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 Death and funeral of Helmut Kohl Helmut Kohl, the former Chancellor of Germany, died at 9:15 a.m. on Friday, 16 June 2017 in the Oggersheim district of Ludwigshafen, his home town, aged 87. Kohl is widely regarded as the "father of the German reunification" and as a principal architect of the Maastricht Treaty which established the European Union (EU) and the euro currency, and became the second person to be named an Honorary Citizen of Europe in 1998. Following his death, he was lauded by world leaders as "the greatest European leader of the second half of the 20th century"