GENERAL NEWS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10245, 23 May 1911, Page 7

GENERAL NEWS.

£200,000,000 REVENUE.

For the first time in British history tiie revenue for a year lias exceeded 200 millions. The official return for receipts into the Exchequer for the fifty-one weeks, from April Ist, 1910, -to March 25th, -911, published in the London Gazette, shows that in that period £200,789,034 was paid into the Treasury.

PLAGUE IN INDIA.

Although the plague is declining in (the Far East, ibhe outbreak in India is growing rapidly worse. The , mortality is now between 20,000 and 30,000 a> week. The official returns for the eight weeks up to February 25th show that the deaths in this period reached ithe appalling figure of 131,543.

A TICKET TO THE STARS.

Sir David Gil gave the cost of a trip to the stars in a leoturo on "The Sidereal Universe" before the mem--1 bens of the Royal Institution. "The nearest fixed star," he said, "is 270,000 rtimes, ias far off as the siin (which is 93,000,000 miles from the earth), and if you wished to travel to it even eeoonomiaaily— ©ay a ■penny a hundred miles— the ticket would oost one and a hsM times the National ! :■• t

I BURNED IN CATALEPTIC F!T. I

Setting her clothes on fire while undressing, a woman named Mary Williams, upon whom an inquest was held at Hackney, was thrown hy terror into a state practically resembling , catalepsy, and. fell to the floor. Here, a doctor said, she must have lain» fully oanecdouis, hut powerless to > move or cry out, whfile her clothing ) Emouldered away. Slie was terribly ' hoirned, and was ifound. by her mistaess the following morning.

j VILLA MURDER.

A orftdh! widow, Mime. Melanie Mathilde, aged 64, has been found murdered in her viUa on it£be outskirts of Paris. Bhie was suptposed to be in embarrassed circumstances, arid kept only one servant, a gardener, who slept in a small building in a comer of the long garden ing the house. On searching for his mistress at the house the gardener found traces of burglars. Many rooms had bsem .ransacked. Finally he discovered Mme. MatMlde's body in her bedroom. She had evidently been, struck with a hamnwer, and no less than twenty-one wounds had been inflicted.