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Friday April 4, 2008

Shorts: World

Jewish group slams Swiss-Iran gas deal

The World Jewish Congress criticized Switzerland this week for agreeing to a 25-year gas deal with Iran.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey traveled to Iran in mid-March to sign the deal worth between $28 billion and $42 billion.

“It became clear immediately that the visit by the Swiss foreign minister was a propagandistic triumph for the mullahs,” said WJC President Ronald Lauder. — ap

Controversial adviser wins U.N. position

Jean Ziegler, a Swiss writer who praised a Holocaust denier, won an advisory position last week to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

In 1996, Ziegler praised French Holo- caust denier Roger Gaurady as “one of the leading thinkers of our time.”

Also elected as an adviser to the council was Richard Falk, a Princeton emeritus professor who has likened Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians to the Holocaust. — jta

German Jews cut ties with pope

A theological row over the pope’s decision to use a rare Latin prayer for Good Friday, which urges Jews to convert to Catholicism, has prompted the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, to sever relations with the Catholic Church.

The Vatican’s liaison to Jewish groups, Cardinal Walter Kasper, has argued that the prayer is not a missionary statement; rather, the wording reflects the desire of the Catholic Church for all people to be saved through Jesus Christ.

Knobloch says that “implicit in the Good Friday prayer is a subtle call to proselytize Jews, which I must characterize as an affront that is arrogant and clearly a backward step in the Christian-Jewish dialogue.” — jpost.com

49 Neo-Nazi murders so far in 2008

Since the beginning of 2008, Neo-Nazis are responsible for the deaths of 49 people and for injuring at least 80 others in Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union, human rights groups reported.

Most of the injured victims hail from the republics of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The majority of the murders, however, have taken place in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Russian news agencies have furthermore reported that the number of skinheads in Russia has increased to about 70,000. — ynetnews.com

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