GERMANY: The country's highest court Thursday overturned a ruling that a Catholic-run hospital wrongly dismissed a senior doctor for remarrying.

The hospital's chief doctor divorced his first wife in 2008 then remarried.

The following year, the hospital dismissed him. However, a court nullified the dismissal.

But the Federal Constitutional Court said that the legal system "cannot override the church's conception of itself" so long as that didn't clash with the constitution.

SWEDEN: An appeals court upheld the detention order on Julian Assange Thursday, dismissing a challenge by the WikiLeaks founder, who is wanted by prosecutors in an investigation of alleged sex crimes.

Confirming a ruling by a lower court, the Svea appeals court said there was no reason to lift the detention order just because it could not be enforced at the moment.

Mr Assange has avoided extradition to Sweden by taking shelter in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

UNITED STATES: Members of the House ways and means and Senate finance committees introduced Bills on Wednesday to close a legal loophole that allowed former nazis to receive benefits payments after being forced to leave the US.

The Bills come in response to a press investigation that revealed millions of dollars in benefits had been paid to dozens of former nazis.

Separate Bills were introduced in the House and Senate last week.

EGYPT: Authorities arrested early Thursday a leading Muslim Brotherhood member who played a key role in negotiations between his now-banned group and the government.

The arrest of Mohammed Ali Bishr at his home in the Nile Delta was linked to a call for demonstrations.

But they were called by a hard-line Salafi group and not the Brotherhood.

GERMANY: Four human rights groups have released a tool that lets users check whether their computer has been infected with surveillance software.

Amnesty International said the Detekt tool was designed for rights activists and journalists but would be freely available to anybody who feared their computer was being used to monitor them.

Detekt can currently find eight pieces of spyware including FinSpy, which is sold to governments for criminal investigations.

PHILIPPINES: A court convicted nine people Thursday for graft over a 1996 nightclub fire that killed 162 people.

The Sandiganbayan anti-graft court convicted seven former city engineering officials and two operators of the Ozone disco, handing out sentences of up to 10 years.

The court also disqualified one ex-official from ever holding public office for approving the nightclub's building permit despite non-compliance with the building code.

EGYPT: A court acquitted a doctor on Thursday charged with committing female genital mutilation that led to a 13-year-old girl's death.

Lawyer Atef Aboul Einein said the court in Dakahliya had ruled that Raslan Fadl and the girl's father were not guilty.

Over 90 per cent of Egyptian women are estimated to have undergone the illegal procedure, which involves the cutting off of all or part of the clitoris and the labia.

ITALY: Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has added his voice to a chorus of outrage after Italy's highest court threw out a conviction against a Swiss businessman for some 3,000 asbestos-related deaths.

The Court of Cassation ruled late on Wednesday that the statute of limitations had run out in the environmental negligence case against Stephan Schmidheiny, a former executive in Swiss construction firm Eternit.Gera