A Belgian court ruled this week that a gold processing factory located in the Chareidi neighborhood in the center of Antwerp must vacate the area within three years, B’Chadrei Chareidim reported. The ruling follows a protracted public and legal battle by Chareidi residents of the area and other interested parties against the factory due to fears of pollution following a disproportionately high rate of cancer in the community in recent years In June, the gold factory, Value Trading, applied for a 10-year extension on its license, prompting the campaign against it. Askanim published leaflets with maps marked with dots indicating the high number of residents living near the factory who have contracted cancer in recent years and even died.

A Polish diplomat charged with improving contacts with Jews worldwide has been fired after he criticized his own government’s approach to regulating Holocaust speech, the Foreign Ministry said Monday. Jaroslaw Nowak, the plenipotentiary for contacts with the Jewish diaspora described a Holocaust speech law passed by his country’s ruling party as “stupid,” in an interview last week with Jewish News, a weekly newspaper published in the U.K. Nowak also said Poland should pass a law on property restitution, a statement implying further criticism of the ruling authorities, who recently passed a law cutting off the chances for restitution or compensation for those who had properties seized by the communists. Among those affected are Holocaust survivors and their heirs.

In a first for a frum Jew in Switzerland, Jehuda Spielman is running in the upcoming elections for the municipal council in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, home to about 6,000 Jews. Speilman, only 26-years-old and an accountant by profession, grew up with 12 siblings in Zurich’s Wiedikon district. Now married and a father of a two-year-old, he still lives in the same district he hopes to represent. His campaign for office which he has called “Live and Let Live,” has garnered much attention from the press and Spielman has been running from interview to interview.

A 22-year-old white supremacist was sentenced Tuesday to life in federal prison for killing a woman and injuring three others when he burst into a Southern California synagogue in 2019, adding to a life sentence he received three months earlier in state court. John T. Earnest declined to speak in a courtroom full of victims, families and congregants. In state court, his attorney said he wanted to speak but a judge refused, saying he didn’t want to give a platform for his hate-filled speech. Earnest’s attorney, Ellis Johnston III, said his client acknowledged his actions were “inappropriate,” a statement that was greeted with skepticism by prosecutors. Peter Ko, a federal prosecutor, said Earnest’s expression of regret came shortly after the shooting in a phone call to someone else.

A staff member at a school in Washington D.C. was suspended on Friday after forcing third-grade children to reenact scenes from the Holocaust, including shooting victims and digging mass graves, The Washington Post reported on Sunday. The report said that a staff member at Wakins Elementary School instructed children in library class to “dig their classmates’ mass graves and simulate shooting the victims,” an email from the school’s principal, MScott Berkowitz, to the third-graders’ parents said. She also assigned roles to students, including casting a Jewish student as Adolf Hitler and telling her to feign suicide at the end of the skit. One parent said that her son was told to pretend to be on a train to the concentration camp and then feign dying in a gas chamber.

Thirteen years after a horrifying terror attack at the Beis Chabad in Mumbai during which six Jews were brutally murdered, telephone wiretaps of the terrorists have been revealed in which they are heard specifically planning the attack on the Chabad house, The Jewish Chronicle reported. According to the recordings, the terrorists specifically sought a Jewish site to attack as part of their plan to hit a number of different sectors in order to receive as much media attention as possible. Israeli filmmaker Oren Rosenfeld was informed by Indian government sources about the recordings while shooting a documentary about the Jewish community in Mumbai. “They’ve got recordings from the terrorists where they specifically mention the Chabad House as a target,” Rosenfeld told the JC.

The Jewish community in Buenos Aires is reeling following the discovery of the murder of a member of the community Shaul Chilo, 77, z’l, on Friday, B’Chadrei Chareidim reported. Chilo’s housekeeper and daughter found him lifeless in the bathroom of his home with his legs bound together and alerted the police. Following an initial police investigation, the police believe that he died of strangulation. Footage from the home’s security cameras shows thieves entering the home without breaking down the front door, instead seamlessly opening the door with a magnetic card. Chilo’s friends and acquaintances say he was a beloved member of the community. He was the father-in-law of Yehoshua Ahurdai, the director of the local Chevra Kadisha.

Police are asking for the public’s help after releasing a video of a suspect in the killing of Canadian drug company billionaire Barry Sherman and his wife four years ago. Toronto Det. Sgt. Brandon Price said Tuesday the suspect spends “a very suspicious amount of time” in the immediate area of the Sherman home around the time the Sherman’s were murdered. Price provided the public with security camera footage of a man or woman walking down a sidewalk with a hat who seems to kick up his or her right boot as they takes each step. The video does not show the suspect’s face. Price estimated the person is 5-6 to 5 foot-9 tall. Police are asking for the public’s help to identify the suspect.

A Nobel laureate in literature, Jewish students and other prominent figures in Austria want the country’s new interior minister removed from office because of allegedly antisemitic comments he made during a regional election campaign more than a decade ago. Gerhard Karner, who became interior minister a week ago when predecessor Karl Nehammer became Austria’s new chancellor, said Monday that he regrets what he said and wouldn’t say it now, but he rejected allegations of antisemitism.

Two rulings from the US Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit last week support the efforts of Chabad to recover seforim and manuscripts stolen by the Soviet Union and the Nazis, Collive reported on Wednesday. The Russian government has continuously refused to return the Jewish items despite multiple court orders. The seforim and manuscripts belonged to the Friediker Rebbe who was forced to escape from Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution after he was condemned to death for spreading Yiddishkeit. During World War II, the Nazis seized the items and they were subsequently seized by the Soviet army after the Nazi defeat. The Soviets brought the stolen items to Moscow where they are holding them until today. Years ago, Chabad won a lawsuit in the U.S.