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WELLINGTON: Auckland University of Technology says it will stand by Anthony Resnick, a health lecturer who abruptly resigned and left the country in the wake of the espionage scandal that has strained relations between Israel and New Zealand -- at least till any evidence of wrongdoing is presented. Resnick, 35, a prominent member of the local Jewish community and a native New Zealander, took an indefinite leave in late March, saying he had to attend to pressing family business abroad. In early June he sent the school an e-mail that cited medical reasons for his absence and announced his resignation. He is now believed to be in Israel. But in late July, several Kiwi news outlets named Resnick as the previously unidentified, Auckland-based suspect authorities have been seeking to interview in connection with the scandal involving Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman, two Israelis arrested in Auckland and sentenced to six months in jail for immigration fraud after they tried to obtain a bogus New Zealand passport. The government accuses the pair of being part of a Mossad plot.

PARIS: France�s CSA broadcasting regulation authority has ordered the private Eutelsat satellite company to cease transmitting programs from the Lebanese Hizballah movement�s Al-Manar television channel to viewers in France, after Jewish groups protested their anti-Semitic content. The CSA said it acted following the advice of a recently created government committee to fight racism and anti-Semitism, which was particularly shocked by the "Al-Shatat" (The Diaspora) series, which purports to tell the story of Zionism with sometimes blood-curdling scenes reminiscent of Nazi propaganda. The series was brought to the government�s attention by CRIF, the roof body for French Jewish groups. A Hizballah spokesman in Beirut said the decision was taken "under political pressure."

WEIMAR: Bauhaus Design University students here are designing souvenirs and memorabilia for visitors to Buchenwald to take home with them. The joint project of the Buchenwald Memorial Association, which runs the former Nazi death camp site, and the school will also raise money for the camp�s memorial center. Among the gift ideas are notebooks with photos of victims before they arrived at the camp, and flower pots with seeds taken from plants around Buchenwald. Students had first participated in a 12-week seminar and a three-day tour around the camp. Creations should be in the museum shop by next year, in time for the 60th anniversary of the camp�s liberation. Jarek Mansfeld from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, on the other hand, said he would never entertain such a project. "Visitors take with them memories or perhaps a photo. We don�t have any pencils with �Auschwitz� printed on them, and we�ll never have any." Survivor groups have so far refused to comment.

VERDUN: French police have arrested two skinheads for daubing swastikas last April on the main memorial to French Jewish war dead situated at the site of the 1916 Battle of Verdun, an incident that caused a major outcry in France. The two have confessed and face five-year prison sentences. They said they acted to imitate neo-Nazi or pagan-adoring groups that have desecrated 300 Jewish, Muslim and Christian graves in Alsace since April. In the latest such incident, some 30 Jewish tombstones were daubed with swastikas and "666," at Saverne on July 27.

PERTH: And in West Australia, police have arrested five men over an anti-Semitic graffiti attack on a synagogue and kosher food store on July 17, described by Jewish communal leaders as the worst such attack in living memory. The arrested are believed to be linked to a white supremacist gang that also vandalized a Chinese restaurant and issued threats against the West Australian attorney general and the head of the local ethnic community council. Two other gang members are being sought by police.

BERLIN: A proposed 30 million-euro cut in the budget of Berlin Technical University could threaten the Berlin Center for Anti-Semitic Research, which says it might have to eliminate one of its two teaching posts and slow research. The center�s director, Prof. Wolfgang Benz, protested the cuts, stressing the need to examine the increased anti-Semitism in Islamic communities, as well as anti-Semitic tones in critical views of Israel. Benz added that very little was known about the causes of anti-Semitism among young people. The center recently played a role in an EU-sponsored study on hostility toward Jews in Europe, which highlighted anti-Semitism among Muslims.