■ Germany
Nazis killed Hitler relative
A second cousin of Adolf Hitler was one of the victims of the Nazi euthanasia program, new research revealed on Monday has shown. Aloisia V, who had spent many years in a secure psychiatric center, was murdered in the gas chambers of the Hartheim Institute near Linz in Austria in December 1940. She was 49 at the time, only two years younger than Hitler. The fate of Hitler's second cousin has come to light after study of previously unknown Nazi documents by the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Munich and the Ober-salzberg Institute for contemporary history at Berchtesgaden.
■ United States
Bush honors Powell
US President George W. Bush paid tribute to outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday to mark the annual holiday cele-brating civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr King, the minister widely credited with leading the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, was gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, when Powell was an up-and-coming officer in the US Army. Powell, whose immigrant parents were born in Jamaica and who grew up in New York's tough inner city, rose through the US military to become the country's top general and eventually the first black secretary of state. Bush credited Powell for his drive to be the best at his profession regardless of race and for helping rally the world in the war on terrorism. In his decades of service, Powell has worked "tirelessly" to confronting poverty, hunger and disease, Bush said. "I appreciate all he has done for our wonderful country," Bush said.
■ Australia
Bad year for journalists
The war in Iraq and lawlessness in the Philippines helped make 2004 the deadliest year on record for media profes-sionals, an industry association said yesterday. The International Fede-ration of Journalists (IFJ) said last year saw 129 journalists and media staff were killed in the course of reporting. IFJ president Christopher Warren said Iraq was the most dangerous country for journalists with 19 media staff losing their lives there. The Philippines recorded 13 casualties, most related to investigations into drug trafficking, corruption and organized crime. Warren, who is also the federal secretary of Australia's Media Enter-tainment and Arts Alliance, said that for all the journalists that had died there had been hundreds of journalists put in dangerous situations.
■ Iraq
Expats register to vote
Expatriate Iraqis across the world on Monday began registering for their country's first democratic elections in 35 years, due to be held on Jan. 30. Tens of thousands signed at about 150 registration offices in 14 countries, among them Australia, the UK, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, Holland, Sweden, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, the US and Turkey. Iraqis in Eastern Europe were planning on travelling to Germany to cast ballots. A total of 1.2 million Iraqis abroad were expected to register for the polls, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which was asked to coordinate the expatriate vote. But the total number of planned absentee ballots could only be known with certainty once the seven-day period for registration is over on Sunday, the IOM said.
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