Silvio Berlusconi the end of April 2009, Berlusconi's wife Veronica Lario, who would divorce him several years later, wrote an open letter expressing her anger at Berlusconi's choice of young, attractive female candidates—some with little or no political experience—to represent the party in the 2009 European Parliament elections. Berlusconi demanded a public apology, claiming that for the third time his wife had "done this to me in the middle of an election campaign", and stated that there was little prospect of his marriage continuing. On 3 May, Lario announced she was filing for divorce. She claimed that Berlusconi had not attended his
Death and funeral of Helmut Kohl and was honoured with an unprecedented European Act of State in his honour in Strasbourg, France, attended by the leaders of the EU's nations and other current and former world leaders. Subsequently, a Catholic requiem mass was celebrated in the Speyer Cathedral in Speyer, Germany, before Kohl was interred in the nearby Old Cemetery. Helmut Kohl was survived by his two sons Walter Kohl and Peter Kohl, and by his grandchildren Johannes and Leyla Kohl. No member of the Kohl family—Kohl's children and grandchildren—participated in any of the ceremonies, owing to a feud with Kohl's controversial new wife Maike Kohl-Richter,