CABLE SUMMARY.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 237, 20 January 1898, Page 3

CABLE SUMMARY.

A Japanese transport has been wrecked at the Pescadores Islands. Eighty-five of the crew were drowned and only five saved• Sir Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner of South Africa, is forwarding to Mr Chamberlain an address, drawn up by the Afrikander Bund, decl.ring the urgent necessity for the construction of an all-British deep-sea cable. The United States Government has decided that if sealskins can be proved by the wearers or owners to have been purchased before December 30th last, the recently-passed pelagic law shall not apply to them, and they will not be confiscattd. A private Bill has been introduced in the French Chamber of Deputies to transfer the penitentiary at New Culedonia to Kerguelcn Island, in the Indian Ocean. The ground for this step is that New Caledonia is commeroial'y valuable, while the convicts' work is unprofitable. It is expected that the Ministry will support the measure. Mr Hobbs, a confederate of Jabez Balfour in the notorious Liberal Building Society frauds, who wi>B sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, has been released owing to illhealth. At the invi'ation of Belgium, an international conference is about to assemble for the purpose of discussing the question of the abolition of. sugar bounties. Messrs Turnbull, Martin and Co., the well-known shipbuilders of London, Glasgow and Dunedin, are having four steamers, each of 8500 tons, built lor the New Zealand frozen meat trade. General Zurlinden, commander of £e 15th French Army Corps, has been appointed Military Commander in Paris in succession to General Sausster. Genera] Jamont, one of tl.e members of the Council of YVa", succeeds General de Turcy as Comman.ler-in-Chief.