More shtick than you can shake a stick at

• The Detroit Free Press reports that “A Detroit-area military engineer accused in 1997 of passing secrets to the Israelis was targeted because of his Orthodox Jewish faith, the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a report.”
• The ruling DRP party of the island nation of Maldives, located roughly 700km southwest of Sri Lanka, attacked the opposing MDP party for bringing “white foreigners and Jews” into the country.
• Speaking at Rabbi Marc Schneier’s Westhampton synagogue, New York governor David Paterson called himself “a son of Israel” and acknowledged having Jewish ancestors. The governor also characterized the Hampton Jewish community’s struggle to put up an eruv as a civil rights issue.
• New York’s JFK international airport got a kosher vending machine.
• Newsweek reports on kiddush clubs and alcohol abuse in the Orthodox community.
• Jewschool reports that an Israeli actor will play Saddam Hussein in an upcoming BBC drama.
• Eunice Pollack’s new “Encyclopedia of American Jewish History” examines the Jewish community’s role in shaping contemporary American culture.
• Scotland got its first kosher kilts – or tartans, to be precise.
• Sixty Six, a new British comedy about a bar mitzvah boy competing for attention with the World Cup finals, debuted over the weekend.
• The NY Daily News reports on a 44 year-old Brooklyn man who fought through his cerebral palsy in order to celebrate his bar mitzvah.
• The AP tells the story of a Shoah survivor and her gentile rescuer who have lived “like sisters” in Warsaw since 1942.
• Chabad won a lawsuit against a Florida town that tried to prevent it from leasing city property to open a Chabad house.
• The NY Times has a feature on The Jewish Channel, the relatively new on-demand Jewish cable network run by Elie Singer, son of former head of the World Jewish Congress Israel Singer.
• Jerusalemite shares an Al Jazeera video about Jerusalem cuisine, reluctantly admitting, “They did a great job.”
• Israeli authorities used explosives to demolish an apartment building in eastern Jerusalem built without a permit.
• The Forward reports on a growing trend among religious Zionists in Israel to use the fast of Tisha B’Av to mourn Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza strip.