"France said Monday night that the number of anti-Semitic acts in the country soared last year, and decried the 'poison' of hate.
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that the total number of recorded anti-Semitic acts rose to 541 in 2018 from 311 in 2017.
He spoke in the Paris suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-du-Bois, where vandals chopped down trees planted in honor of a Jewish man tortured and killed in 2006.
The incident was the latest in a recent string of racist vandalism..."