Greater Manchester and Lancashire residents told to minimise travel as variant cases rise
Greater Manchester and Lancashire are to receive a “strengthened package of support” to tackle a rise in the Delta coronavirus variant, Matt Hancock has announced – with residents told to minimise travel.
Addressing the Commons, the health secretary said: “I can tell the House that today, working with local authorities, we are providing a strengthened package of support based on what is working in Bolton to help Greater Manchester and Lancashire tackle the rise in the Delta variant that we are seeing there.”
On the government’s website, the ‘minimise travel’ page has also been updated to include areas in Greater Manchester and Lancashire.
It states: “In the areas listed above, wherever possible, you should try to meet outside rather than inside where possible, keep two metres apart from people that you don’t live with (unless you have formed a support bubble with them) – this includes friends and family you don’t live with, minimise travel in and out of affected areas.”
Matt Hancock told MPs extra testing will be rolled out in Greater Manchester and Lancashire
The support package announced on Tuesday includes:
• Rapid response teams
• Extra testing
• Military support
• Supervised in-school testing
Mr Hancock told the Commons: “I want to encourage everyone in Manchester and Lancashire to get the tests on offer.
“We know that this approach can work. We’ve seen it work in south London and in Bolton in stopping a rise in the number of cases and this is the next stage of tackling the pandemic in Manchester and in Lancashire.
“And of course, it is vital that people in these areas as everywhere else come forward and get the jab as soon as they are eligible because that is our way out of this pandemic together.”
Residents in Greater Manchester and Lancashire are being told to get tested twice a week for free
Other areas where the new COVID-19 variant is spreading include Bedford, Blackburn with Darwen, Kirklees, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside.
As with residents of Greater Manchester and Lancashire, people in the areas above are advised by the government to try and meet outside, keep two metres apart and minimise travel.
Individuals are also advised to continue to work from home if they can and to get tested twice a week.
Mr Hancock announced the update in the Commons after briefing the relevant MPs on Tuesday morning.
It comes less than two weeks before 21 June, the government’s proposed date for the next relaxation of restrictions.
Responding to the announcement made by Mr Hancock in the Commons, the PM’s official spokesman said: “We want to provide the package of support that has been effective in Bolton to a wider area to tackle the cases of the Delta variant.”
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The Indian (Delta) variant of COVID-19 is 40% more transmissible than the Kent (Alpha) strain, Matt Hancock has told Sky News.
At the weekend, Matt Hancock told Sky News the Indian variant of coronavirus makes the decision about lifting lockdown restrictions on 21 June “more difficult”.
The new COVID-19 variant, also known as the Delta variant, is 40% more transmissible than the Kent (Alpha) strain, the health secretary said, leaving the easing of social distancing in the balance for the original target date.
It comes as government figures released on Tuesday show nearly a third of secondary school pupils in Bolton were absent for COVID-related reasons on the week before half-term.
In the North West of England, Covid-19 related pupil absence was 4% on May 27, compared to the national average of 1.8%, according to the statistics,
This was predominantly due to an increase in cases of coronavirus in Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen, the Department for Education (DfE) analysis said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has released its annual report detailing complaints and losses due to scams and fraud involving cryptocurrency in 2024.
According to the report released on April 23, the IC3 received more than 140,000 complaints referencing cryptocurrency in 2024, resulting in roughly $9.3 billion in losses. The bureau reported that individuals over the age of 60 had been the most affected by crypto-related fraud, with roughly 33,000 complaints and $2.8 billion in losses.
“Last year saw a new record for losses reported to IC3, totaling a staggering $16.6 billion,” said the report. “Fraud represented the bulk of reported losses in 2024, and ransomware was again the most pervasive threat to critical infrastructure, with complaints rising 9% from 2023,” notes the report, adding that, as a group, those over the age of 60 suffered the most losses and submitted the most complaints.
The report added that the resultant losses had increased roughly 66% since 2023, from roughly $5.6 billion to $9.3 billion. The most significant percentage of losses occurred due to crypto investment schemes, while the largest number of complaints related to “sextortion” schemes, in which fraudsters manipulated photos and videos to create explicit content. Other scams included schemes involving the use of crypto ATMs or kiosks.
Related: Crypto scam uses trade war fears to lure victims, Canadian watchdogs warn
In February, the FBI reported its “Operation Level Up” had saved potential victims of crypto fraud roughly $285 million between January 2024 and January 2025. However, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis speculated that 2025 could see the largest number of scams to date, given that generative AI is making the practice “more scalable and affordable for bad actors to conduct.”
Globally, Chainalysis estimated that there had been roughly $41 billion in illicit crypto volume in 2024, with roughly 25% of the funds involved with “hacking, extortion, trafficking, or scams.” Some of the most high-profile crimes included the $1.4 billion in crypto stolen from the Bybit exchange in March and North Korean hackers taking more than $1.3 billion.
Magazine: Trump’s crypto ventures raise conflict of interest, insider trading questions
United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently called for “Bretton Woods institutions,” such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to reorient themselves, a signal that the global monetary order could be shifting.
Speaking at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) on April 23, Bessent called on the IMF and the World Bank to correct trade imbalances and protect the value of fiat currencies against exchange rate risk.
“The Bretton Woods institutions must step back from their sprawling and unfocused agendas,” Bessent said. He added:
“The IMF’s mission is to promote international monetary cooperation, facilitate the balanced growth of international trade, encourage economic growth, and discourage harmful policies like competitive exchange rate depreciation.”
Bessent’s call for the IMF to correct trade imbalances between countries, specifically the US and China, coincides with a decline in the US dollar to three-year lows, $36 trillion in US government debt, and stiff economic competition from China.
Investor and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio argues that the world is experiencing a global macroeconomic shift that will upend the post-WWII financial order and eventually replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency, potentially with a digital form of money.
Related: Trump tariffs reignite idea that Bitcoin could outlast US dollar
The Bretton Woods Agreement
The Bretton Woods Agreement was signed in 1944 and pegged the currencies of 44 countries to the value of the US dollar, which, at that point, was pegged to the value of gold at $35 per ounce.
Eliminating complex foreign exchange risks between freely floating currencies to make global trade more efficient was the primary goal of the agreement.
In August 1971, US President Richard Nixon announced the end of the dollar’s convertibility to gold — formally ending the Bretton Woods agreement in a move that was supposed to be temporary.
“Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it does today,” Nixon incorrectly told Americans during his now-infamous address.
The IMF and the World Bank, which were spawned from the Bretton Woods agreement, continue operating in an attempt to curb the effects of free-floating fiat currencies on the foreign exchange market.
Bessent eyes stablecoins to protect the US dollar, BTC advocates have another idea
Speaking at the White House Digital Asset Summit on March 7, Bessent said stablecoins could drive international demand for US dollars and US government debt instruments.
Bessent added that the Trump administration will use stablecoins to protect the US dollar and its status as the global reserve currency.
Bitcoin maximalist Max Keiser argued against this plan, predicting that gold-backed stablecoins would outcompete dollar-pegged tokens due to the desire for low-volatility, inflation-resistant money.
In March this year, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote that the $36 trillion US national debt could drive investors to Bitcoin (BTC) as market participants start to see BTC as a better store of value than the US dollar.
Bitwise executive Jeff Park voiced a similar prediction in February, focused on the effects of US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
The analyst wrote that the tumult from the ongoing trade war would cause worldwide inflation, which would cause individuals to seek alternative stores of value like Bitcoin, driving its price much higher in the long term.
Magazine: Bitcoin payments are being undermined by centralized stablecoins
The Alabama Securities Commission, a financial regulator for the US state, dropped its lawsuit against crypto exchange Coinbase, which accused the company of violating securities laws by offering staking services to clients.
The regulator cited the ongoing work between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the crypto industry to develop clear crypto regulations as the primary reason for dropping the litigation, according to the April 23 legal filing shared by Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal.
The filing read:
“The SEC has announced the formation of a new task force to, among other things, provide guidance for the promulgation of rules regarding the regulation of cryptocurrency products and services.”
“Due to the foregoing, the Commission believes it would be apt to allow policymakers time to consider regulatory constructs,” the filing continued.
The Alabama Securities Commission filed its lawsuit against Coinbase in June 2023, alongside state regulators from California, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
The Commission’s dropped lawsuit reflects the positive regulatory shift toward cryptocurrencies in the United States as reform at the federal level matriculates into state-level regulatory policy.
Related: Oregon targets Coinbase after SEC drops its federal lawsuit
US states drop Coinbase lawsuit but half still holding out
Five of the 10 states that filed the litigation against Coinbase for its staking services have dropped their lawsuits.
On March 13, Vermont’s Department of Financial Regulation became the first of the 10 state regulators to drop the staking lawsuit against Coinbase.
South Carolina’s securities watchdog was the next to drop the 2023 litigation against Coinbase, dismissing the lawsuit on March 28.
Grewal announced that Kentucky’s Department of Financial Institutions followed Vermont and South Carolina’s lead on April 1 by also dismissing its Coinbase lawsuit.
Despite the domino effect of states rescinding litigation against the crypto exchange, the Coinbase chief legal officer said that more work needs to be done.
“Five holdouts are still electing to waste taxpayer resources on lawsuits, and four of those have banned staking with Coinbase, depriving consumers of the right to earn on their platform of choice,” Grewal wrote in an April 23 X post.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
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