World news-roundup: Bones unearthed at former death camp

Country: Italy

Carbon dating has shown that an Italian town’s Torah scroll is likely to be the oldest still is use by any Jewish community anywhere in the world. Scientists said the scroll in Biella, which has just been restored, dates back to around 1250. It remains wholly intact with no parchment substitutes.

Country: Germany

The president of the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group has been arrested for possessing drugs, reportedly crystal meth. Volker Beck, 55, was detained after addressing 150 members of the Rabbinical Conference of Europe. Beck, a spokesman on religion, supports a ‘liberal drugs policy’.

Country: France

A former Charlie Hebdo cartoonist is suing a famous French-Jewish philosopher who called him ‘anti-Semitic’ for his caricatures. Bernard-Henri Levy last month took aim at Maurice Sinet, who in 2008 parodied the president’s son marrying a rich Jewish woman and his pending conversion to Judaism.

Country: Poland

Construction workers have unearthed bones at the site of a former Nazi concentration camp near Krakow, during repairs to a gas pipeline. The property, in Plaszow, is adjacent to the former funeral home of a Jewish cemetery on which the camp was built. It is on a list of historic monuments.

Country: United States

‘Late Show’ host Stephen Colbert brought the house down last week, when he sang songs from Fiddler on the Roof with the show’s Broadway cast. Colbert, who took over from David Letterman in 2014, sang ‘Matchmaker, Matchmaker’ and ‘Tradition’ in Tuesday night’s opening segment.

Country: India

The emissaries at Chabad House in Mumbai have named their newborn son after a rabbi killed in the Islamist attacks on the city in 2008. Rabbi Yisroel Kozlovsky and his wife Chaya, who arrived in 2012, named their boy Gabi after Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, one of 166 people who were murdered.