The head of the Opec oil cartel, Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, died shortly before the end of his tenure at the age of 63 in his native Nigeria. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna for the German Press Agency on Wednesday.

Barkindo had headed the oil cartel’s secretariat since 2016 and was set to hand over the post of director-general to Kuwait’s Haitham Al-Ghais in early August. Before he became head of Opec, Barkindo worked for the state-owned Nigerian oil company NNPC for many years. He was the company’s CEO from 2009 to 2010.

Current NNPC boss Mele Kyari previously reported on his predecessor’s death on Twitter. Accordingly, Barkindo died late Tuesday evening. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari received the outgoing Opec boss on Tuesday in the capital Abuja. Buhari praised Barkindo for, among other things, building the alliance between Opec and cooperation partners under the leadership of Russia. The grouping known as Opec has been influencing supply and prices in the global oil market for several years through production agreements.

Christian Olearius, co-owner of the Warburg Bank, has been charged with serious tax evasion, among other things. He was one of the protagonists in the Hamburg scandal about cum-ex deals. At the time, the mayor of Hamburg probably tried to help him, too, Olaf Scholz.

Airport chaos in Germany: NRW, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein have started the summer holidays – and are finally ringing in the chaos at the airports. Some workers are even going on warning strikes. But not only German airports are sinking into chaos. All important information in the news ticker.

A state of emergency was declared in five regions of Italy. The reason is a persistent and extreme drought due to a rarely experienced lack of water. The drought is particularly extreme in the north of the country and around the Po River.