The plan calls for a $545bn fund for infrastructure spending. Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has announced a deal to drastically overhaul the country’s debt rules to allow a boom in defence and security spending as well as 500 billion euros ($545bn) in infrastructure investment in the next 12 years. Merz’s conservatives and their prospective Social Democratic coalition partners reached an agreement with the Greens party on...

Columbia University has expelled, suspended or revoked degrees of students who occupied a campus hall during pro-Palestinian demonstrations in April 2024, the university said on Thursday. Students were issued with punishments based on the “severity of behaviour at these events” and past infractions, if any, a statement from Columbia read. The move is the university’s response to a crackdown on student activists in the United States who led...