Recount Challenged

MINNEAPOLIS — Norm Coleman said he’ll challenge Al Franken’s U.S. Senate victory in court. The Minnesota senator, a Republican, said Jan. 7 that he’ll contest the recount, which ended with Franken winning by 225 votes. Coleman, who served one Senate term, rejected calls to end his challenge. Minnesota law prevents the certification of an election until all legal challenges are settled, so the seat could be vacant for weeks. The race between Franken, a former Saturday Night Live performer, and Coleman was the only 2008 Senate race with two Jewish candidates.

Djerba Trial Opens

PARIS — Two suspects accused of helping to bomb an 1,900-year-old Tunisian synagogue said they were innocent on the first day of their trial in Paris. A third suspect, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who is also an accused planner of the 9/11 terror attacks and an adviser to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, wasn’t present at the Jan. 5 trial. He’s being held at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The shul attack took place on the island of Djerba in April 2002. It killed 21 people and wounded 30 others.

Woman Nominated

WASHINGTON — U.S. president-elect Barack Obama has nominated a Jewish woman to serve as solicitor general. Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School, would be the first female to serve in the job if confirmed by the Senate.

Funding Considered

NEW YORK — The Orthodox Union is considering an emergency fund to help cash-strapped day schools and yeshivas. It floated the idea of collecting money to help needy schools at a Jan. 7 meeting of educators at its Manhattan headquarters to discuss the poor economy’s effect on schools.

Priest Not Sorry

WELLINGTON — The Catholic priest who vandalized a memorial to slain Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in New Zealand has rejected calls to apologize. Kiwi Friends of Israel on Jan. 7 called on Father Gerard Burns to apologize for what the newly formed pro-Israel group described as “tasteless vandalism.” The previous day, Father Burns splashed red paint mixed with drops of his own blood on the memorial in Wellington. But the priest, who led hundreds of protesters through the city, said it was a “symbolic action” and a “denunciation of the [Israeli] state, not an attack on the Jewish faith.”

Chagalls To Be Sold

LONDON —  Some 50 previously unseen drawings and paintings by Marc Chagall will be auctioned Jan. 29 by the Leo Baeck College in London. They’re painted on title pages of books about Chagall. The artist’s friends gave them to the college.