GENERAL NEWS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8858, 8 July 1907, Page 4

GENERAL NEWS.

In defiance of the lavra of Euclid, a saving of time in the mails from New York to Rio de Janeiro and : Buenos Ayres is to be made by the j American Post Office by sending them twice across the Atlantic, t first to Southampton and Havre and j then to South America by the Royal Mail packets. The new arrangements started recently, 1 and the authorities estimate that this will effect a saving of seven days to* Rio de Janeiro and nine days to Buenos Ayres. < A great sensation has been caused in Rome by a report that the famous “Madonna,” by Albert Durer, at Fabriano, has disappeared. *®As this most valuable”picture has been for a long time kept in a closet cupboard and never exhibited, it is feared that the theft happened long ago, and that the masterpiece has been sold and smuggled cut of the country. The authorities are doing , their utmost to trace the picture, I hut it is feared that 'their efforts I will prove fruitless. I The United States Government j inquisition into the financial'methods | of Mr Harriman and otherj railway magnates, according to report? made public lately, is likely to result in wholesale prosecutions of the most sensational description. Counsel to the Inter-State Commerce Commission, which conducted the inquisition, declares that Mr Harriman grossly violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and that the agreements between the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Companies for acquiring control of other railways resulted in suppressing competition over man area equal to one-third of the entire United States. A Rome telegram says that the excavations near the basilica of Paestum in Southern Italy have shown an extensive pre-Hellenic settlement, with hundreds of stone instruments arid' other objects, in addition to decorated bronze arms in excellent condition. Dr. Gabrioi has found that many of tne fragments in the Naples museum go to complete the famous quadriga of Herculaneum, and if he succeeds in finding more either in the museum or in the excavations, the monument will be one of the most magnificent recovered from the buried cities. Influential members of the Reichstag have launched a movement to make Alsace-Lorraine a Grand Duchy, and to place the Kaiser’s second son, Eithel Freidrich, on the throne as the first reigning Grand Duke. The Parliamentary representatives of Alsace-Lorraine, now an imperial province governed by a viceroy, have already introduced bills asking an independent Constitution and the conversion of the province into a sovereign German State. The whole side of a mountain which forms part of the Blumisalo Range, situated above Kiental, a pretty Alpine resort near Reicheubch, commenced moving recently. The landslip carried with it huge boulders and pine trees. It crumpled chalets and houses like matchwood, killing two villagers and injuring others. Government engineers were summoned and ordered the immediate evacation |of Kiental. Villa-' gers and tourists fled, the latter going to Reicheubacha. Largo gangs of men are making trenches and obstacles to stop the progress of the slide, but it is feared that Kiental is doomed.