Germany news: Berlin's orchestra eases dress code amid heat

Some of the biggest headlines coming out of Germany on Friday included:

The budget committee in Germany's Bundestag parliament has signed off on government plans to acquire a 40% stake in Franco-German tank maker KNDS , Defense Minister Boris Pistrorius said on Friday.

This enables Berlin to become an equal stakeholder in the company, alongside the French government, while the remaining 20% of shares will be sold to private investors in an IPO next month.

The company makes Leopard 2 tanks, Caesar howitzers and the Puma infantry fighting vehicle, among other products.

At present, France owns 50% of KNDS and the family behind German arms giant Krauss-Maffei Wegmann holds the remainder. France will be reducing its share to 40% while Germany buys out most of the Kraus-Maffei stake and one fifth of the company is privately sold.

The German governent's buyout is expected to be worth up to €7.2 billion (roughly $8.2 billion). Berlin says the move aims to secure joint control, strengthen oversight of strategic and security matters and prop up Europe's defense industrial base.

"The defense company KNDS is indispensable for the operational readiness of our land forces," Pistorius said in a statement.

A controversial sex education class assignment issued to 8th graders at a German school "clearly did not meet" the standards and goals of the subject, the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia's Education Ministry has said .

Responding this week to a question raised by the far-right opposition AfD, the ministry said that it had received three citizens' complaints about the class taught at an upper-tier Gymnasium secondary school in Kevelaer, near the border to the Netherlands in the far west of Germany.

"The subject of 'sexuality' requires particularly sensitive handling in all educational contexts," the ministry said, meaning that teaching materials for sex education classes must be selected with care and be age appropriate.

The first reports of the assignment, in which students were tasked with coming up with a concept for a "new brothel for everyone," surfaced late last month.

Regional public broadcaster WDR , among others, reported that the children were given a building and floor plan for an existing brothel, which they were told they could not alter, and were charged with coming up with a modern and inclusive "pleasure house dedicated to the joys of sex."

Selling sex is legal in Germany and recognized as a business and profession, provided those doing so are aged 18 or over, formally register with the authorities, and are acting of their own free will, among other restrictions.

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An Istanbul court has handed long jail sentences to defendants facing trial over the case of a German family that died of poisoning while vacationing in Turkey.

The Turkish-German Böcek family consisted of father Servet, mother Cigdem, their 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.

They were on vacation in Istanbul when they fell violently ill, later dying in a local hospital.

Six people, including the owner of the hotel and a pest control company, were on trial for causing death through negligence after an autopsy revealed the four had been poisoned by pesticide .

Prosecutors argued this is the result of an insect extermination being improperly carried out on the first floor of the hotel.

The Caglayan Court found on Friday four of the six defendants guilty.

The hotel owner was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison, with the owner of the pest control company and his son each receiving an 18-year prison sentence.

An employee at the company was slammed with a 12-year-and-two-months prison sentence.

The judge cited "deliberate manslaughter" as the grounds for the verdict.

Speaking to the German DPA news agency, the brother of the deceased father said he considered the 18-year sentence a "fair" one.

German authorities on Friday arrested two suspected supporters of the right-wing extremist group Last Wave of Defense ("Letzte Verteidigungswelle").

The two German nationals are accused of attempted murder, attempted arson resulting in death and attempted aggravated arson as accomplices, according to the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe.

They were arrested in Thuringia and currently remain in pre-trial detention.

The case relates to an attempted arson attack on an asylum seekers' accommodation center in the town of Schmölln last year.

"To this end, the group smashed a window and attempted to fire pyrotechnics, ignited using a fireworks battery, into the interior of the building," the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office stated.

A rolling research study measuring the overall size of the German jobs market has entered negative territroy for the first time since the restrictions of the COVID pandemic , data released on Friday showed.

The IAB labor market barometer is made up of two measurements, one monitoring unemployment numbers or the number of jobseekers, and the other monitoring the overall number of people in work in the country.

For the first time since COVID, both indicators dipped below the break-even mark of 100 points.

The unemployment barometer, which has vascillated between positive and negative levels in recent years, actually recovered slightly, rising to 99.3 points.

But for the first time in years, the measurement of overall job numbers sank to 99.9, dipping into negative territory.

These combined tallies put the overal barometer at 99.6 points.

"Demographic decline has finally reached the labor market: Employment is falling, whilst the rise in unemployment is coming to an end," researcher Enzo Weber said.

This means that more people are retiring or otherwise leaving the labor market than are entering it as the population ages, so it is getting harder to fill vacant jobs and overall employment numbers are falling.

The European Union is introducing a rule requiring the monitoring and verification of methane emissions for fuel deliveries to the bloc. The new regulations are due to go into effect next year, and the continent's biggest gas market, Germany, is unhappy.

"As it stands, the methane regulation would prevent not only gas imports into ​Germany, LNG, but also petroleum products from being imported from 2027 onward," German ​Economy Minister Katherina ‌Reiche said ahead of an EU meeting of ministers on Friday.

The blocs' ministers will discuss an initiative put by a dozen EU governments, including Italy, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, to delay the rules coming into effect by three years.