IKEA will open its third store in Israel on March 11, when it opens the doors to its Kiryat Ata branch near Haifa. The company paid $110 million to build the store, which will have 51 showrooms and three houses with designed rooms.

“IKEA’s entry to the north is the implementation of another step in IKEA’s vision,” said IKEA Israel CEO Shuky Koblenz. “During the store’s construction, we saw rapid development in the Ata Junction commercial district, and the store is already a cornerstone for developers and businesspeople in the north.

“As we saw in Netanya and Rishon LeTzion, we believe that the new store will be a center of attraction for residents of the metropolitan area, will create opportunities for commercial and entertainment development, and jobs, and will even improve the quality of commerce in the area.”

IKEA is considering extending its operations in Israel and opening up a branch in Ramallah, in the Palestinian Authority, and in Be’er Sheva and Jerusalem, the  Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Acharonot reported.

Matthew Bronfman, who holds the IKEA franchise for Israel, reported said that “we’ll be happy to help establish the store” in Ramallah.

The planned stores for Be’er Sheva and Jerusalem would be consistent with the format of IKEA’s new format of opening “IKEA point” branches, which are one-tenth as large as the chain’s regular outlets.

IKEA is investigating how its online advertisement banner came to be placed on a Swedish anti-Semitic blog, a spokesperson for the furniture giant said. IKEA has two stores in Israel.

Aftonbladet found ads for several companies, including IKEA and Western Union, on a Swedish blog called the “Gothic team,” which features anti-Semitic and other racist texts. It recently featured an interview with a leader of a Swedish Nazi movement. In another article, Jewish-Swedish journalist Anita Goldman is described as “a super Jewess” who promotes “ideas that will benefit the Jewish elite clan’s own purposes and achievements” with “ethno-centric chauvinism that shines like the cold steel of a camp guard.”

“We have stopped all advertising for this package pending an investigation into what happened,” Sara Paulsson, a press officer for the Swedish home design and furniture giant told the local daily Aftonbladet on Saturday.

Paulsson said the company purchased “advertisement packages” from a third party, which provides placement. The ads for IKEA and the other companies have been removed from the blog.

A New York Daily News headline writer needs a quick course in kosher dietary laws after an overly cute headline tried to get across the message that moose lasagna is not kosher if pork is used.

As most Jews and many non-Jews know, Jewish law forbids eating milk products and meat products together. Even if the moose meat were slaughtered according to Jewish law, mixing it with a cheese lasagna is as kosher as a ham on cheese sandwich.

The offending non-kosher item was pork, which the Daily News reported was found in batch sample of moose lasagna served up in IKEA stores in Europe.

The Daily News began its headline blurb with “Kosher wanted?” and then followed it with the report of  the discovery of pork, which is a forbidden food not only for Jews but also for Muslims, whose European population is more than 45 million.

The newspaper explained that moose meat is common in Sweden home of IKEA, but is not usually used in lasagna.