Abbas under pressure
Palestinian leaders have called on President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw recognition of Israel and break off security cooperation, following the Trump administration’s decision to name Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Central Council declared yesterday it should no longer be bound by the 1993 Oslo peace accords and that its leaders would never recognise Israel as a Jewish state, in a statement released at the end of a two-day conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah. It said Palestinians would again seek full statehood recognition from the United Nations. Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their own future state, and have long appealed to the United States and other nations to resist Israel’s claim to the entire city.
Organ ring fugitive caught
The suspected kingpin of an organ trafficking ring has been arrested in Cyprus after a decade on the run. Moshe Harel, an Israeli citizen, is facing extradition to Kosovo. Harel and a medical team are alleged to have taken kidneys from poor donors from Turkey, central Asia and eastern Europe and transplanted them into rich recipients, mainly from Israel, at a clinic in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. The gang paid €15,000 for each kidney and sold them for €100,000. The clinic was raided in 2008, and Harel was detained briefly but went on the run after being released. Five people have already been convicted for their part in the operation.
Chopper hunch pays off
The father of a teenager who spent 30 hours trapped in a crashed car in New South Wales bush hired a helicopter to look for him. When Samuel Lethbridge, 17, failed to return to his home at Lake Macquarie on Sunday night, Tony Lethbridge suspected his son may have been in a car crash. The helicopter he hired on Monday morning was used to spot the car in bush about 20 kilometres south of the family home. Samuel had been in the smashed Hyundai for more than a day with multiple fractures. Tony Lethbridge said he thought his son was tired and may have driven off the road.