GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2405, 16 March 1922, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS.

President Harding has approved the design of the medal which under the army hill of June sth, 1920, he was authorised to present to the city of Verdun in the name of the Congress and people of the United States. John Flanagan, of Newark, was the artist selected by the Commission of Fine Arts to execute the work. The medal was cut- at the Philadelphia Mint. The obverse represents two struggling giants, and the reverse Port; Cheussee, with the Verdun'forming the bnckgroilnd. The phrase “Us ne passciont pas” (“They shall not pass’) is inscribed across one face, and “From the People of the United States to the City of Verdun” across the other. Why is .it that so many women have such a sinister influence on watches? Allowing that they are -naturally more careless of them than men, there must still he some other and more definite reason. Claims have been put .forward that the electricity in one’s body has a direct influence on such delicate mechanism, yet few men experience the difficulty referred to. It may be that the very smallness ol: a lady’s watch makes it abnormally sensitive to the “batteries” of a highly-charged individual. In discussing the subject recently in an English paper, a correspondent stated that a certain young woman of his acquaintance wore and stopped each of her three sisters’ watches in turn before she could convince a sceptical father that the stopping of her own lihd not. been due to carelessness! An attempt lias just been made to east a devil out of 1 a woman living in a village of the Lauenbprgcr district of Pomerania. She appears to have been of a sour disposition, and three of the, village gossips came to the conclusion that her feelings were due to diabolical possession, and resolved to effect a cure by means of ancient enchantments known to them. They first of all gathered the herbs needed for the purpose m the forest at the proper conjunction of the stars. Then a tripod was formed of three chairs, and to these the patient was bound. Beneath her was fixed a pail of red-hot coal on wlifch the herbs were scattered. As the fume's of the burning weeds veiled the victim, the three lings croned the prescribed enchantment. The louder the woman shrieked the louder they sang, and after the process had been continued long enough to prove effective, they ran away, believing the devil would run out of the woman after them. She, however, continued to shriek. Her cries were heard by a man. who came to t he .rescue and unbound her. Within a short time the Paris police will keep up communication with headquarters by wireless telephone when they are pursuing wrongdoers by motor while m the spring, an air police force will he on duty in the sky. According to the present plans of M. Leullien, the Prefect of Police, the two ordinary motor cars of .the Surete will first he equipped with wireless telephones, a portable outfit being available for the use of officials.