service 'in England numbers 40,000 men, 170 airships and kit balloons, and well over 2500 seaplanes and aeroplanes. These figures are constantly increasing.

The Germans are registering all hens in Russia. Every owner must produce three eggs a week. If the hen dies it must he brought to the commandant as proof that it can lay

no more eggs. Wife-heating is punished with the lash in Cumberland, U.S.A. Convicted on a charge yd; heating Ids wife, a man has been sentenced to 20 lashes and one year in the house of correction. Two hundred and eighty-one thousand people are employed in the munitions factories actually owned hy the British Government, and Ihe weekly wages hill totals a million pounds sterling. Since the beginning of the war the Admiralty believes that between forty and fifty per cent, of German submarines operating in Homo waters have been captured,- sunk, or otherwise destroyed. 'Wartime prices have affected the makers of counterfeit money, who lind that all “non-precious” metals used in the making of spurious money have become 100 costly to make the business worth the risk involved. A recent census of the European population of South Africa gives: —Gape Province, 580,771, an increase of 35,103 compared with Kill ; Natal, 120,405, an increase of 77,352; Orange Fret 1 Stale, 181.202, an increase of 0,409. Total for the Union, including travellers, 1,418,000, an increase of 141,818. Old hops, of which at least 200,00011). have been collected recently, are, perhaps, to be used in Germany as a substitute for tobacco, which grows increasingly scarce. It is asserted that chemical investigations have proved that by a method of preparation the hops act and taste much like tobacco, and can be used without even a mixture of tobacco. Wounded live times’ in the battle of the Marne, Gerard Meister won the annual swimming contest across the River Seine, a distance of 350 yards. The temperature stood at about the freezing point, and the bridges and banks of the river were crowded with spectators who cheered Ihe swimmers as they plunged through the icy water. Meister won this event in 1913. U.S. police have appeared in Paris recently, arousing much interest. They have just made their appearance in the Place de FOpera, Paris, wearing the regulation uniform with a black arm badge with the letters “M.P.”, signifying military police, in red. This makes the third police force operating in Paris, the British Army having hud its special military police there for some time. Holland gin will be hard to obtain in future. The two hundred distilleries of Schiedam, which produced vast quantities of gin and other liquors, were notified in January by the Government’s Grain Bureau that no more grain will be supplied for conversion into alcoholic products. This means the paralysis of one of the industries for which Holland is best known abroad.