“We are working to increase the flexibility of our businesses,” Merz told a Berlin press conference after lengthy talks between his centre-right CDU/CSU alliance and their coalition partners, the centre-left SPD.

“We are working to cut red tape. We are working to protect our welfare state, and we are working to ease the burden on employees and companies by lowering taxes,” said Merz, who had promised a “great leap forward” for German growth.

The package includes income tax cuts worth 10 billion euros ($11.4bn), to be financed by higher taxes on those earning more than 250,000 euros a year.

And changes to the pension system will eventually see the retirement age rise past 67.

“The highest earners in this country will take on a larger share” of the tax burden, said Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of the SPD.

“That is fair, so that our country can move forward.” The tax relief would mean an average family is about 600 euros better off per year, the parties said.

The coalition also agreed to reduce corporate reporting obligations that companies see as burdensome, and to scrap the right of employees to get a sick note by telephone with the aim of reducing worker absentee days in Germany.

It will also be possible to employ people on temporary contracts for up to four years.

Business organisations welcomed the plans, but trade union IG Metall said the labour reforms were “an attack on workers’ rights”.

‘Under pressure’

The coalition parties — in power since May last year in Europe’s biggest economy — had been struggling for months to agree on a series of thorny issues.

The government is also keen to show it can get to grips with the country’s problems and to diminish the appeal of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has been topping national opinion polls for months.

Key regional elections will be held in September in formerly communist eastern Germany, which could produce the first-ever AfD-led state government.

That would be unprecedented in post-war Germany and would underline Merz’s dire approval ratings.

“We are doing everything we can to overcome our country’s structural weakness when it comes to economic growth,” Merz said, admitting that “we are under pressure from many sides”.

Germany’s export-led industry was long the engine of its economic success, but has been hit hard by rising energy and labour costs. Tough Chinese competition and US President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff blitz have only heightened the pressure.

In a part of the package which was seen as aimed at China, the coalition said the government would press for tougher action at the EU level against “unfair competition” as well as stricter rules on foreign investment in “strategic sectors and critical infrastructure”.

Marion Muehlberger, senior economist at Deutsche Bank, said Thursday’s announcement represented “one of (Germany’s) biggest reform packages in decades” and showed the government’s “ability to agree on important structural reforms”.

She said that the package “should bode well for sentiment and dovetail with our forecast that growth will pick up in the second half of the year”.

Holger Schmieding from Berenberg cautioned that “none of the many reforms… will be ground-breaking on its own”.

“But on top of the major pension reform proposal, which the government had already endorsed ten days ago, the reform deal can make a real difference,” he said. “If implemented, Germany can become a better place to invest and create jobs again.” Marcel Fratzscher, president of the DIW Institute, offered a more downbeat assessment, telling the Rheinische Post daily that the reforms did not represent “a great success but rather a symbolic package”.

Security was on high alert ahead of the start of the funerary activities for Iran’s ruler for three decades, with dozens of personnel stationed at the main entrance to the Grand Mosalla, methodically stopping each car in the vicinity.

Passengers must present a special permit to enter the premises, which have yet to be opened to the public.

AFP obtained special access on Thursday, as a handful of curious bystanders watched the preparations from just outside the complex.

Within, the walls were draped in massive portraits of the late Khamenei, alongside black flags of mourning and red ones symbolising martyrdom and vengeance.

In one image, Khamenei — then the president — appears alongside young fighters in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

Hossein Moghadassi, one of those who has been working on the site for days, said, “We are planting flowers and watering the shrubs for the farewell ceremony of our martyred guide.”

He was clad in a hat and a scarf to cover his face as temperatures soared, with trucks transporting hundreds of boxes of drinking water in anticipation of the mercury surpassing 35º Celsius on Saturday, the first of six days of national mourning.

“People will come from all over Iran. There will be huge crowds,” Moghadassi added.

‘Vengeance’

Authorities expect between 15 and 20 million people to participate in the funeral in Tehran alone. The gates to the Grand Mosalla are set to open at 6am (0230 GMT) on Saturday.

Within the premises, dozens of ambulances and rescue vehicles have been parked in preparation for the funeral of the supreme leader, who was killed in US-Israeli strikes on February 28.

Black banners bear several of Khamenei’s most famous quotes, while an image of the late leader with a raised fist — a symbol of resistance against the West — was ubiquitous across the site.

Other banners read: “We are mourning, but we remain on our feet.”

The Mosalla’s main building, a mosque, will host the supreme leader’s remains over three days for “pilgrims”, according to the organisers.

On Monday, a procession will travel through the streets of the capital before arriving on Tuesday in the Shia holy city of Qom.

Khamenei will be buried on July 9 in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, another holy city and the late ruler’s birthplace.

Iran’s top negotiator in talks with the US, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on Thursday called for a massive turnout as a way to avenge Khamenei’s death.

“I invite all the Iranian people… to write a glorious page in the history of Islamic Iran through your presence,” said Ghalibaf, who is also Iran’s parliament speaker. “The nation’s call for vengeance must ring in the ears of the whole world.”

With the official death toll nearing 2,300 and huge numbers of people still missing, the rescue of security guard Hernan Gil after so long under the rubble was greeted as a miracle.

Gil was brought out on a stretcher after a painstaking operation to extract him from the collapsed seven-story building where he worked in Catia La Mar, a coastal area almost entirely razed to the ground in the June 24 catastrophe.

“This is truly a miracle,” Gil’s wife Gusbimar Gonzalez told AFP before his rescue.

“I’m completely amazed because it’s the first time I’ve seen so many countries come together like this to save a single person,” she said.

Rescue teams from seven countries — Venezuela, Chile, the United States, Portugal, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico — worked around the clock over the past three days to reach him.

It was a complex operation in which teams had to avoid provoking the further collapse of already damaged, nearby structures.

“It wasn’t easy to reach the exact spot where the victim was located,” Cristian Vera, the leader of the Chilean rescue team, told AFP.

However, while there have been a few astounding rescues — a three-year-old boy was found Tuesday six days after the quake — hope has faded of finding many more survivors.

No signs of life

The majority of collapsed buildings in the hardest-hit city of La Guaira, just north of Caracas, have been marked with the letter ‘D’ for ‘deceased’ – a sign they had been searched with no signs of life found.

“Time isn’t wasted in a place where there is no expectation of recovering people alive,” said Javier Rodes, the coordinator of a Spanish rescue team whose sniffer dog Nala searched in vain through the rubble for traces of life.

Venezuela’s National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said on Wednesday that the number of deaths had risen to 2,295, and more than 11,000 people were injured.

He said almost 13,000 people had been left homeless.

Tens of thousands of people remain unaccounted for.

Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez on Wednesday declared seven days of mourning, saying the country’s “soul is torn apart by the human losses”.

The two powerful quakes, measuring 7.2 and 7.5, shattered entire neighbourhoods in oil-rich Venezuela, which has suffered decades of economic crisis that devastated infrastructure and health services.

The country is also in a fragile political transition six months after the United States ousted leader Nicolas Maduro.

Fight for survival

The focus is now shifting to survival for those who escaped the quakes.

Many are homeless and food and water are becoming scarce.

There have been widespread reports of theft. On Wednesday, four police officers were arrested after being caught by residents stealing valuables from the rubble.

Queues for aid are growing longer by the day, with many surviving on the goodwill of volunteers and donations from fellow citizens.

“Here, we were receiving nothing until last night when they started bringing water,” said 56-year-old Fatima Berroteran, who has been sleeping with her family in a parking lot since their home in a high-rise complex in La Guaira collapsed.

The World Food Programme (WFP) on Tuesday appealed for $50 million to feed some 500,000 people for three months in Venezuela.

Risk of disease

Fears of disease were also rising.

World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Christian Lindmeier said health services in Venezuela were under “extreme pressure”.

“There’s an increased risk now of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases” such as measles and diphtheria, due to low pre-earthquake vaccination coverage, he said.

The quakes likely damaged or destroyed 58,870 buildings, according to a preliminary assessment of satellite data published by Nasa.

The two parties signed a memorandum of understanding with the Odisha state government, Adani said in a statement, with the proposed investment set to be India’s “largest foreign direct investment in the metallurgy sector”.

The statement said the Odisha project will see Adani Enterprises Limited and an IHC subsidiary form a 50/50 joint venture.

The project itself will consist of a refinery that can produce four million metric tonnes of aluminium per year, a smaller-capacity aluminum smelter and a 4,000-megawatt captive power plant.

The project is expected to create 53,500 jobs, with 35,000 during ​construction and another 18,500 once operations begin, an official said ​at ⁠the MoU signing ceremony.

Odisha, home to some of India’s ​largest bauxite reserves ​used to produce ⁠aluminum, accounts for 54 per cent of the country’s aluminum output.

“This partnership with Adani Enterprises reflects that strategy and our shared ambition to develop a world-class integrated aluminium project that creates lasting economic value,” Syed Basar Shueb, chief executive of IHC, said in a statement.

The investment comes as ⁠India seeks to expand domestic aluminium production to meet growing demand from ​the infrastructure, power, transport and renewable energy industries, while reducing reliance on imports ​of value-added metal products.

While New Delhi is the world’s second-largest producer of aluminum, it still depends on imports to keep up with booming demand from local industries.

Last year, Indian policymakers unveiled a strategic plan to boost domestic output by scaling up production six-fold by 2047 and doubling the national aluminium recycling rate.

Four years ago, India and the UAE signed a broad trade and investment pact that would eventually cut all tariffs on each other’s goods and aimed to increase annual trade between the two nations to $100 billion within five years.

A full court comprising Chief Justice Raja Saeed Akram, Justice Raza Ali Khan and Justice Khalid Yousaf Chaudhary ruled that the application would be heard along with the Election Commission’s petition for leave to appeal (PLA) after the latter completes scrutiny in the court’s registry.

On June 23, the AJK High Court had directed the commission to provisionally register PTI as a political party, effectively suspending the commission’s May 16 decision rejecting the party’s registration application.

Challenging the order, the Election Commission filed a petition for leave to appeal (PLA) in the Supreme Court along with an application under Rules 1 and 2 of Order VI of the Supreme Court Rules, 1978, seeking ex parte ad interim relief pending the appeal.

At the previous hearing, PTI counsel Yasir Safeer Mughal sought an adjournment, saying he was not adequately prepared to argue the case.

Thereupon, Chief Justice Akram ordered that the operation of the high court’s June 23 order, to the extent of the interim relief granted to PTI, would remain in abeyance until July 2.

When the matter came up on Thursday, the apex court ordered that the commission’s application would be heard together with the PLA. No date for the hearing was fixed.

However, with the Supreme Court set to begin its summer recess on Monday, which will continue until Oct 7, the case is unlikely to be taken up before the elections, effectively leaving the legal status of PTI’s provisional registration unresolved during the electoral process.

The general elections in AJK are scheduled to be held on July 27.

Work on the road has been ongoing under Khan’s tenure, including when he visited the expressway last November to review beautification, rehabilitation and improvement works along the route.

According to the communications ministry, Khan presided over the meeting to review the authority’s financial close and map out strategic infrastructure priorities for the current fiscal year.

In a decision aimed at boosting regional connectivity, the minister announced a 70km extension of the Murree Expressway (N-75) to Muzaffarabad.

The expansion will effectively connect Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) to Pakistan’s main motorway and expressway network, providing residents with a modern, high-speed and safer travel facility.

The minister said the extension marked the beginning of a modern era of safe transit for the people of AJK, adding that they deserved the same “high-calibre” motorway facilities available across the rest of the country.

To ensure maximum efficiency across the board, he issued directives to the NHA leadership to prioritise the completion of ongoing infrastructure projects over launching new ones.

He said that during the current fiscal year, the NHA must focus its resources on completing 25 priority projects before shifting attention to new initiatives.

Among these, Khan emphasised the completion of the M-8 Motorway, directing that the Hoshab–Awaran Road and the Awaran–Nal project be fast-tracked.

He said these southwestern corridors were important for expanding trade with neighbouring Iran as well as for unlocking the tourism potential of the region.

Reviewing the NHA’s long-term financial health, Khan also outlined a bold vision to transform the authority to ensure self-reliance. He said the NHA will be restructured to generate up to Rs400 billion annually from its own internal revenue streams, rather than relying on federal government funding.

The meeting concluded after detailed briefings by the Secretary for Communications and the chairman of the NHA on the organisation’s fiscal closeout and strategic operational roadmap.

The road has witnessed several accidents, including one earlier this month in which at least 10 people were killed and 13 others injured when a van caught fire after falling into a nullah while taking a turn, the National Highways and Motorway Police (NHMP) said.

The 15-sitting session from June 10 to 24 had 333 members, with three general seats vacant. Overall, 234 MNAs, or 70pc, skipped at least one sitting, the report stated.

The 13th sitting, which saw voting on demands for grants and consideration of a standing committee report on the budget for FY27, recorded the highest attendance of 75pc, with 300 MNAs present.

According to Fafen, 191 members were present between eight and 14 sittings, while as many as 37 members attended between one and seven sittings.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attended six sittings during the session, while Leader of the Opposition Mehmood Khan Achakzai attended 12.

Among cabinet members from the NA, six federal ministers and three ministers of state attended all sittings. The lowest attendance was of Communications Minister Aleem Khan, who was present in the House in eight sessions.

Among parliamentary party leaders, PML-N’s Khawaja Asif attended all sittings, as well as Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen’s Hameed Hussain (MWM), National Party’s Pullain Baloch, Balochistan Awami Party’s (BAP) Khalid Hussain Magsi, and PML-Z’s Ijazul Haq.

PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari attended four sittings, while Maulana Fazlur Rehman of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) was present in just two sittings.

The ruling party PML-N’s 48 lawmakers were in full attendance out of 132 MNAs, while 15 of PPP’s 74 leaders were present during all sittings.

Out of 75 independents — which include four who sit on the government benches — 27 MNAs attended all 15 sittings.

Regionally, 53 MNAs from Punjab recorded “perfect attendance”, followed by 25 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Six lawmakers from Punjab did not attend any sitting.

Female lawmakers recorded higher proportionate attendance than male colleagues across all 15 sittings, Fafen noted.

Out of the 10 cabinet members who were scheduled for Question Hour, six attended, while parliamentary secretaries attended the remaining ones. Two out of four ministers required for Calling Attention Notices appeared.

Fafen noted that in the preceding session of the NA, 267 members, or 80pc, missed at least one sitting. Only 102, or 38pc, submitted formal leave applications, while 165, or 62pc, were absent without one.

It said the report relied on official attendance and leave records published on the NA’s website and aimed to promote transparency and accountability of elected representatives.

A model called GLM-5.2, launched last month by Beijing-based startup Z.ai, may finally be closing that gap in terms of Western interest.

GLM-5.2 has Silicon Valley buzzing with its coding and ‌agent capabilities, or the ability to execute complex tasks with minimal prompting, that almost rival leading US offerings at a fraction of the cost, in what some experts are calling a “mini DeepSeek moment.”

It has quickly climbed the usage charts on third-party AI developer platforms like OpenRouter, where it now ranks above Anthropic’s models, while executives from cloud data platform Snowflake’s CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have lauded its abilities.

“We now have a Chinese open-weight model that is as good as the currently available models ​from OpenAI and Anthropic,” said David Sacks, US President Donald Trump’s former AI czar, last week before Washington lifted curbs on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models on Tuesday.

Those capabilities have put Z.ai’s GLM-5.2 model ​at the heart of a growing debate about whether China is finally catching up to the US in the AI race, as technology executives warn that Washington’s unpredictable ⁠regulation of the industry risks hampering its lead in the frontier technology.

“It is just a tick below Opus 4.8 (from Anthropic) and right up there with GPT 5.5 (from OpenAI),” Sacks said of GLM-5.2 on the All-In podcast, adding ​that “we cannot afford to do things that slow our companies down.”

The Anthropic curbs and the delayed public rollout of OpenAI’s latest GPT-5.6 model have fueled global demand for the Chinese model, some experts said.

“The international developer community is increasingly ​aware that relying solely on proprietary, US-based API models carries significant risk,” said Brian Tse, founder and CEO of Concordia AI, a Beijing-based consultancy focused on AI safety.

GLM-5.2’s positive global reception also suggests increased interest in cheaper open-source development because businesses are getting stung by the rising and often unpredictable costs of using AI to complete tasks, as closed-source agentic AI tools consume more tokens, the units used to measure AI usage.

Z.ai, also known as Zhipu AI, declined to comment. Anthropic and OpenAI did not immediately ​respond to requests for comment.

GLM-5.2 currently holds fifth place on Artificial Analysis’ large language model (LLM) intelligence leaderboard, which ranks performance across a range of benchmarks designed to measure overall capability, including reasoning and coding skills.

And it ​is in the second spot on Code Arena’s front-end coding rankings, measuring how well models generate websites and front-end applications, while operating at roughly a sixth of the cost of closed US frontier models like Claude and the GPT series.

Z.ai has ‌not disclosed how ⁠much it spent to develop GLM-5.2.

In a reply to Elon Musk on X last month, Z.ai founder Tang Jie said that the Chinese startup could produce a model on par with Anthropic’s Fable before the first quarter of next year.

“The shift GLM-5.2 brings is that the open-source model has become a plug-and-play, out-of-the-box product,” said Tiezhen Wang, former APAC lead at Hugging Face, a startup that serves as a hub for developers tinkering with open-source models.

“You just deploy the model and without doing any complex fine-tuning systems, it is in a highly usable, ready-to-use state. This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for open-source adoption.”