MAIL NEWS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1256, 23 January 1883, Page 2

MAIL NEWS.

“AGE” SPECIALS, LONDON, January IoBismarck proposed that the German Government should expend a sum of 600,000 marks . for relieving the sufferers by the recent inundations. It has been decided by the Suez Canal Company to expend a sum of 20 millions for widening and otherwise improving the Canal. The works are to be commenced at once. The Czar of Russia has dismissed the Secret Society Guard, by which he had been surrounded, and has discontinued many precautions which he has hitherto taken to frustrate the design# of the Nihilists. Sir Charles Dilkn, the new President of the Local Government Board, is at present at Nice, whither he has gone to attend the second funeral of the late M. Gambetta. whose remains are to be finally interred there to-morrow. The Prussian advance into Central Asia is still strenuously resented by the inhabitants, and it is now reported that the people of Merva have murdered a Russian surveyor and three Cossacks in his employ. Mr Samuel, Agent-General for New South Wales, has been presented with a handsome souvenir by the colonists and other residents in London, as a mark of their satisfaction at his recent elevation to Knighthood. The French vintage of 1882 shows a decrease on that of the previous year of 3,000,000 hectolires. Since the death of Gambetta dissensions have sprung up in the ranks of his followers, and it is believed that a general disruption of the party is likely to take place. It is reported that the English Government me about to despatch a reinforcement of troops to Natal, with a view generally to the unsettled state of South Africa.

A Socialist agitation of an alarming character his sprung up at Rome, with ramifications throughout Italy. The Government have determined to take stringent measures for the suppression of the organisation, and wholesale arrests are being made in consequence. The widow of the late General Chanzy has been granted an annual pension of 1,200 francs by the French Government.

Numbers of laborers in Connaught have applied for Government aid to enable them to emigrate to Queensland. The United States Congress have reversed the decision arrived at a short time ago in favor of the abolition of a portion of the protective duties previously in force.