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 However, when he told the school principal that he intended to marry his male partner, his offer of employment was withdrawn.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."
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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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