Jewish & World News

Poultry has gone off the menu for many Orthodox London Jews because 80 percent of the chickens that have been slaughtered for them were declared not kosher. “We apologize to the public for the shortage of chickens in the recent/current week/s,” according to an announcement dated March 7 by the Kashrut Committee of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations.

The British capital’s new Jewish community center buried a time capsule on Wednesday on the site of its purpose- built building to give the next generation a glimpse of how London Jews went about their lives in 2013. The time capsule was buried in the piazza floor at the state-of-the-art building – known as JW3, and located in Hampstead, northwest London – which is nearing completion and will be one of the largest Jewish community centers in Europe when it opens in September.

New York may have lost the summer Olympics bid to London for the just-ended event, but that didn’t translate to a dip in tourism for the Big Apple. The conventional wisdom is that the Olympics bring tons of tourists to the host city, but New York showed the world once again it can’t be beat. “New York is so powerful that it doesn’t need the Olympics to succeed,” NYU Urban Policy professor Mitchell Moss told WCBS 880′s Alex Silverman. “We continue to actually out-draw London without the games,” by more than 100,000 tourists a day, Moss said.

Most Britons believe the London Olympics have delivered good value for money, according to a poll published Saturday, as the hosts revel in Britain's best performance at the Games for more than a century. Some 55 percent of the British population think the Games are "well worth" the £9 billion ($14 billion, 11.5 billion euro) pricetag, cheering the nation up as it battles recession, according to the Guardian/ICM poll.

Sixteen gang members have received prison sentences ranging from 16 months to nine years for their role in Britain's riots a year ago. The riots lasted from Aug. 7-10, 2011. They were triggered by the police killing of a London gang member and swept several English cities including the capital.

London Mayor Boris Johnson got stuck midair on a zip line Wednesday during a celebration for 2012 Olympic Games. ITV, the British partner of NBC News, reported that Johnson had to be pulled the remainder of the way by people on the ground.

More than 20,000 people in various venues in London attended the British Zionist Federation’s “Minute for Munich” program that was promoted via social media. A short memorial service at the Israeli Embassy that was organized by the Zionist Federation was streamed live online Friday, according to the London Jewish Chronicle.

Complaining that the Olympic movement is still ignoring their pain, Israelis marked the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre on Sunday with a modest service in the atrium of a London apartment block. Prayers were read for the 11 murdered Israelis, wreaths were laid for them and a plaque unveiled about four miles (six kilometers) from the Olympic Stadium.

Olympic athletes, including some from Team USA, had a bad start to the London Games Monday after bus drivers taking them to the competitors’ village in east London got lost. Kerron Clement, US 400m hurdler and Beijing silver medallist, claimed he spent four hours on a bus after the driver got lost after collecting them from Heathrow airport.

President Shimon Peres on Tuesday cancelled his trip to London for the opening of the Olympic Games. The cancellation is not related to the International Olympic Committee's refusal to have a minute's silence in memory of the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The opening ceremony of the London Olympics will take place on a Friday evening. There are no hotels within walking distance of the stadium. Peres, who is a good walker, would not have mind walking the extra mile if there was a hotel at the end of it – but there isn't, aside from which it would place a most unenviable burden on his security detail.

The footage shows the man lost in his music on a Central Line train heading eastbound away from London. As the doors are about to close at Leytonstone, where the Central Line splits to either go towards Hainault of Epping, a smartly dressed man shoves him off the Tube as the doors are closing.

Shocked London Olympics workers fled after an excavator struck a Nazi bomb left over from World War II. Construction crews from the 2012 Games raced away Wednesday amid fears the relic could explode. The scare halted work to clear a site for four temporary indoor basketball courts in east London. It resumed four hours later after police were called and the 2.2-pound (one-kilogram) bomb was taken away.

Virgin Media has won the contract to provide wi-fi to the London Underground. The contract is only for ticket offices, escalators and platforms because it would have required major construction work to have added connectivity to the network's tunnels. From July 2012 all Tube passengers will initially be able to connect to the internet for free.

Jewish students at the London School of Economics and members of the university's Palestinian Society clashed during an Israel Apartheid Week protest. The Palestinian Society protesters created a mock checkpoint Monday outside a campus building, stopping students by asking for identification and reportedly harassing Jewish students. Counter-protesters, said to be members of the Students' Union Jewish Society, threw water balloons at the Palestinian Society protesters, spurring a fight that injured at least one student, the Jewish Chronicle reported. University security had to separate the protesters.

An Italian fugitive was caught after years on the run when he posted a photo on Facebook showing himself posing with a wax model of US President Barack Obama, the ANSA news agency reported. Michele Grasso, a 27 year old from Sicily, disappeared in 2008 to escape a conviction for drug dealing. He ended up in London, where he found work in an Italian restaurant.

Press Release On Monday, February 13, orthodox Jews will gather outside the Israeli Embassy in London to express outrage at the Zionist government's treatment of the orthodox Jewish people in Israel. At the behest of Israeli government officials, the Israeli Police have been using harassment tactics, violence, and brutality against orthodox Jews across Israel.

Four men have pleaded guilty to a plot to attack the London Stock Exchange and target two rabbis at their homes. The men appeared at Woolwich Crown Court with five other British Muslims and pleaded guilty to the plan to plant an improvised explosive device in the Exchange's toilets.

Israel - It happened in London last December: Police officers raided a hotel in the British capital to arrest Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. Luckily for her, she was not even in the city. The details of the dramatic affair, which could have sparked a wide-scale diplomatic incident and possibly put Israel and Britain's relations in danger, were brought to the attention of the Yedioth Ahronoth daily on Sunday.

Ask a life-long Brooklynite if he has an accent and you're likely to get this rapid-fire response: fuhgeddaboudit! Ask a typical European what that means, and you're likely to get a befuddled look and silence. That's why a London-based translation firm is looking for people to help translate Brooklynese.

Leaders of Hackney's orthodox Jewish community have attacked town hall bosses over plans to redevelop the largest school building in Stamford Hill into luxury homes.