the headlines: donald trump and joe biden have been holding separate town hall events, instead of the second tv debate which was cancelled due to the president getting coronavirus. while questioned by the moderator, mr trump declined to condemn online conspiracy theories involving him. twitter is investigating a global outage as millions of users weren't able to post or read messages. twitter says there's no evidence to suggest it was caused by a security breach or hack, and there will be more updates to come. the world health organization has given a warning to european countries to impose new restrictions to save lives, as europe reports more covid cases than the us and india. a curfew will come into force in france on saturday in nine cities.

david eades will be here at the top of the hour. but first, it's time for newscast. hello from all of us. it's going to be slightly longer still. unfortunately, for you, katya, it's going to be slightly longer still, because we got lots of coronavirus to talk about before we get to the view from europe. so are you 0k to sit tight for a number of minutes? absolutely. we'll be back with you. so lots of news on that front today, lots more areas being put into tier two, the high alert level, with no more mixing indoors between other households apart from a few exceptions,

and the new areas in tier two, as it's called technically, london, essex, but not southend and thurrock, york, north—east derbyshire, chesterfield, erewash in derbyshire, elmbridge in surrey and barrow in furness in cumbria. and it means that about half the population is now under extra restrictions. of england. compared to where we were a few days ago. this will come in at midnight on friday, so when we wake up saturday morning we will be in a different era, so in that context it has been a very, very big day. a big step further towards tighter restrictions everywhere. but, also, a big rise in the political tensions. something been brewing all week. we spoke about it earlier, didn't we, the clash between local and national leadership, and more than anything else a big north—south divide? here's how that clash has been playing out. this is matt hancock in parliament today... the liverpool city region moved into the very high level yesterday, and i want to thank the local leadership for their public service and cross— party teamwork in the face of this virus. we've developed a substantial package of support for areas that enter this third tier, and this includes more support for local test and trace, more funding for local enforcement and the job support scheme, of course, alongside the offer of help

from the armed services. well, how's that going with the people who might be put into tier 3? here's andy burnham, mayor of greater manchester. he's not happy... they are willing to sacrifice jobs and businesses here to try save them elsewhere. greater manchester, the liverpool city region, and lancashire are being set up as the canaries in the coal mine for and experimental, regional lockdown strategy as an attempt to prevent the expense of what is truly needed. strong old stuff, isn't it, laura and adam, and that real sense that this regional strategy from the government as far as england is concerned, which we've heard was coming for quite well, actually now playing out, and seeing those tensions and seeing the awkwardness about what the government does when it's running up against as strong a resistance

as that from greater manchester? that's right, and it's not just party political. matt hancock said earlier, "0h, its party political." implication — the northern mayors ijust trying to stir up trouble because they don't like the tories. that's not the case. there are some tory mps, including some very senior ones, who are upset notjust about the idea of this regional strategy, but also about the way that the government's handling it. so before we had that dramatic moment on the steps of manchester town hall and andy burnham there, really furious, there was a series of sort of angry calls, ministers with mps on zoom, not always the right people being invited, it all being really, really messy. and it's dangerous for the government, notjust because it's a really important part of how they are trying to manage this, but also because think of the politics here. next borisjohnson swept into number ten with a massive majority because, "oh, look, he was the tory leader that could win in the north of england!"

well, this is the two sides of the north and south being pitted against each other, very publicly, in a very big way, and there's no easy way out for either of them. and don't forget in lots of bits of the north of england people have already been living under limited local lockdowns for ages, whereas the south—east hasn't, so the dynamics here are already pretty fraught. but here's the thing. at the end of the day number ten has the power to impose this, as they did on merseyside at the beginning of the week even though they said, "oh, it was all lovely, it was all marvellous" — steve rotheram, suddenly the most famous man in british politics, according to boris johnson. they've got the power to impose it. but after today if they impose it, and i think they probably will end up doing that, it's going to have a big political cost, no question. and it plays into the thing, doesn't it, laura, well, the thing that some of us i suppose at westminster now nerdily obsess about and have done for years, where we are seeing in technicolour now the kind of structures of government, how government is playing out every day in a way that is noticeable to people only paying a kind of fleeting glimpse in the direction

of politics, whether it be the tensions we have seen and the differences we have seen as far as cardiff and edinburgh and belfast are concerned compared with england, and now within the english regional models of mayors and big local authority leaders who are big figures in their local areas, well known in their local areas, but now have something of a national stage as well. yeah, that's right, and at the beginning of the week when number ten wanted to use them to help the restrictions along and, you know, someone in government said to me, "actually, this is partlyjust being pragmatic. if andy burnham is popular in his area, let's get him on board in order to help with the message. we've got to get people's consent to do this stuff." if, on the other hand, they got a well— known local leader saying the opposite and slagging off the government, then that makes things much, much trickier. couldn't rishi sunak solve all of this at a stroke byjust increasing the job support scheme from paying two thirds of people's wages if their business has to shut to just restoring it back to the old furlough scheme of 80%? couldn't he just, at the stroke

of a pen, and this problem would go away? ah, yeah, probably, but right now the treasury are absolutely adamant they are not going to do it, despite there being some very, very strong calls for him to do so, including from dame louise casey, friend of this programme, who we spoke to in an interview yesterday who is very, very clear in her mind, and she chose her words very carefully, that if more and more parts of the country come under this limited lockdown where people get two thirds of their wages if their businesses are forced to close, and they can top it up with benefits, but if that happens in a big way, we are looking at something really profound for many, many families. do we want to go back to the days when people can't put shoes on their children's feet? this is what we are talking about. are we actually asking people in places like liverpool to go out and prostitute themselves

so that actually they can put food on the table? you know, iam not a dramatic person. i have been in whitehall for over 20 years, i've worked in the voluntary sector, and this is unprecedented. i have never worked... i remember the thatcher era right through to now, and i have never worked in a situation where i am so concerned about what is going to happen. laura, this gets to the crux of why these decisions are so, so difficult, apparently, for governments — nationally, regionally, locally, at whatever level — because it's not just the scientific advice, the quite scary sometimes scientific advice that we hear, or the suggestions from the likes of sage and others, but the massive economic consequences of closing down huge swathes of the hospitality sector or whatever it might be, with profound effects on people's finances when many might be surviving on the minimum wage and therefore going down to only two thirds of that? it makes things incredibly difficult. that's right, and hospitality is a big sector of the economy

anyway, but it has a bigger share of employment than it does relatively to its size of the overall pyre. —— overall pie. and loads of those jobs are not necessarily very well paid jobs, and ijust wonder whether or not the treasury's position on this is going to hold in the coming weeks and months. now, it is interesting today that the chancellor actually responded online to what louise casey said. he repeated that, "actually, well, what the government is offering is quite in line with international comparisons, and rememberthere's universal credit that people can turn to", but there's something quite interesting also that a tory chancellor saying, "don't worry, you can just start claiming benefits. " well, the world's on its head in lots of different ways, and actually a minister said to me yesterday that they reckon that rishi sunak will have to revisit this and either say, "i'll put that support in for a whole year," so at least people would be able to plan better, or he willjust or he willjust have to put the amount up,

but that is why the northern mayors are so ci’oss. they are saying, "you're asking us to do this, everyone knows there's going to be a big economic impact, and you can't do it to be but unless you can guarantee their incomes and livelihoods", and that is really the challenge, you know, that the economic hangover from this is going to be so long and so nasty, and it's very real for people already. i spotted three things in matt hancock's statement today that are worth talking about. arejust mentioning. no, by the magic of television laura is going to be replaced by fergus walsh, medical editor, because we have been speaking to a member of sage, jeremy farrer, who runs the wellcome trust, the big backers of medical and scientific research. if i click my fingers, laura will magically mark, like doctor who, into dr walsh. fergus walsh is here! laughter hi, adam. shall we have a chat with the professor? he is here. hello, jeremy. i should say you are here on a personal capacity tonight rather than representing sage. given that the famous meeting

on the 21st of september where the idea of the circuit breaker was signed off by the scientific advisers. why did you think the circuit break was something necessary? the transmission of the infection and the numbers across the uk really started to fall and really reach their low point in about a 10th ofjuly, and since then they have just been edging up consistently throuthuly, august, then into september, and by the middle of september at the time of that meeting you could see they were at that point of inflection, when they go from gradual increase to a pretty dramatic increase, and when the community transmission builds up i am afraid to say hospitalisation and, tragically, deaths, will always follow, and that's what we were seeing through the early weeks of september through to that meeting. has the government missed the boat this time around? yes. personal view, iwould have moved on the 215t or whatever of september, and in my view that was the best time to act, and you could have got away

with a shorter lockdown, i believe, and you could have opened things up quicker. but if that was the first best time to act, then the second best time to act as today, tomorrow, as this week. let's say we have another three weeks of the new regional alert system, another couple of days of back and forwards between matt hancock and andy burnham in manchester, just spell out for us what you think the consequences a of that will be? when you are in this phase of an epidemic where, you know, the r value is 1.5, or let's say we have another three weeks of the new regional alert system, another couple of days of back and forwards between matt hancock and andy burnham in manchester, just spell out for us what you think the consequences of that will be? when you are in this phase of an epidemic where, you know, the r value is 1.5,

r h 1.5, and you have doubling times now on average across the country of seven days, but it's shorter than that. seven days is an average across the whole country. if you wait a week, you double the numbers. so if there are let's say 20,000 confirmed cases today, which is i think about the number, and of course that's an underestimate of the total number of cases, but let's say there are 20,000. seven days from now there will be 40,000, and seven days later there will be 80,000. so you are in that very fast upward swing of the epidemic, and the delay of a day matters, a weak's to really matters, and a two—week delay, you have gone through a four times increase. we saw that in march and april and we are seeing that, frankly, across much of europe now. the red lights are flashing in every single country in europe now, and britain is not exceptional to that, it's following a very similarcurve. what would you advise the government to do right now? be very specific. tonight or tomorrow?

firstly, i think we have to come together as a country. this fragmentation and, frankly, making this either a north south or party political issue, that's a very dangerous route to go down. if you look at the countries that have controlled this well to date, china, singapore, vietnam, korea, germany, new zealand, they have had a national consensus about the way forward, and what we don't want now is a fragmentation, confusion, one area or region or city pitched against another. i think that would be very damaging to public health and the country because my ability to respond so that would be the first thing, a national consensus on the way forward would be critical. then a national debate about whether we want to focus mostly on the economy and opening it up or we want to combine the economic and health, which in my view are totally aligned. i think the country will have to go into a much tighter restriction than we have in place today, even

in the second night levels. chris whitty said it perfectly today. the base restrictions in the highest tier will not be enough to turn the r value below one and they will not be enough to bring this epidemic under control, even in those hotspots, and in the lower tiers, i think the first two, the restrictions there are not enough to not see those progressing into the higher tier, and i think a circuit breaker of probably three weeks would put the epidemic back to the beginning of september levels, and that would give us three weeks to get the test, trace, isolate system really functional and trusted, and used, and accessible, and it would allow us to prepare the nhs better than even they are prepared today and prepare for the winter, because we are in for a very bumpy period between now and the spring of next year. but on current trajectory,

can you see a situation where we shut the schools again? we can avoid that but we have to act now. and delaying, waiting, negotiations on this city or that city, adds to the complexity, adds to the delays and the longer you delay, when the doubling time is seven days or less in some parts, the harder it will be and then, yes, you may have to close schools, but if you acted now, i think you could keep schools open. jeremy, the welcome trust is funding a lot of the research into these new treatments. if you had to pick out one intervention that might really make a difference in the next few months, what might it be? on treatment, the coming of what is called monoclonal antibodies, which are antibodies against the virus itself, but at the moment, there is not enough investment there. i have just come off a call with this global coalition trying to produce vaccines, diagnostics and treatments and at the moment, i am a great fan of vaccines, of course, but at the moment vaccines are getting a lot of attention and a lot of funding and that is very good, but we need to balance

this and also make sure that we invest in new treatments, because, you know, i started my career at the start of the hiv epidemic and we still don't have an hiv vaccine today and we rely on treatments. and that is true for malaria and tb as well. so i would invest much more in the treatments. i think they are going to come sooner maybe than the vaccines and i think they will be used for people with mild all the way through to very severe disease, so i would back the monoclonals and i would back them with greater investment than we are doing today. it has been great to chat to you, thank you for your time and for your insight. yeah, pleasure. thanks, jeremy. thanks for bringing us up to date and helping me out with that interview, fergus. great pleasure. fergus and me hearing the view on lockdown and circuit breakers and things from professorjeremy farrar, but now it's time to speak to doctor—doctor adler in

brussels. hello! hello. hello, step into my cabinet, how can i help you? laughter well, there is not a lot of stepping into other places in many other countries in europe right now, because it seems that shutting things isjust all the rage across the continent. yes, definitely. europe is shutting down, we are into a second wave, there are lockdown measures going on all over the place, butjust like in the uk, nobody wants to use the term "lockdown". so, there are all sorts of imaginative descriptions, france is going on talking a lot about curfews, you have got night—time curfews being introduced, from saturday, in paris and other hotspots, that is from nine o'clock at night until six o'clock in the morning, which left a lot of french men and women on twitter noting that the coronavirus only comes out at night. really? i think, what you have is basically leaders all over europe and all over the world looking at this difficulty of how do you try and curb the virus and yet not stifle the economy? so, emmanuel macron yesterday was saying, we have got to keep working, we have got to keep going, but we have to look

at ways of reducing connection. here we are at an eu summit right now and it is supposed to be about brexit and the environment but everybody, all of the leaders here have covid, covid, tim -- covid on of the leaders here have covid, covid, tim —— covid on their minds. interesting in europe is the effect it is having on politics and politicians. this was a very different emmanuel macron. shall we get into the nitty—gritty, katya, of brexit, because it is extraordinary to imagine a parallel universe in which this blinking virus had never happened and we would have been crawling over every little detail and of course, we have still tried to do that, but inevitably our headspace has been taken up with the pandemic. so, here we are at the point where the prime minister had said this is the deadline, the european summit where things we thought or at least some suggested were going to happen, and where are we? well, yeah, this was another

deadline of the prime minister, but i say another, because he had set an earlier deadline of the summer or the end of the summer, and so i think, well, i know, actually, from conversations with european politicians and diplomats, they did not take this deadline seriously, of the 15th of october, this was a uk deadline, not theirs, although michel barnier's deadline is not far off, it was the end of october. it was two weeks, yeah. to have a deal, exactly. and that ain't going to happen. in fact, what you have tonight is talk about whether the prime minister might keep true to what he warned at the beginning of september when he said, the deal has got to be on the table by today, the 15th of october, because otherwise he basically said you may as welljust walk away, because it ain't going to happen by the end of this year and be ready to be implemented. he sort of rowed back on that earlier in the week after speaking to ursula von der leyen and said he was going to wait until tomorrow, wait to see what was said at the summit and as we speak, there is a twitter war going on over words, words, as we know, my fellow wordsmiths, are so important. and eu leaders today, after discussing brexit, came out with their brexit conclusions, it is always a formal thing, they come out with his written conclusions

and they basically said, the ball is now in your court, uk, to make the moves necessary to get an agreement here. and they also want michel barnier to continue talks, but they did not use the word intensive talks. yeah, they scrubbed that out, didn't they, in the drafting process? and, guess what, this has been noticed by the uk. shock, horror! because of course the wording in all of this does matter so much, even though we are a long way away from legal texts or anything like that, so david frost, the chief negotiator here, he has said online that he is very disappointed by the eu's response, he is surprised by the suggestion that it will be the uk that has to budge, in order to get something through, we know what the main sticking points are, right? fish, and particularly french fish, that is where things are going wrong. le poisson! it is down to them. but, it is hard to tell, frankly, at this stage, how surreal any of this is, i am not meaning to be glib and i am not meaning to be cynical, but i am sceptical, because in all of these negotiations, there are

theatrics, we talked — a lot — about how at some point, do they have to have another bust up before either side can back down? yeah, exactly, so ijust wonder, i don't know. katya, why does that word "intensive" matter, or the lack of it? well, just to say that david frost took to twitter to say, you know, what happened to the word "intensive"? you had the european commission, because remember, you know, the different institutions, the eu leaders summit is the european council, the european commission is having negotiations with the uk in behalf of the eu and the commission tweeted out that actually if you have a look at michel barnier's press conference, he did use the word intensive. 0h! so, it just looks like a complete mess, it is a total mess, and you just kind of think, when there is covid going on and we know that brexit, whether there is a deal, however narrow it is, or no deal, really affects people's lives and livelihoods, are we really going to have this twitter war over intensive or not? when, you know, the assumption is that both sides do want a deal, it is in both sides political interest, particularly, with all of covid

going on and the misery that it is causing, not to have a no deal situation, but we are still hearing the same stuff, yes a deal, not at any price, you make the move, no, you make the move, and actually, i agree with you, laura, i think it has got to get really sort of difficult now in order for both sides to say, we have got to the edge of the precipice, but we have decided to be grown—ups, because of covid, and here we are, with this deal. but it is not 100% sure. and laura, just very quickly, even though this isn't a real deadline, borisjohnson is going to do something tomorrow, he will have to either carry on talking, which will annoy some people, or he will have to walk away, which will have huge consequences. he is going to have to make a decision and communicate it to us. or he will say, "i am really, really, really, really, really. . . cross. " this is definitely it! i am very cross and i had very much hoped that we would see progress at this point and i am urging my eu friends to come up

with something, because we have been reasonable, they have been unreasonable, and, you know, let's see. so ‘stay‘, but in the most aggressive way possible. well, we will see, we will see. as katya says, the fundamentals, the fundamentals are there, as most people would say, there is a deal to be done, but there is high—stakes politics here, but... i don't know. when do you think the actual deadline is? so we have had the boris johnson deadline of today and the barnier deadline of the end of the month. 0h! oh, chris, you know these deadlines are always made to be broken and the eu may be mocking the prime minister, but the eu is exactly the same with its deadline. i know they are. i am just thinking, for our dear viewer, i mean, we know when the end of the transition period is, at the end of this year, but they couldn't do it on new year's eve! imean? no, because you have got to remember, because of our dualist system in the uk, which we love to talk about,

you have got to convert the international treaty, the fta or the trade agreement with the partnership agreement into domestic legislation. so, when is the deadline, that is the thing. on the british side, they are a little bit worried about running out of time for that. i think they are, but, you know, somebody, iam just trying to find in the way that i like to do... you see, new year's eve plans this year are not going to be what they normally are. well, exactly. no—one's going to be going out. i mean, i think early december we might see something. i wouldn't, you know... with every eu meeting or eu leader speaking, it sort of creeps further and further towards the end of the year and now people are talking about early december. the uk is worried about that, because obviously, whether or not there is a deal, uk businesses have to do a lot of stuff. there are going to be lots and lots of changes anyway. so, i think this time around there is a little bit more urgency on the uk side than on the eu side, but we will see, these things slide, don't they, which means we have plenty more opportunities to talk about it brexit, altogether, which feels so nice! the subject formally known as

brexit. i have to say to you, chris, while you were saying, that normally we would be poring over every detail, but obviously covid is taking... can ijust remind you of your sad friend who sits here and does continue, silently, in a corner, poring over every detail, but no bbc outlet want to talk to me about it. awww! you had ample opportunity tonight, katya. ample. i rock backwards and forwards in my little rocking chair and, so thank you for letting me loose today. also, katya, have you watched emily in paris yet, on netflix? um, i have not. you have got to watch it. just so you can hate it. really? anyone living on the continent... yes, i've heard it. i want to hear your review next time we speak. right, we have hit our deadline. 0h! unusual. we have got to go. that is it for this edition of newscast, thank you very much for watching, we will be back soon. goodbye. bye. bye! newscast, newscast, newscast, from the bbc.

hello there. we are moving into a quieter spell of weather. it may only be short—lived, mind you. essentially, we have got high—pressure dominating, but again, the centre of the high pressure is towards the north of the uk, hence those winds off the north sea, as we've seen over the past few days, bringing with them a few showers as well. probably not as many showers today compared with what we had yesterday, and more places will be dry with a little sunshine, but it will be a chilly start to the day on friday, especially where we've got the clearer skies in the west. we start with a few showers to the east, they will run their way through lincolnshire, through the midlands, to parts of wales and the extreme south—east of england, the odd one possibly in northern ireland, too. more sunshine for northern england, the rest of the sunshine in the north will be on the west side of the country for many parts of scotland.

it looks cloudy, it will be a cool day, as it was yesterday. that cloud continues to push down across scotland into northern england, one or two showers continuing into the night, maybe a few more showers arriving in the far south—west of england as well. but probably not quite as cold early on saturday morning compared with friday morning, those temperatures under the cloud at around six or seven degrees. the weekend looks quiet, little or no wind — winds very light, lots of cloud around, many places will be dry. it is still quite cool. a few showers towards the south coast of england, the odd one for england and wales, a bit of drizzle coming in across northern and eastern scotland, perhaps into the north—east of england, that will make it feel quite cold, but is struggling to make double figures in northern scotland. 12 or 13 is going to be a typicalfigure, a lot of cloud around, too. on the whole, it looks quite cloudy on sunday but if anything cloud thinner for many areas,

so that a sign of seeing some a little rain is arriving in northern ireland, perhaps the north—west of scotland. but is a sign of things to come, really, if we look further ahead into the early part of next week, instead of high pressure dominating the weather, pressure is falling and low pressure is going to take charge. you can see we have a number of weather fronts on the scene as well. so we can tidy that up, really and just with this sort of headline, because the early part of next week looks like it's going to be a big change in weather — to wet and windy conditions, maybe not quite as chilly as the weekend.

this is bbc news. i'm david eades with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. donald trump and joe biden have made rival tv appearances, with the president refusing to condemn online conspiracy theories involving him. i know nothing about that, you told me, but what you told me doesn't necessarily make it fa ct, doesn't necessarily make it fact, i hate to say it out. while taking heat over criminaljustice and taxes at his town hall in philadelphia, joe biden also criticised mr trump's handling of the coronavirus. we are in a situation where we have 210,000 plus people dead and what is he doing? nothing.

he is still