NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3944, 18 May 1929, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

In by-gone days ships had raised “castles" fore and aft, manned by men in amour. It is the forecastle which still survives. The death-rate from tuberculosis in Britain, which is steadily declining', has dropped by forty or fifty per cent, in the past forty years. London’s youngest councillor is Miss Gladys Waldron, aged 21, who has been elected to Fulham Council. Iler father is the mayor of Fulham. Taxation in Great Britain per head of the population is £ls 2s Bd, the next European figures being France £8 5s 10s and Germany £5 6s sd. At the Paris law courts there is an old lady of 80, who has been employed for the last fifty years as shortest writer, and is still active. The largest railways station in the world is the Grand Central Station in Mew York, which has 67 lines, over which 600 passenger trains pass every day. Banana plantations, both in the Canary Islands and the West Indies arc suffering from a disease which is causing a loss amounting to millions sterling. About 10,000 children of school age in Britain are living in the general wards of poor houses, mixing with all sorts of people, including the feeble-minded. Bed “tail lights" are supplied to the policemen on night duty at Mulhousc, Alsace-Lorraine; each man carries three suspended from his belt at the back. Britain has held the speed record for the Atlantic trip ever since the ’sixties, with the exception of the period between 1807 and 1907, when the “blue riband" went to German boats.