LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 March 1941, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Air Force Recruits. kjore than 400 young men applied to join the Royal New Zealand Air Force last week when the Dominion-wide campaign for air crew recruits, mainly pilots and observers, was begun in Auckland. A number of applications to join the Fleet Air Arm was also received. The Territorial Force. New conditions governing the Territorial Force in New Zealand are to be brought into operation. These provide for the acceptance of married men for service on a voluntary basis and the lowering of the medical standard. It is also stated that no men between the ages of 20 and 40, who are medically graded as class I, except those exempted from overseas service, are to be posted to the Territorial Force or be called up for intensive training. Unusual Suicide. Suicide by an unusual method was revealed at an inquest in Napier by Mr Miller, S.M., into the death of a woman, Muriel Lillian Waldon. A young girl was induced by the woman to pull the trigger of a rifle which Waldon had placed on a table and pointed toward her own head. The girl told the coroner how, at the instigation of the woman, she had pulled the trigger on a number of occasions when it had only “clicked." On another occasion when the child thought the rifle was unloaded she had pulled the trigger, as asked by the woman, and it had fired. The coroner remarked that the woman was of unsound mind and had killed herself by placing a rifle on the table and, while standing in front of it, by inducing the girl to pull the trigger. The girl was entirely innocent as she was. |under the belief that the rifle was not loaded.

Control of Aliens. Considerations that are taken into account by the Aliens Appeal Tribunal and the local alien authorities in deciding what recommendations they are to make for the treatment of aliens were outlined by the Minister of Justice, Mr. Mason, last night. He said that the interest of the State would have been prejudiced if it had been necessary to conduct every investigation and make every decision publicly. Mr. Mason said, that with the exception of a handful in one provincial district, all of the 2300 cases of enemy aliens had been investigated, and appropriate action consequential upon the reports had already been taken, or, in the case of some recent reports, was now being taken, by the Government, In no case, where internment had been finally recommended by the tribunal had the Government refused to intern the alien. The number at present actually in internment was 80.

Bicycle Tyres. Some classes of bicycle tyres, more particularly children's sizes, are practically unobtainable. A ban was originally imposed under import control on the importation of bicycle tyres and tubes during 1941. The idea was that the Dominion industry should meet all requirements. But the industry, merchants state, manufactures only certain sizes, and is now so hampered by shortages of raw materials that it is unable to meet the full demand for the classes on which it concentrates production. In view of this situation the Government lifted the ban on the import of tyres and tubes some weeks ago. It fixed the allocation for tyres at 25 per cent, of an importers 1938 purchases. The extent of the relaxation of the ban was manifestly insufficient, and merchants have just been informed by the Customs Department that licences will be issued to 45 per cent, of 1938 importations from all sources, purchases, however, to be drawn from the United Kingdom.