GERMANY
Hitler’s landlord said Jewish
A historian said Adolf Hitler lived for almost a decade in a house that belonged to a Jewish merchant. Paul Hoser said Hitler lived at Thierschstrasse 41 in Munich’s Lehel District from 1920 until 1929, interrupted by a year spent at Landsberg Prison for staging a failed coup in Bavaria. Writing in the quarterly VfZ, Hoser said the house was bought in 1921 by Hugo Erlanger. He lost the house in 1934, after falling behind on mortgage payments. According to the research, Hitler treated his Jewish landlord “with courtesy” despite harboring strong anti-Semitism that would later contribute to the Nazi’s murderous policy toward Jews. Erlanger survived the war and was able to get his house back in 1949. The research was first reported on Saturday by Der Spiegel magazine.
UNITED STATES
Chuck Berry on display
Chuck Berry fans are getting their chance to pay their respects to the rock ’n’ roll visionary, about three weeks after his death aged 90 near his hometown of St Louis. Fans of the legend behind such classics as Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen and Roll Over Beethoven could file past his casket yesterday at The Pageant, a St Louis club where he frequently performed. The public viewing will be followed by a private service for family and friends, including those in the music industry. Charles Edward Anderson Berry, who died on March 18, was the first artist in the inaugural 1986 class to go into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and he closed out its concert in 1995 to celebrate that Cleveland building’s opening.
AUSTRALIA
Refugees might stay in PNG
Asylum seekers sent by Australia to a Papua New Guinea (PNG) camp would be resettled there if they are not offered a place in the US, Minister of Immigration Peter Dutton said yesterday. Canberra sends asylum seekers who try to enter the country to offshore processing centers on PNG’s Manus Island and Nauru, blocking them from resettling in Australia. The conservative government has instead worked to relocate those found to be refugees within PNG or to third countries such as the US and Cambodia. The push to move the more than 800 refugees on Manus has sped up with the camp due to close down after a PNG Supreme Court ruling last year declared that holding people there was unconstitutional and illegal. “There are officials from the US ... looking at each individual case at the moment,” Dutton told Sky News, without stating how many refugees might be accepted by Washington. He said those who miss out are “staying in PNG, that’s the arrangement as it currently stands. If people have been found not to be refugees, then the expectation is that they will be returned home.”
AFGHANISTAN
Bomb kills at least nine
An official said a roadside bomb killed at least nine security forces personnel during an ongoing operation in the northern Balkh Province. Munir Ahmad Farhad, spokesman for the provincial governor, yesterday said that several other forces were wounded the night before in the Chimtal District, where they are battling Taliban insurgents. He said five insurgents have been killed and dozens wounded. Afghan forces have struggled to combat the Taliban since the US and NATO formally concluded their combat mission more than two years ago. The Taliban have seized a number of districts across the country, and the fighting is expected to intensify as warmer weather sets in.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not