A court has jailed two Kosovan doctors for harvesting kidneys and selling the organs to wealthy patients for up to €100,000 (£88,000).
Lutfi Dervishi,
a urologist, and Sokol Hajdini, an anaesthetist, performed surgery on kidney donors brought to Kosovo mainly from Turkey, Russia, Moldova and Kazakhstan.
Their kidneys were harvested and sold on to patients, mainly Israelis. The donors were paid just €15,000 each.
A neighborhood watch group is coming under heat again after one of their officials was charged with sexual assault of a minor, reports PIX 11 News.
Jacob Daskal, 59,
was arrested on Thursday and accused of raping a 16-year-old girl. The alleged abuse lasted over a span of five months.
Daskal is the leader of Shomrim’s Brooklyn South Safety Patrol group. The organization acts a liaison between the community and police department.
Daskal is being charged with third-degree rape, forcible touching, and acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17.
Ursula Haverbeck, 89,
had been due to report to prison to start a two-year sentence on May 2, but instead the authorities discovered she had vanished from her home in Vlotho, central Germany.
Roman Polanski
is suing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after being expelled from the organisation last week.
Former San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Mike Shumann
resigned from the KGO-TV sportscasting gig he has held for almost a quarter-century after allegedly stealing a jacket belonging to Golden State Warriors director of team security Ralph Walker, the Bay Area TV station announced over the weekend.
Greg Pittman,
an American history teacher at Stoneman Douglas, is under investigation by the Broward County School District for remarks he allegedly made in class comparing pro-Second Amendment student Kyle Kashuv to Adolph Hitler, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Friday.
In August, Idaho’s Lordship Church landed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual list of hate groups.
The label was decried by the church’s leaders, Pastor Warren Mark Campbell,
who denounced the SPLC as a “biased, liberal hate group” and said that their anti-Gay, Anti-Muslim, pro-gun, pro-homeschooling church was not that far outside mainstream Christianity. The subject was tackled by the local daily newspaper, The Statesman, which said the group seemed “less menacing” than other groups on the list and that while “most of Idaho’s hate groups proclaim racist or anti-Semitic views. Lordship Church is different.”
Mary Hassell,
a coroner who operated a “cab rank” system for burials, has been told by the High Court to drop her policy and release the bodies of Jews and Muslims first.
Marie van der Zyl,
president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said Ms Hassell must “consider her position”.
Judges said the “equality protocol” policy introduced by Mary Hassell, the senior coroner for inner north London, was “discriminatory” and “incapable of rational justification”.
The protocol said that “no death will be prioritised in any way over any other because of the religion of the deceased or family, either by the coroner’s officers or coroners.”
This meant cases were assessed and bodies released for burial by the coroner’s office in order of when they were received, taking no account of any religious requirements.
Ms Hassell introduced the policy at the end of October last year, prompting protests from Jewish and Muslim groups, whose beliefs require a funeral to take place as soon as possible after death.
She told the court that she was concerned about the “negative impact that prioritisation of one sector of the community above others has had upon the families of those other deceased”.
She also relied on guidance issued in 2014 by the Chief Coroner which said “the law does not allow the Coroner to give priority to any one person over another”.
But in a judgment released on Friday Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Whipple said her understanding of the law was “misguided” and the guidance was incorrect.
“What on its face looks like a general policy which applies to everyone equally may in fact have an unequal impact on a minority.
“In other words, to treat everyone in the same way is not necessarily to treat them equally.
“Uniformity is not the same thing as equality,” they said.
They ruled that the policy was unlawful and said she should introduce a new one.
Religious groups welcomed the ruling.
Rabbi Asher Gratt, speaking on behalf of the Adath Yisroel Burial Society, a charity which arranges burials for Orthodox Jewish people in north London, and which originally brought the case, said: “This legal victory will bring immense relief for grieving families to bury their loved ones with respect and dignity, preventing further unnecessary anguish at the darkest moment of their lives.”
Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said Ms Hassell must “consider her position”.
“She has previously said that she does not believe that using her discretion to order cases, which she needs to do to uphold the religious freedom of the diverse communities she is meant to serve, is ‘fair’.
“If she cannot carry out this basic function of her role, she must vacate her position.”
A statement issued by Ms Hassell’s office said that she would implement a new policy following a consultation process.
The Chief Coroner is also expected to issue new guidance reflecting the ruling.
“In future, instead of considering no family for prioritisation, the Senior Coroner will consider every family for prioritisation.
“In deciding the order of priority, she will take into account all relevant considerations, including the special needs of each individual family,” the statement said.
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