News and Notes by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 16.

News and Notes.

By Editor

—Rio Janeiro is afflicted with an epidemic of yellow and typhoid fevers.

—One hundred and forty Alsatians have been fined 600 marks each for failing to report for service in the German army.

—The Michigan House of Representatives on the 11th inst. passed a bill prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or giving away of cigarettes.

—Scores of families are threatened with eviction from their homes in Donegal, Ireland, and are making defensive preparations, which may end in bloodshed.

—The Spanish Government has refused China's request for permission to establish Consulates in Manila, and at other points in the Spanish colonies in the Pacific.

—Heavy thunder, wind, and hail-storms visited Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and Maryland the 12th inst., doing considerable damage to stock and buildings.

—The Southern Pacific Company has established several new hospital stations along its line of road in New Mexico and Arizona Territories, for the benefit of its employés.

—Secretary Windom has given orders to again start the mint at Carson City, Nevada, which will hereafter run on regular time, on gold and silver coinage, as in years past.

—Owing to the suspension of labor on the Panama Canal, over 3,000 persons on the line of works are in a destitute condition, several deaths from starvation having already occurred.

—As the Provincial Treasury of Quebec is absolutely empty, it is difficult to see where the money is to come from with which to pay the $400,000 provided for in the Jesuits' Estate Act.

—The five States of Central America are taking measures to establish a confederacy. A code of international law is being formulated, and other important features are to be introduced.

—It is authoritatively stated that no opinion will be rendered in the Chae Chang Ping case until early in May. The U. S. Supreme Bench is divided upon several material points connected with the case.

—Chevreul, the distinguished French chemist, is dead. For several years he has been one of the foremost scientists in France, as well as the most distinguished centenarian. He was 102 years old.

—Evidently Boulanger is still an object of fear to the French Government, as at latest accounts it was determined to crush him and his associates, seventeen of whom will be indicted by the Senate court.

—The Mormon Conference, just closed, elected Wilford Woodruff president of the church, with George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith as counselors. Lorenzo Snow becomes president of the Twelve Apostles.

—The State Department at Washington announced officially April 10, that there would be a cessation of naval demonstrations in Samoan waters. Bismarck has proposed that the two Governments maintain only one vessel each at Samoa, instead of three, as at first contemplated.

—It is rumored that the operators employed by the Western Union Telegraph Company have again banded themselves together in a secret organization. It is not improbable that before the summer closes there may be a sudden stoppage of all the Western Union business, and a general strike among its thousands of operators.

—The Catholic Total Abstinence News, the organ of the Catholic Temperance Union of Pennsylvania, has come out violently opposed to the Prohibition Amendment. It says it will make the evils of the illegal traffic a hundred-fold worse, and quotes the utterances of high Catholic dignitaries in favor of license and against Prohibition.

—Won Kwang Pei, formerly of the Chinese Embassy at Washington, advocates the expulsion of every American in the service of China as a reprisal for the exclusion of Chinamen from America. In a memorial on the subject he refers with contempt to the American navy, which he declares would be powerless in an aggressive movement.

—Many will remember the great overflow of the Yellow River, in China, last year, which caused such loss of life. Recent advices state that after almost superhuman effort, the breach has at last been closed, and the river runs in its accustomed channel once more. It is possible, however, that a further outbreak may occur in the next month as a result of the melting of the snow in the mountains.