GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2438, 8 June 1922, Page 1

GENERAL NEWS ITEMS

Thirty fishermen and small farmers living in the neighbourhood of Ostend will shortly receive between them the sum of £3,500,000 as heirs of a man named Doyen who died in America in 1883 leaving an immense fortune. The heirs are direct descendants of the millionaire, but the American Government refused to give up the factories which- constituted Doyen’s wealth, and pleaded prescriptive rights. The matter was taken up diplomatically, and has now been settled by the intervention of British and Belgian banks. A young railway clerk named Maurice Chevalier visited his fiancee at the village of Nonglard, Annecy, near Geneva, in order to arrange the wedding. He then disappeared, and his body has now been found by police, with the aid of dogs, in a wood near the station. A rope tied in> a lover’s knot was round his neck. The knot had evidently been tied after the strangling had taken place. Chevalier’s fiancee is a beautiful girl. He had several rivals, and the police are searching for the murderer among them. A hundred million lire (about £1,180,000) in the Ancona branch of the Banca d’ltalia has been in serious danger of being stolen by an audacious band of thieves. They entered the bank by making a hole in the wall of an adjoining building and taking with them a whole arsenal of implements, including blowpipes, drills and jemmies. Their activities wei’e, however, interrupted by a. watchman, who, though 63, put up a good fight against the intruders, who numbered half a dozen, and managed to attract the attention of passers-by, obliging the thieves to flee. One of them was caught.