The Acting Secretary of the Navy, has by letter informed the contractor who had made arrangements with the Cuban Gov-ernment to remove the wreck of the Maine, that the Navy Department has no authority either to abandon the vessel or to permit its removal.
The Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department has received a copy of an enactment of the Philippine Commission providing for the administration and temporary leasing and sale of the land commonly known as the Friar Lands, for the purchase of which the government of the Philippine Islands recently has contracted.
A reception in honor of Independence Day was given in London by American Ambassador Choate, which was attended by about fifteen hundred guests, including many distinguished Englishmen.
The Constellation, the oldest ship of the old navy, has been brought from Newport to the New York Navy Yard to await there her further disposition by the Navy Department.
United States Consul-General Gummere at Tangier has been cabled instructions from Secretary Hay for dealing with the brigand, Raisuli, the point of which is a positive injunction to refrain from committing the United States Government to any guarantee of immunity for the brigands or in any way to take any action that would amount to the recognition of the right of brigandage and blackmail in Morocco.
The terms of ransom asked by Rasouli and his band of bandits who kidnapped the American citizen Perdicaris and his stepson Varley in Morocco are considered by the State Department as impossible of acceptance.
A question which has come prominently to the fore in the proceedings of the Methodist-Episcopal General Conference at Los Angeles, is that involving a change in discipline to the extent of entirely removing the Church ban on dancing, card-playing, and theatre-going.
