Shorts: World

Report: Hate crimes up in France

paris (jta) | Attacks on French Jews and Muslims and their institutions doubled last year, according to a new report.

There were 1,565 recorded threats and violent attacks in 2004, up from 833 a year earlier, according to the National Consultative Commission of Human Rights' annual report.

The number of attacks was the highest in at least a decade. There were 970 anti-Semitic acts in 2004, compared to 601 in 2003, the report said. Most of the attackers were from an "Arab Muslim background," the Liberation newspaper reported. The report also pointed out that the number of attacks decreased in the last few months of 2004.




WWII pope's path to beatification proceeding

vatican city (ap) | The path to possible beatification of World War II-era Pope Pius XII, accused by some of not doing enough to prevent the Holocaust, is proceeding as planned, the head of the Vatican's office in charge of sainthoods said last week.

Pius' dealings with Jews is a volatile issue. Some historians and Jewish thinkers say the wartime pope was a secret anti-Semite who failed to speak out against the Holocaust. Some Jewish groups have opposed efforts to have Pius beatified, which is the last formal step before possible sainthood.

A commission of historians has been charged with studying the reams of material collected on the wartime pope, but no date has been set for their first meeting.




Anti-Semitic messages return to Serbia

belgrade (ap) | In a sign of reviving nationalism and anti-Semitism, hate messages against Serbia's Jews, human rights groups and a leading pro-Western broadcaster appeared in Belgrade this week.

Serbia's pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, called for an urgent investigation and called the messages a "call for a lynching ... which we believed had disappeared from our political scene."

The anti-Semitic messages were written at the entrance to Belgrade's Jewish cemetery and in Jewish Street in the old part of the capital.

The appearance of nationalist symbols and messages was reminiscent of the rule of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, whose nationalist policies led to four wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.




Annan calls for reform

new york (jta) | Kofi Annan's recommendations for U.N. reform urge a definition of terrorism that would reject attacks in the name of "national resistance."

The secretary-general released his report last week, based on a recent report on reform by a high-level panel, and as a five-year update on the Millennium Declaration in which world leaders committed to build a safer world.

Among the proposals, Annan repeated a call he made earlier this month asking states to endorse a counterterrorism convention that defines terrorism as any action "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act."

Arab and Muslim states have fought to avoid criticism of attacks on civilians in the name of "national liberation" struggles, an implicit endorsement of Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israelis.