Scholz’s wife stepping down as minister in German state

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s wife is stepping down as the education minister of the region where the couple lives. The government of Brandenburg state, an eastern region that surrounds Berlin, said on Monday that Britta Ernst is resigning from her post, but didn’t give any reason. The 62-year-old Ernst has been Brandenburg’s education minister since 2017. Like Scholz, she is a member of the center-left Social Democrats. Ernst was a member of the state legislature in her native Hamburg, where Scholz later served as mayor, from 1997 to 2011. She was the education minister of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein from 2014 until a center-left government in that region lost power in 2017.