World Report

PARIS (JTA) -- A state prosecutor urged a French court on Monday to appoint independent computer experts to test the assertion of Yahoo! that it is technically impossible to block access by Internet users in France to Web sites selling Nazi paraphernalia.

In May, a court ordered the Internet portal to prevent French Web surfers from taking part in any auctions on its Web site that deal in Nazi items, as French law prohibits the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

Meanwhile, Germany has given up trying to bar its citizens from accessing foreign-based neo-Nazi sites on the Internet. Although it has some of the world's toughest laws banning hate speech, the nation has decided that it is unrealistic to try to shield Germans from foreign Web sites.

Mandela-style rabbi retiring in S. Africa

JOHANNESBURG (JTA) -- An American-born Lubavitch rabbi known for his anti-apartheid activism is retiring from his South African pulpit this Rosh Hashanah after 35 years.

In addition to his vocal opposition to South Africa's racist regime, Norman Bernhard established the first religious Jewish primary school in sub-Saharan Africa on the premises of his synagogue and expanded his shul based on a U.S.-style community center.

Aussie agents block suspected terrorists

SYDNEY (JTA) -- Australia deported five people linked to terrorist organizations in advance of September's Olympic Games.

Two were linked to an Algerian Islamic group with ties to terrorist financier Osama Bin Laden. Another was connected to an unnamed Mideast terrorist group.

Word of the deportations came after government officials refuted reports that agreements have been made with the United States or Israel to allow private security guards to carry guns to protect athletes at the games.

Jews in Russia lose ownership of shul

MOSCOW (JTA) -- A court in the former Soviet republic of Georgia ruled against the local Jewish community in a long-running dispute over ownership of a synagogue in the capital of Tbilisi.

The ruling reversed earlier court decisions returning the Abesadze Street Synagogue to the Jewish community, sparking a wave of anti-Semitic rhetoric in the local media. The chief rabbi of Georgia said the community plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Similar incidents have catalyzed the Russian Jewish Congress to launch a campaign to obtain Jewish communal property confiscated during the Soviet era. Observers in Moscow link the decision with the recent government actions against the Congress' president, tycoon Vladimir Goussinsky, although Berel Lazar, the head of the Russian Federation of Jewish Communities refutes any state-level anti-Semitism.

Lazar expects President Vladimir Putin will attend the upcoming opening of a new $20 million Jewish center.

Germans create fund to pay out $5 billion

BERLIN (JTA) -- Germany joined representatives from the United States, Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic and other nations at a historic signing ceremony creating a $5.2 billion fund for Holocaust-era slave and forced laborers.

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called the fund's creation "above all a gesture of moral responsibility" toward Nazi victims

Likewise, the Dutch government, banks, insurance companies and stock exchange agreed to pay some $325 million to pay for property and assets looted from Jews during World War II.