GENERAL NEWS STEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2170, 31 August 1920, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS STEMS.

Louis Leighton, a platelayer, was sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour at the Derby Assizes for interfering with signals and points on four different dates, on the Midland Railway. . Mr Justice liorridge said tho offence, which might have brought death to many people, was most serious, and ho had great doubt weather Leighton ought not to go to penal servitude.

A Swiss multi-millionaire company promoter and financier, M. Jules Bloch, who made enormous profits during the Avar and declared only a portion for taxation, was lined by the federal Commission at Berne the record sum of Hi,0.00,000 italics, which, according to the present rate of exchange, amounts to more than £050,000. M. Bloch was given a fortnight in which to appeal. The case has been pending since the armistice.

A moving mountain is threatening with destruction a street of .forty houses in the mining village of Mardy, Olamorganshire. The encroachmenl of the mountain has been diseernihle for spine months, and Hie “squeeze” is now increasing so mueh that it is difficult to enter some of the houses on account of the bulging of doors and walls. Mirny houses are being held up by props, and (he oeeupiers have removed bedroom furniture’to the ground floor in readiness for hurried removal. “You are a set of fools. You have been completely bewitched. In all my experience I have never heard such a foolish verdict.” Such was the comment of Judge Landviteh on the jury of Vienna, who hoard a ease in which Margaret Blau, a 21-year-old girl, was charged with committing theft and attempting to induce witnesses to give false evidence. The girl, a striking beauty with all the charms of most Viennese possess, pleaded guilty to the charges, but the jury acquitted her, and she left the court all smiles. The attention of pedestrians in a Paris street was arrested by an altercation between an elderly woman and a young man, who continually protested, “But 1 did not hurt the horse.” A crowd assembled, to whom the woman explained that she had caught the young man pulling out hairs from her horse's tail, “I wanted the hairs for fishing to-mor-row.” said the man. A policeman tried to make peace, but the woman would not accept his mediation, and both parlies and the horse were taken to the police station.

Pickpocket* >t away with 3.(507 unmounted diamonds and two Dutch 1,000-llorin Holes (the total value of the property amounting to over .015,000 from a Dutch diamond merchant who was t ravelin)”' on a London train. During the journey he noted not hint; unusual until he ■■cached Easton, when he found the end of Ids chain danyliny and the wallet missing. The chain had been severed with a pair of sharp cutters.