TOP HEADLINES

- Portugal will bring in localized night-time curfews from Monday, Prime Minister Antonio Costa has announced, after the country hit a record 6,640 new infections on Saturday.

- France's death toll has topped 40,000 for the first time, with a fresh record of 86,852 new cases, a little over one week after the government put the country back under lockdown.

- Italy has approved a $3.4 billion aid package after new restrictions were introduced earlier this week. On Saturday, the nation recorded its highest ever daily tally for new cases, 39,811.

- Slovakia held a second round of nationwide testing on Saturday, after screening more than 3.6 million people – two-thirds of the population – last weekend.

- Current global uncertainty amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus could risk another world war, the head of Britain's armed forces Nick Carter has warned.

- The UK government will give extra support to prevent families going hungry this winter, a climbdown after resisting calls by footballer Marcus Rashford to extend free school meals.

- Violent clashes broke out between police and anti-lockdown protesters on Saturday in Germany's Leipzig and the Slovenian capital Ljubljana as demonstrators across Europe continue to rail against new restrictions. 

- Global infections exceeded 50 million on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, with the past 30 days accounting for a quarter of the total cases.

- Georgia will introduce a curfew in its largest cities, with restrictions on movement between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. local time set to come into effect from Monday.

- New restrictions have come into force in Poland, with cinemas, theatres and cultural venues closing as primary school age children switch to distance learning from Monday.

- Austria and Poland have reported a record numbers of cases, with 8,241 and 27,875 new infections respectively. 

- Spanish soccer club Real Madrid have reported their Belgian forward Eden Hazard and his Brazilian teammate Casemiro have both tested positive for coronavirus. 

AROUND EUROPE

Italy

Italy has signed off a new aid package, reportedly worth $3.4 billion, to ease the economic fallout from restrictions it introduced earlier this week.

New measures which came into force on Friday separate the country into three zones, in line with the severity of the latest outbreak.

While the limitations are less severe than Italy's first nationwide lockdown in March, many shops have been shut in the highest-risk zones including Milan's Lombardy region, where people can only leave their homes for work, health reasons or emergencies.

The package allows for delays to the spring tax payments due in November and increases transfers to businesses operating in regions classed as red or orange. 

"We have increased compensations because we realised that what was granted for the spring lockdown wasn't enough," Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the Corriere della Sera newspaper in an interview. "We've also widened the number of beneficiaries."

The package includes money for childcare or work leave for parents who are not able to work from home, as large numbers of Italian school children moved to remote learning.

"There's no turning back. The alternative is to shut down the entire country causing enormous damage," Conte said.

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Portugal

Portugal will bring in localised night-time curfews from Monday, Prime Minister Antonio Costa announced in the early hours of Sunday.

"We cannot have the slightest doubt that everything must be done to contain the pandemic," Costa told a news conference. "If we fail to do so, we must increasingly adopt more restrictive measures and compromise the month of December."

The curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. local time – excluding night workers – will be enforced in 121 of the country's 308 municipalities, including Lisbon and Porto, as the country enters a 15-day state of emergency.

Portugal has recorded a comparatively low 173,540 cases and 2,848 deaths but it hit 6,640 cases on Saturday, the highest daily figure since the pandemic started, with a total of 2,420 people in hospital and 366 in intensive care units. 

France

France's total number of deaths has surpassed the milestone of 40,000 while the daily number of new cases hit a fresh record.

Deaths reached 40,169, including 306 in the last 24 hours, the health ministry said in its daily report on the outbreak on Saturday.

The government reintroduced national lockdown measures for the second time this year a little over a week ago, as the country recorded a total of 1,748,705 confirmed cases, up a record 86,852 from the 1,661,853 it announced on Friday.

Despite much of Europe being in the midst of the pandemic's second wave, President Emmanuel Macron has sensed an opportunity to market France as Europe's next business destination after the crisis and has embarked on a charm offensive to lure international investors.

"We've realised that investors are facing a blank slate now and that the CEOs of big multinationals are closely looking at how each country is responding to the crisis," one French presidential adviser said.

"Britain is bogged down in Brexit, which isn't helping promote their country," another Macron adviser added. "Germany has a recovery package more tilted towards demand than supply, so they have no new selling case to speak of."

Macron organized a conference call with the chief executives of Tata, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Zalando, among others, to seek to secure new investment on Friday, with French officials saying they hope to benefit as investor decide now which countries would be the long-term post-coronavirus winners.

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