NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1911, 5 December 1918, Page 4

NEWS IN BRIEF.

The London County Council hair decided lo spend £BOO-on providin'! canvas bags for the collection ol used tickets in train cars. If. onethird of the tickets used were collected in these bags they would realise at present prices about £720 a year. The ships and vessels of all kinds employed in the naval service ii September, 10.14, in Great Britain after the mobilisation had beei completed, had a tonnage of jusl over 4,000,000. At the end of hostilities the figures were well ovei 0,000,000. With the existing shoi'tage oJ labour and abnormal demand foi fuel, mine operators in Britain tun of necessity lo electrification as tin only way of increasing tjieir outpu at the same lime alleviating the labour situation which is now so serious, Strange appointments have beei made in the formation of a Ministry ;it Staprouol, Caucasus. The portfolio of Minister for Education Inn been given lo a sixteen-year-oh schoolgirl, while the Minister for tin Interior is an illiterate bootmaker. The American Bed Cross set iq six depots in Ireland, where lima i-ont stores of clothing, lirst-aid outfits, ami other necessaries to provide amply for any emergency wind might arise through the torpedoing of ships carrying American soldiers or sailors. If necessary, (i,ot)( ,-diipwrecked Americans could hav< been outlined from head to foot a one time from these emergency depots. In the year 1010 a commission o: the International Health Board vis ited South America and delimit in the seed-beds of yellow fever, as i preliminary Mep in (he campaigi for completely eliminating this dis ease from the world, fl is believe' that the sources of infection are a Guyaquil, Ecuador; in a region a long the south shore of the Carri bean; in a strip along the norll coast of Brazil, The I’nited Slates Department o Agriculture, announces that tin largest experimental plant in (In United States for. the nmmifactnn of fixed nitrogen j'rom the air, i; now in operation at the Arlingtoi experimental farm of (he Department of Agriculture, near Washing ton. At this plant atmospheric nit rogen is combined with hydrogen It form ammonia, which is availahf fur use in the manufacture of eithe explosives or fertilisers. The number of Austrian combat ant prisoners in British hands is 8chleei's and .1,2-18 oilier ranks, am the number of British comhatan prisoner.- in Auslro-Hungariai hands is 32 oliicers and 75 of othe. rank;'. French civilians, irrespective o. -ex, who have been wounded or in '.Hired as the result of any act of (h enemy, arc allowed to wear a ycilov ribbon bordered with blue stripes on which i- aliixed a fivc-poiutei star. The Congo Diver is the most won derfiil waterway in the world. It it so far across in parts that vesselmay pass one another and yet b out of sight, fi has twice the exlen of the navigable writers of the Mis sissippj and its tributaries.