DAILY NEWS IN ENGLISH
Indiaʼs top court decriminalizes adultery A colonial-era law that punished adultery with jail time was ruled unconstitutional on Thursday by Indiaʼs top court. The law was in place for more than a century and dictated that any man who slept with a married woman, without her husbandʼs permission, could go to prison for up to 5 years. "Thinking of adultery from a point of view of criminality is a retrograde step," the five-judge bench of the Supreme Court said in what was a unanimous decision. The law was challenged in front of the court on the grounds that it was arbitrary and discriminated women, as they could not file a complaint or be held liable under the archaic law. ʼMan is the seducerʼ Government lawyers had argued that overturning the law threatened the institution of marriage, and caused harm to children and families. But the 158-year-old law deprived women of dignity and individual choice and gave "license to the husband to use women as a chattel," the court retorted.
Students at German Catholic school protest for gay teacher Around 600 pupils protested Thursday against their schoolʼs decision not to hire a gay teacher at the Gymnasium Mariengarden, a private high school in the town of Borken in western Germany. The students assembled to form a rainbow out of colored balloons alongside a banner that read, "Mariengarden is colorful." The man had completed his teacher training at the Catholic school and subsequently been offered a job. However, when he told the school principal that he intended to marry his male partner, his offer of employment was withdrawn. Read more: Opinion: Catholic Church must change Church officials responsible for the administration of the school said Wednesday that, "The plan to marry contravenes the churchʼs position on matrimony and family."
222/2018 • 28 SEPTEMBER, 2018
WikiLeaks names new editor-in-chief as Julian Assange sits in Ecuadorian Embassy Julian Assange has named Kristinn Hrafnsson as WikiLeaksʼ new editor-in-chief
Assange remains in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where for the last six months he has only been able to communicate with his lawyers.
Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche to quit in 2019 The chief executive of German carmaker Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, will resign from his post in May 2019, the Stuttgart-based company has announced. His contract would have expired in December of next year. Following more than 13 years at the helm of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche is expected to quit in May 2019, the company said Wednesday. He will be succeeded by the current head of development at the group, Ola Kaellenius, a 49-year-old Swede. Following a two-year absence, Zetsche is then expected to take over as head of the firmʼs supervisory board from Manfred Bischoff whose tenure ends in
2021. The news about Zetscheʼs resignation roughly half a year before his contract would have expired comes as the car and truck makeris undergoing a period of rapid change and restructuring. Daimler and the wider German car industry is experiencing a delicate period as it suffers the fallout from the dieselgate emissions cheating scandal. European carmakers must adapt to new, tougher emissions rules, while bans on older diesel vehicles are looming in many German cities. Daimler has had to recall some 774,000 vehicles this year to undo illegal defeat devices designed to conceal high levels of harmful emissions from regulatorsʼ tests.
ʼBalloonʼ depicts miraculous escape from the GDR n 1979, the Iron Curtain was virtually impenetrable. Rarely did anyone from East Germany manage to flee west. But a new film by Michael Bully Herbig — actor and director of German blockbuster spoof comedies including Manituʼs Shoe and Dreamship Surprise: Period 1 — tells the true story of two East German families who made a spectacular and risky escape attempt a decade before the Berlin War fell. On September 16, 1979, the Strelzyk and the Wetzel families
from the southeastern state of Thuringia flew to freedom in homemade hot air balloons: four adults and four children wedged in a basket measuring two square meters, and towering 30 meters above them the balloon made of 1,245 square meters of material. For half-an-hour at night, the gondola carried the families to their destination in West Germanyʼs Bavaria, 18 kilometers from their starting point in communist East Germany.
Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Ford testifies before Senate hearing Christine Blasey Ford fought back tears on Thursday as she told a Senate committee about an alleged sexual assault by President Donald TrumpʼsSupreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were both teenagers in the 1980s. Ford said Kavanaugh locked her in a bedroom during a social gathering and pinned her to the bed. "Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He was having a hard time because he was inebriated… I believed he was going to rape me." The 51-year-old said she was "terrified," but wanted to share her experience "because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school." The highstakes hearing coulddetermine Kavanaughʼs chancesof securing the lifetime post on the countryʼs top court. Kavanaugh, who was to appear separately, was expected to tell senators he did not commit any of the crimes leveled against him.
Slovakia police arrest suspects in journalist Jan Kuciakʼs killing Daniel Lipsic, a lawyer representing the families ofJan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova, said suspects were arrested early on Thursday, with local media reporting one or more arrests. Slovak police said on its Facebook page it had detained "persons suspected of violent crime and was carrying out home searches," but did not say in which case. Prime Minister Peter Pellegriniwrote on Facebook that: "Police have arrested the suspects in the murder of two innocent young people," adding that the ongoing investigation was "a priority" for his government.
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222/2018 • 28 September, 2018
Turkeyʼs economic woes power Balkan reboot
US Fed hikes interest rates for a third time this year
Turkey has long considered theWestern Balkanspart of its sphere of influence. The Ottoman Empire encompassed Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo up to 1918. A century on from theOttomansʼ demise, Turkey is again looking covetously at the region. Turkeyʼs share in Serbiaʼs foreign trade is only about 3.5 percent, but it has crept almost without notice into Serbiaʼs top 10 trading partners and Kosovoʼs top three. Turkish construction companies, for example, are building and will operate 20 power plants in Serbia. Emerging TurkishSerbian economic relations are indeed likely to be focused on energy, the showpiece being theTurk Stream gas pipeline led by Russian energy giant Gazprom . The Western Balkans makes up only a fraction of Turkeyʼs foreign trade, compared with trade with the European Union of around €145 billion ($165 billion). But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently spoke of increasing Turkish investments in Serbia to $5 billion in the longer term, from around €1.7 billion in 2017.
The American central bank has raised the benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point, but showed no indication it would be more aggressive in monetary tightening. It also left its outlook for the coming years unchanged.
Tiger Woods to face Francesco Molinari in opening fourballs Americans Tiger Woods and Patrick Reed will face Europeʼs Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood in Fridayʼs opening fourballs at the Ryder Cup in France. US Open and and US PGA Champion Brooks Koepka and Tony Finau will play Justin Rose and Jon Rahm in the opening match. Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler face Rory McIlroy and Thorbjorn Olesen, while Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas play Paul Casey and Tyrrell Hatton. The US team is aiming to win on foreign soil for the first time in 25 years.
In a policy statement released on Wednesday, the US Fed rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said it would lift the benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range of 2.00 percent to 2.25 percent. Moreover, the central bank foresees another rate hike in December and three more next year, to be followed by another increase in 2020. That
would put the benchmark rate at 3.4 percent in two years — roughly half a percentage point above its estimated "neutral" rate of interest that neither stimulates nor restricts the economy. Read more: US growth revised up on investment and export spurt In its closely watched statement, the FOMC removed a longstanding phrase which described the Fedʼs rate stance as providing stimulus to the economy.
Bill Cosby sentenced to at least 3 years in prison The ex-comedian was handed a three to 10-year prison sentence for drugging and assaulting a woman in 2004. DisgracedUS comedian Bill Cosby, 81, was sentenced to at least three years in prison on Tuesday. He was also branded a "sexually violent predator" by a Pennsylvania judge for assaulting a woman at his Philadelphia mansion 14 years ago. "It is time for justice. Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come," Judge Steven OʼNeill said. The judge then quoted from victim Andrea Con-
standʼs statement to the court, saying that Cosby had taken her "beautiful, young spirit and crushed it." He then handed Cosby a prison sentence of three to 10 years, the first such celebrity sentencing of the #MeToo era. Cosby must also pay $25,000 in fines (€21,244), undergo regular therapy and register as a sex offender. The latter requires him to notify schools, law enforcement and Constand of any changes in address. Cosby was also denied bail by the judge, meaning he would head immediately to prison after leaving the court house.
World Press Photo exhibition now open in Budapest A heartwarming hug, exploited sex workers and all of the chaos and calamity caused by an increasing terrorist attacks and conflict. The annual World Press Photo travelling exhibition once again portrays milestones from the past year through the best works of photojournalism. The exhibition is on view until October 23rd at the Hungarian National Museum. If you just visit one show in Budapest this autumn, it should be this one.
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German photography trade fair transforms itself into an imaging marketplace "Photokina isnʼt what it used to be," some visitors tell the organizers of the biennial photography trade fair in the western German city of Cologne, which opened again on Wednesday. But Katharina Hamma, Managing Director of the Kölnmesse exhibition hall, told DW that the cynical comment was actually positive proof that the long-established event is evolving, The photography event, which was first held in 1950, has long since become a marketplace for all kinds of imaging technology, and its slogan, "Imaging unlimited," sums up its latest strategy. For many years, Photokina suffered from a decline in exhibitors as the whole photography sector dwindled. A huge effort went into attracting interest from related sectors to expand the trade fairʼs appeal. This year, for the first time, Chinese telecommunications and smartphone group Huawei and the German headphone and audio specialist Sennheiser have their own booths.
Watergate alum: Firing Rod Rosenstein would be criminal It is hard to say what is exactly going on here. One part of me thinks, this whole thing about Rod Rosenstein was just a setup to try and deflect attention away from the Kavanaugh hearings right now, which is what Trumpʼs normal pattern is: to try to do something to get peopleʼs attention in a different direction. So, I am not sure how serious he is about this and whether this was just a deflection from Kavanaugh or whether he really is serious about getting rid of Rosenstein. Part of me believes that this thing is all a setup by Trump to begin with. The notion that Rosenstein was seriously talking about the 25th Amendment as to Trump is kind of ridiculous. The 25th Amendment is really kind of designed for the Woodrow Wilson situation, where he was basically non compos mentis and his wife was acting as president and he just had no ability to act as president. The whole process of removing somebody with the 25th Amendment is extremely complex.