Shorts: World

London mayor faces hearing

london (jta) | The mayor of London will have a disciplinary hearing for comparing a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard. The Adjudication Panel for England, which will conduct the hearing, could bar Ken Livingstone from office for up to five years, the Associated Press reported.

During an exchange earlier this year, the mayor asked Oliver Finegold of the London Evening Standard if he were a German war criminal, since the Daily Mail, the Standard's sister paper, supported the Nazis in the 1930s. When Finegold told Livingstone he was Jewish, Livingstone said, "Well you might be, but actually you are just a like a concentration camp guard."




Ghetto's liquidation marked

warsaw (jta) | Survivors and their families joined others in marking the 61st anniversary in Poland of the liquidation of the Lodz Ghetto.

Last week's ceremonies included the opening of a new Jewish center and a march through the city's streets. Some 230,000 Jews lived in the city before World War II.




France to honor Dreyfus

paris (jta) | France will issue a postage stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus. A Jewish captain in the French army, Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason in 1894 in a trial renowned for the anti-Semitism it exposed in France.

After serving five years on Devil's Island off the coast of South America, Dreyfus was pardoned in late 1899 by the president of France as a result of massive intervention in the media, and was permitted to return to Paris. The founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, cited the Dreyfus trial as a major motivation behind his support for a Jewish state.




Students stabbed in Kiev

kiev (jta) | Ukrainian skinheads critically wounded a Jewish youth. The teenager and a fellow yeshiva student were attacked by a racist mob overnight as they walked through a traffic underpass in Kiev, their community's leader, Rabbi Yaacov Zilberman, said. Mordechai Ben Avraham was hospitalized in critical condition.

Ukraine's Jews have complained to local authorities about an increasing number of anti-Semitic incidents. Ukrainian police said the attack was not motivated by anti-Semitism.