VARIOUS CABLES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8435, 6 May 1907, Page 5

VARIOUS CABLES.

TRANSVAAL AGENT-GENERAL. : LONDON, May 3. Sir Richard Solomon has been appointed Agent-General for the Transvaal in London. j RUSSO-JAPANESE COMMERCIAL ' TREATY. ST. PETERSBURG, May 3. Russia and Japan have agreed to the text of a commercial treaty embodying specific concessions on each side. RANSOM IN TURKEY. . LONDON, May 3. Britain has applied to Turkey for recovery of the ransom (£13,500) which the British Consul at Salonika paid,for- the liberation of the kidnapped son of Mr Abbott, a British merchant of Salonika. (The Turkish authorities had refused to pay the money—a fact that caused foreigners in Salonika great indignation.) NEW BELGIAN MINISTRY. BRUSSELS, May 3. M. de Trooz, a clerical, has formed a Ministry in^Belgium. COLONIAL ART. LONDON, May 3. Mr Oswald Binley,' a New Zealander, is exhibiting at the Salon and the Academy. Mr |McKennel, the Australian sculptor, has sold a group entitled "Earth and the Elements," now on exhibition at the Academy. RETURNING HOME. Received May 5, 5.15 p.m. PIETERMARITZBURG, May 4. The steamer Atlantic has left JJur- ,' ban with 458 "assisted" Australians, returning home. MEASLES. Received May 5, 5.15 p.m. MADRID, May 4. The children in the Royal Palace at Madrid are suffering from measles. A GERMAN BANK. Received May 5, 5.15 p.m. i LONDON, May 4. I Reuter's Paris correspondent states that the German Minister at Teheran has secured a convention for establishing a German bank. The attempt of iu*ance in the same direction in 1906 w"is over-ruled by Russia on the ground that the Russian Bank in Persia met all the requirements. SPEECHIJY MR HOFMEYER. CAPETOWN, May 3. Mr John Hofmeyer, speaking at Wellington (Cape Colony), at a meeting of the Afrikander Bond, said he could not be expected to offer an idolatrous worship of the Empire like Britishers, but he had a real interest in its maintenance, and in the Navy as a means to that end. His tariff proposals at the Conference in 1887 originated in the approval of a differential duty by England and the colonies on foreign goods, for the benefit of the Navy, such duties working reciprocally. China's awakening and the Russo-Japanese war necessitated a powerful fleet.

INDIANS IN SOUTH AFRICA. LONDON, May 3. Lord Elgin, Secretary of State for the Colonies, considering the unanimity of the Transvaal Parliament, has advised King Edward not to disallow the Asiatics' Registration Bill.