A former President of Germany, Horst Koehler, is dead.
Naija News reports that Koehler, who served as head of state from 2004 to 2010, died on Saturday at the age of 81 after a brief illness.
The German presidency, in a terse statement, said, “Koehler passed away early this morning in Berlin after a short, serious illness surrounded by his family.”
Horst Köhler was born on February 22, 1943, in Skierbieszów, which was then part of Nazi-occupied Poland.
His family was of German descent and later resettled in Leipzig, East Germany, before fleeing to West Germany in 1953.
The ex-president grew up in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg.
He studied economics and political science at the University of Tübingen, earning a doctorate in economics in 1977.
Before Koehler’s tenure as German president, he held several prominent international positions, including serving as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund from 2000 to 2004.
Köhler resigned as Germany’s president in 2010 following controversy over his remarks about Germany’s military engagements.
In other news, the Speaker of the Ghanaian Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has handed down a two-week suspension to four lawmakers after a violent altercation broke out during a ministerial vetting session.
Naija News gathered that the disruption occurred Thursday evening when the ministerial vetting committee members, tasked with screening nominees for the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), clashed during the process.
The conflict escalated to the point where furniture in the parliamentary chamber was destroyed.
The committee, consisting of representatives from various political parties, was responsible for reviewing the qualifications of ministerial nominees.
However, tensions flared when NDC lawmakers accused their New Patriotic Party (NPP) counterparts of deliberately obstructing the proceedings by asking unnecessarily lengthy questions.
A prime example was Samuel Nartey George, NDC’s nominee for communications minister, who endured more than five hours of questioning.
This lengthy interrogation triggered anger from NDC members, who felt it was part of a strategy to delay the process for political gain.