NEWS IN BRIEF

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2340, 11 October 1921, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF

The centenary of the independence of Brazil will be celebrated at Rio de Janeiro in the autumn of 1922 by an international exhibition.

Thirty-five years ago there were only 125 mills in Japan. Now there are more than 25,000 modern factories, employing 2,000,000 workers. British trading vessels, carrying £250,000 worth of goods, have started for Siberia by the Arctic route. If successful, this will mark an epoch in commercial history. Although the beaver’s chief use for its flat, trowel-shaped tail is for swimming, it has another purpose. When beaten upon the water, it becomes an alarm-signal. Solomon’s Temple, for the building of which practically the whole manhood of Israel was comman* (leered, would have cost £1,000,000,to construct at present prices. -

New village schools are growing lip all over Palestine, and in four years every district will be provided for. Even Bedouin tribes are having their children taught. About this season of the year, yellow shrimps choke the Cameroon River, Africa, and the neighbouring estuaries. It is caught in millions, dried, and sent inland for food.

France’s war-devastated forests are being fast replanted. In the Aisno district, 225,000 acres have already been cleared of blackened trunks and planted with vigorous saplings.

Cigarettes to the number of 61,000,000,000 were manufactured in the United States of America last year. The number of cigars manufactured was 9,000,000,000. The Danish authorities propose to publish a newspaper for prison inmates. It is felt that they are handicapped by a lack of knowledge on their return to the outside world.

Ollicial returns for the Italian

financial year, which closed on June 30th last, show that the taxation receipts amounted to £130,000,000, an* excess over the estimates of 48 per cent. The Peruvian centenary festivities at Lima closed with a State ball in the historic Government Palace, a portion of which has been completely reconstructed after a recent fire.

A gramophone which plays a dozen records continuously without attention, and returns each when finished automatically to its proper place in an album, was demonstrated in London lately.

In an average life of 70 years, not counting the first 10, over 21 years are spent in sleep, oyer 16 in work, 11 months in dressing and undressing, and 7 months in churchgoing, says one statistician.

The White Star liner Olympic completed her fastest trans-Atlan-tic voyage since 1914, when she arrived at New York at 10.10 p.m. on August 9th. She did the trip in 5 days 18 hours 18 minutes.