shorts: world

Man jumps off cliff

to escape kidnappers

buenos aries (jta) | A Briton kidnapped in Colombia along with four Israelis, a Spaniard and a German escaped by jumping off a cliff. Matthew Scott, 19, told reporters Wednesday he made his daring escape to get away from his captors near the remote "Lost City" jungle.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe blamed Cuban-inspired rebels for the Sept. 12 kidnapping of the eight trekkers, an act for which no group has yet claimed responsibility.

The fate of the captive Israelis remains unknown.

Vegetarians fight

kosher slaughter

london (jta) | A British vegetarian group is planning to launch a campaign on Yom Kippur against kosher slaughter.

Vegetarians International Voice for Animals is resuming an effort begun several years ago because the semiofficial British Farm Animal Welfare Council recommended this summer that all animals in the country be stunned before slaughter.

But the group said it had not intended to offend the Jewish community by launching the drive on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, when observant Jews fast.

Jewish authorities have ruled unanimously that stunning an animal before killing it renders its meat not kosher, said Rabbi Jeremy Conway, head of the kashrut division of London's rabbinical court.

Le Pen campaign

hits close to home

paris (jta) | Jews are protesting after far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen set up campaign headquarters in their Marseille apartment block.

According to a report in Friday's edition of the Jewish weekly Actualite Juive, neighborhood families, which include the brother of France's chief rabbi, were taken by surprise when Le Pen chose their block as the headquarters for his campaign for the presidency of the Provence-Alpes Cote d'Azur region in next March's regional elections.

The families are protesting the move to their housing association. "We just came back from holiday to be faced with a fait accompli," Evelyn Sitruk, the chief rabbi's sister-in-law, told the paper.

"One morning, we discovered the little blue, white and red flame, which is the National Front symbol, on one of the letter boxes."