Netanyahu ‘drops part of judicial overhaul’

JERUSALEM (Reuters) : Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has dropped a central element of a bitterly contested plan to roll back Supreme Court powers that has roiled Israel for months, though he was still pursuing changes to the way judges are selected.
In a filmed interview posted on the Wall Street Journal website on Thursday, Netanyahu said he was no longer seeking to grant parliament the authority to overturn Supreme Court rulings.
“I threw that out,” Netanyahu said of the highly disputed “override clause.”
He said that another part of his nationalist-religious government’s plan that would give the ruling coalition decisive sway in appointing judges will be changed but not scrapped.