In brief: Affair becomes part of hacking case

London – Two former editors of Britain’s News Corp being tried on phone hacking charges had an affair that lasted at least six years, the prosecution revealed Thursday.

The affair between Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, former editors of the defunct News of the World Sunday tabloid at the heart of the phone hacking scandal, began around 1998, the court was told.

Prosecution lawyer Andrew Edis said he was not revealing such details to make a moral judgment but because Brooks and Coulson are accused of conspiracy to hack phones, bribing public officials and concealing evidence during the time of the affair. The two defendants deny all the charges against them.

Proof offered of Nazi Gestapo leader’s death

Berlin – A German historian has found conclusive proof that Nazi Gestapo chief Heinrich Mueller died in the final days of World War II and was buried in a mass grave in a Jewish cemetery in Berlin, the German daily Bild reported Thursday.

The research carried out by historian Johannes Tuchel, head of the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin, appears to resolve one of the most enduring mysteries of the Nazi era and discredit decades of reported sightings of the secret police chief in Latin America after the war.

As head of Adolf Hitler’s notorious Gestapo, Mueller played a key role in orchestrating the Holocaust with his oversight of the arrests, deportation and extermination of European Jews.

Tuchel was researching a wartime massacre reportedly ordered by Mueller when he came across a death certificate that indicated the Nazi general had been buried near the Luftwaffe headquarters in the final, chaotic days ahead of the May 1945 Allied defeat of the Nazis. The cause of his death was not immediately clear.