[ad_1] Andy Bounds in Manchester and Sarah Provan in London Greater Manchester is seeking an extra £90m in financial aid in return for tighter coronavirus restrictions as a noon deadline for talks with the UK government approaches. Prime minister Boris Johnson has threatened to impose the “tier 3” category of restrictions unilaterally to curb a rise in infections that could overwhelm hospitals. The government said that within two weeks all critical-care beds in Greater Manchester will be taken by Covid-19 patients and insists that it has offered local leaders a “good package” of £22m. “The real risk is by the first week of November in the current trajectory there will…

[ad_1] Advisers to Canada’s GardaWorld, the security group pursuing a £3bn deal to buy UK rival G4S, stand to make up to £312m in fees if they are successful in clinching shareholder support for the hostile takeover. The fees were laid out in an offer document released by GardaWorld on Saturday, in which the Canadian group argued that its 190p per share offer for G4S was justified given the level of investment needed to address longstanding financial and reputational issues.  Bankers including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America and Jefferies stand to earn as much as £100m in fees for providing financial advice and broking services should a deal be reached,…

[ad_1] Martin Arnold in Frankfurt Germany’s five leading economic research institutes cut their bi-annual forecasts for this year and next year, warning that production capacity would remain about 1 per cent below pre-coronavirus forecasts in the medium term. In updated forecasts, the researchers said they expected the German economy to contract 5.4 per cent this year, deeper than the decline of 4.2 per cent they predicted in April. They also cut their forecast for growth next year from 5.8 per cent to 4.7 per cent, while issuing a new prediction for growth of 2.7 per cent in 2022. “Although a substantial part of the drop in output experienced in spring…

[ad_1] The former head of the US National Security Agency has warned that the coronavirus pandemic has significantly increased cyber risk, with companies likely to face a growing number of attacks. Michael Rogers said “the attack surface has just exploded” because so many people are working from home rather than in offices, which have better cyber protection. Mr Rogers was head of the NSA, the US government agency in charge of cyber security, between 2014 and 2018. He is now on the board of directors at CyberCube, which advises insurance companies about cyber risk. “Remote access is being executed on a level that is nowhere near the historic norms of…

[ad_1] Federal prosecutors in Michigan have charged six men with conspiring to kidnap the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, as part of a militia-led plot before the November general election. The FBI arrested five of the men on Wednesday, according to court records. As part of the plot, the group allegedly held training sessions with weapons, attempted to build explosive devices, and surveilled Ms Whitmer’s properties. One of the members of the alleged plot had called Ms Whitmer a “tyrant” and said “we gotta do something”, according to an FBI affidavit filed in court earlier this week and unsealed on Thursday. “Several members talked about murdering ‘tyrants’ or ‘taking’ a…

[ad_1] Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe in London The number of positive coronavirus cases within the UK surged again on Sunday, with the government admitting that “technical” issues had caused delays in the publication of test results. A record 22,961 new coronavirus cases were confirmed on Sunday, an increase of more than 10,000 compared with 12,872 on Saturday. The government said a technical issue had been identified overnight on Friday “in the automated process that transfers positive cases data” to Public Health England. As a result, the number of coronavirus cases announced on Saturday and Sunday included 15,841 additional cases from between September 25 and Friday. Last night, the government said that the…

[ad_1] Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis has pushed the US into uncharted territory. A country hit by economic devastation, racial unrest and a pandemic is now asking what happens if Covid-19 fells — or incapacitates — the president just weeks before election day. No major party’s presidential candidate has ever pulled out of the race before election day because of illness, although one vice-presidential candidate passed away shortly before the 1912 poll — and was not replaced on the ballot. Here we look at the big questions. What happens if a presidential candidate is ill and has to withdraw before polling day? The candidate’s political party has to make a choice.…

[ad_1] Guy Chazan in Berlin Germany is to impose strict restrictions on social gatherings, as Angela Merkel warned that Germany could be facing more than 19,000 new infections a day by Christmas unless more efforts were made to curtail the spread of coronavirus. Authorities also imposed a minimum fine of €50 for anyone giving false contact details in bars and restaurants, amid rising concern about lying on contact forms. Germany has been spared the sharp increases in Covid cases seen in countries like France and Spain, but it has still seen new infections rise considerably, to 2,089 on Tuesday, up from about 300 a day in July. A statement issued…

[ad_1] The US government has sanctioned China’s biggest chipmaker, dealing further damage to the country’s semiconductor industry after cutting Huawei off from its chip suppliers. On Friday, the US Department of Commerce told companies that exports to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) posed an “unacceptable risk” of being diverted to “military end use”, according to a copy of the letter seen by the Financial Times. The move threatens to cut off China’s biggest chipmaker from crucial US software and chipmaking equipment. Companies now require licences to export such products to SMIC. “It all depends on how the US implements this. In the worst-case scenario, SMIC is completely cut off, which would…

[ad_1] Two top US public health officials have played down the chances of having a coronavirus vaccine before the election, despite Donald Trump’s insistence that one will be available “within weeks”. During a hearing before the Senate health committee, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, both insisted drug companies still face hurdles to authorising a vaccine. Dr Fauci said he expected a vaccine to be authorised by November at the earliest, while Dr Hahn stressed that the FDA would soon issue a number of additional guidelines, which experts say will make it…