— Waterbury, Conn., experienced a $3,000,000 fire the 4th inst.
— Japanese troops in Formosa kill between 300 and 400 bandits.
— On Jan. 1, 1902, there were 237,800 British troops in South Africa.
— J. Santos Zelaya is inaugurated President of Nicaragua for the third time.
— Gold is discovered on a farm near Depeyster, N. Y., the dirt assaying $75 a ton.
— Rear-Admiral Sampson is very weak. It is not expected that he will live long.
— Myron T. Herrick, of Cleveland, declines the United States ambassadorship to Italy.
— Archduke Leopold, of Austria, and the Archduchess, make a 200-mile balloon trip.
— The Protestant churches of Chicago plan to unite in union revival services next summer.
— A mine explosion at Hondo, Mexico, the 4th inst., killed 106 miners, Mexicans and Chinese.
— An addition will be made to the White House at Washington, for the departments of State and Justice.
— Dowie has agreed to pay Mr. Stevenson, his brother-in-law, $178,000 damages, in order to settle the case.
— The Vanderbilts and Goulds are engaged in a struggle to secure control of the Delaware and Lackawanna railroad.
— An edict of the Empress Dowager of China abolishes the prohibition of intermarriage between Manchus and Chinese.
— The London Sun enters a slander suit against Arthur Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury, “for accusing the paper of faking.”
— Two hundred persons were made homeless by the destruction of the University Flats, Chicago, by fire, the night of the 6th inst.
— A negro was lynched the 6th inst., at Nicholasville, Ky. He was accused of having attacked a white girl. The women present cheered.
— The Bulgarian Minister of Public Instruction was assassinated at Sofia, the 6th inst., by a man who failed to get a position. The murderer suicided.
— Judge Taft states to a Senate committee that the majority of the Filipinos favor American rule. If that is so, the Filipino majority should be able to stop the Filipino fighters.
— Foreign dispatches state that “the first monthly installment, amounting to 1,820,000 taels ($1,200,000), of the Chinese indemnity has been paid to the Bankers’ Commission of the Powers, at Shanghai.”
— Thomas Byrne, owner of the University flats, Chicago, which were destroyed by fire the 6th inst., gave each of the forty-seven families which were thereby rendered homeless, the sum of $100. After the fire he had the inmates conveyed to hotels in carriages, and ordered all bills sent to him.
— Viljoen, the Boer general recently captured by the British, will be deported.
— The Senate passes a bill increasing the salaries of federal judges twenty-five per cent.
— Emperor William is doing all that he can to oppose the establishment of Christian Science within his domains.
— The Empress Dowager of China instructs her officials to discourage the binding of the feet of Chinese girls.
— Ex-Queen Margherita, of Italy, will visit the United States incognito, traveling under the name of Countess Stupinigi.
— President Roosevelt decides not to render a decision in the Schley case until after his return from the Charleston exposition.
— The Archduchess Elizabeth, of Austria, renounces her right to the Austrian throne, in order to marry a subject not of royal blood.
— President Schwab, of the great steel trust, accompanied by Sir Thomas Lipton, called upon King Edward, at the Marlborough House, the 7th inst.
— On the 4th inst. the Standard Oil Company declared “a dividend of twenty per cent, for the first quarter of 1902, upon its capitalization of $100,000,000.”
— Lord Salisbury declares that England is “ready to accept any settlement in South Africa that recognizes the rights of the sovereign, and offers security to the empire.”
— Eleven persons were killed, and twenty-four seriously wounded, by a gas explosion which destroyed a meat shop at Archer Avenue and Twenty-second St., Chicago, the 4th inst.
— Lord Kitchener’s report of Boer casualties for the week ending the 3d inst., “shows that twenty-nine Boers were killed, six wounded, and 142 made prisoners, and that forty-eight surrendered.”
— A committee of the faculty of Northwestern University, Chicago, recommends that Professor Pearson be requested to resign from the faculty, because of his recent utterances regarding the Bible.
— The United States federal reports show that “smallpox has invaded twenty-three countries and every quarter of the world,” Germany, the best-vaccinated country in the world, being also included.
— The Marquis of Lansdowne, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the British government “has rejected the overtures for peace made by the Dutch government.” The Boer war will go on.
— In order to avoid the placing of the Zion lace industries in the hands of a receiver, John Alexander Dowie paid his brother-in-law, Samuel Stevenson, $178,000 in cash, the 4th inst. Dowie also pays the cost of the trial.
— Winds and storms do great damage in Europe and England. Venice has more snow than for twenty-five years past. At Rome the Tiber rose thirty-five feet, the Forum, the Pantheon, and the Temple of Vesta being flooded.
— The Ways and Means Committee of the United States House of Representatives unanimously approve “a bill repealing all the Spanish war-revenue taxes except the tax on mixed flour. The repeal is to take effect July 1, 1902, except the duty on tea, which will take effect Jan. 1, 1903.” The total annual reduction will amount to $77,000,000.
— The text of the Danish treaty with this country, regarding the Danish West Indies’ transfer, is made public. The United States agrees to pay $5,000,000 in gold for the group; and this country becomes in no way responsible for the $2,000,000 indebtedness of the islands to Denmark. Those islanders who so desire may retain their Danish citizenship.
— A Boer burgher near New Orleans, La., writes a letter to President Roosevelt in which he threatens to make a raid on what he terms the “British camp” in that vicinity, which supplies the British in South Africa with mules and other army supplies. It is thought that he has many sympathizers. He claims that by allowing this traffic to go on, the United States government is not neutral.
— The United States Supreme Court decided on the 3d inst., that the filled-in-land on the lake front, at Chicago, should be awarded to the Illinois Central Railroad. The State of Illinois has for years disputed the railway company’s right to this land, which has an area of fifty-three acres, forty-four having been filled in and nine being still submerged. Its value is estimated to be $10,000,000. Chicago wanted it for a park.
— And now the German Foreign Office confirms a story printed in a Berlin paper, that England wanted to help Spain in the Spanish-American war, but that Russia spoiled the plan.
— A terrific three days’ gale on the North Sea causes many wrecks and great loss of life. The French ship “Chanaral” was wrecked off Ushant, England, and only one of the crew of twenty-two saved. An Italian ship was wrecked off the Scilly Islands.
— According to Chicago dispatches, the health department of that city is “making every effort to organize a co-operative crusade to crush out smallpox in the middle West.” It seems that smallpox is now “more widely spread than at any time since the great seven years’ pandemic of 1879 to 1885. During 1901 there was an increase of 911 per cent in the number of States of which Illinois is in the southern tier. Between Dec. 28, 1900, and Jan. 24, 1901, only 1,070 cases were reported from this territory. During the similar period which closed last month, 10,820 cases were reported.”
— It is understood in Germany that the United States has virtually abandoned the Monroe Doctrine. Professor Jellinek, professor of international law at Heidelberg University, who is “in close touch with the German government,” thus expresses the situation: “The Monroe Doctrine had for its converse that the Americans would not touch any territory outside the American continent. In entering upon a colonial policy in the Philippines, the United States has not observed this, and therefore the Monroe Doctrine is no longer tenable.” It is thought that Prince Henry’s visit to this country will result in the waiving, to a certain extent, by this country, of its Monroe Doctrine policy.
— On the 4th inst. Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, “presented a petition to the Senate, asking for a suspension of hostilities in the Philippines, and an opportunity for the Filipino leaders to be heard by the American government, free from the restrictions which have been placed upon them by the American authorities in the archipelago. This petition is signed by “some of the most prominent men in the country, including Carl Schurz, Geo. F. Edmunds, Charles Francis Adams, Geo. S. Boutwell, W. D. Howells, Mark Twain, Bourke Cockran, Bishop Huntington, Bishop Vincent, William Lloyd Garrison,” and thirty-six University of Chicago professors. This is certainly a most reasonable request.
