The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday. March 25, 1993-Page 11
World
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CJC supports MDA
VANCOUVER — For the second time in three months, Canadian Jewish Congress officials have met with Canadian Red Cross Society leaders to urge full recognition Of the Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's Red Shield of David, within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
"This is an important issue for us. It is hard lb accept that the MDA .satisfies all criteria for official status but one. It cannot accept a cross or a crescent as its emblem," stated Congress president Irving Abella.
Canadian Red Cross Society (CRCS) president Jon Tur-pin .said his organization will push for the creation of a new secular emblem at an international Red Cross/Red Crescent gaiherihg this October.
\yhile Congress is pleased that the CRCS understands the importance of this issue, "nonetheless, we would prefer to have the Canadian Red Cross support immediate full recognition of the MDA. as its American counterpart has done." .said Abella.
Skull not Hitler's
PARIS (JTA) — French coroners have reportedly proved that a corpse which Soviet authorities said in 1945 was that Of Adolf Hitler was in fact that of .someone else.
The four forensic specialists, who wrote up this finding in the journal Semaine en Hopitaux (/y<:w/7/7rt/ Week). base their theory on careful examination of dcx'uments prepared by Soviet arniy coroners who performed the autopsy on May 8, 1945.
The doctors, who Work at the Lille Institute for Social and Legal Medicine, write that the real b<xly of Hitler was in fact discovered by the Soviets'Mn the end of May ■■I945.""' ■■■
Germans arrest Arabs
BONN -r- Police in the southwestern German city of Saar-brucken have arrested two Arabs believed to be plotting a prison escape for convicted terrorists the Hamadei brothers.
Police said one of the two men arrested in February is being held in custody pending his possible expulsion from the country. He was carrying a forged passport from a South Ameiican country, police said. The other man is a Lebanese who legally resides in Germany;
Mohammed Hamadei is serving a life sentence for the 1985'hijacking of a TWA jet and the killing of a U.S. Navy diver, Robert Dean Stethem.
Abbas Hamadei was sentenced to 13 years for kidnapping two Germans in Lebanon in an effort to free his brother.
Palestinian American charged
TEL AVrV — A military court has forriially charged Mohammed Salah, a Palestinian American, with funneling money to the Islamic ftindamentalist organization Hamas.
Salah, who appeared before a court in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is'one of two Americans of Palestinian descent arrested in January for raising funds for Hamas.
The army charged Salah with "executive services for Hamas activists" aiKi said funds distributed by Salah were used to buy semi-automatic rifles, pistols and ammunition.
Salah, who was also personally accused of being a member of Hamas, was ordered held in custody pending the outcome of his trial.
Salah is one of four Palestinian Americans detained by Israel since January.
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Nazi files to he opened
BUENOS AIRES — The Argentine government ha.s signed an agreement to let Jewish organization.s have direct access to the .state's secret files on Nazi war criminals.
The move came after an outcry by Jewish groups and Nazi-hunters that one year after President Carlos Menem declared the files would be made available, they were still being denied information on Nazi war criminals who had lived in Argentina.
Foreign Minister Guido Di Telia signed the accord with Ruben Beraja, head of the DAIA. the umbrella group representing Argentina's Jewish community, and Edgar Bronfman, chair of the World Jewish Congress.
Youths confess to arson
BONN — Two teenage members of a neo-Nazi group have confessed to^ 1991 arson attack on a hostel for
asylum-seekers in the southern German town of Reilingen.
The October 1991 attack resulted in heavy damage but no injuries.
The perpetrators, ages 16 and 17. are members of the National Comrades Action Front. They told police they were motivated by hatred of foreigners.
This month prosecutors in Stuttgart charged five men with torching a refugee hostel in the town of Murrhardt.
In a bid to ensure severe prison terms for the five, the prosecution charged the men with attempted murder.
Inflation rate rises
TEL AVIV — Israel's cost of living rose by 1.2 percent during Februar\'.
The rise nearly duplicated January's 1.3 increa.se and prompted grim forecasts for the future.
Economists predicted that if the monthly index con-tinues to increase by similar amounts throughout the year and the current decline in the shekel-dollar exchange rate is not reversed, inflation in 1993 will return to a two-digit rate, possibly as high as 15 percent.
Nearly all of January's increase was related to the devaluation of the shekel compared to the dollar.
In 1992. the inflation rate was just over nine (percent. It was the first year in many that Israelexperienced only single-digit inflation.
Israel's teachers strike
TEL AVIV — A nationwide teachers strike clo.sed down the country's junior and senior high schools, junior colleges and teachers' seminaries last week, the latest step in a long-running battle by the teachers union to win pay . raises.
Education Minister Shulamit Aloni said she shares the teachers' disgust at delays in the Finance Ministery's review of the situation, but that she is poweriess to help since the Treasury controls the purse strings.
The pay dispute goes back several years, with teachers complaining that their salaries have eroded more than those of other government.employees.
Aloni said that however much she sympathizes with the teachers, she cannot agree to their disruption of the educational .system.
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Two terrorists get life
JERUSALEM — Two Hamas terrorists, members of the Ezzedin al-Kassem gang, were given 20 consecutive life sentences by a military court in Gaza.
They had been convictedof multiple murders of Israelis and Palestinians after being captured by the General Security Service.
Both defendants, residents of the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza, were also found guilty of trying to kill senior police officers;
The two defendants told the court they were proud of their deeds and acted in the name of the Palestinian people. They said they would continue to kill Jews and "collaborators" after being released from prison.
S.F. activist dies
SAN FRANCISCO — Jewish community leader. Democratic Party activist and hotelier MeWin Swig died of cancer here March 14. He was 75.
Swig was a past president of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation and .sat on the boards of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Brandeis University, and. at the'Ume of his death, nine other Jewish and civic organizations. He was also a vice-president of [he JeMish Telegraphic Agency. - Swig was chairman of Swig Weiler & Dinner Development Co.. a family i-eal estate company whose holdings included the Fairmont Hotel chain.
Space-trekking mezuzah
JERUSALEM — A mezuzah that traveled seven million miles around the earth in the pocket of Jewish astronaut Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman will be affixed on the doorpost of Jerusalem's Bloomfield Science Museum.
The Brooklyn-bom NASA astronaut was unable to attend the museum opening last July because of preparations for his flight on the Atlantic shuttle mission soon after, but his greetings were shown in a video film at the ceremony.
Hoffman had wanted to be an astronaut since childhood. He studied astronomy at Harvard and realized his dream when he was accepted intoJhe NASA program in 1978 after answering a want ad for astronauts.
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