Bloomberg Microsoft Corp.’s agreement to acquire 5G software maker Affirmed Networks Inc. valued the company at about $1.35 billion. Microsoft announced the deal without disclosing financial details. Microsoft already serves telecom customers and struck an agreement with AT&T Inc. last year with the aim of moving more the carrier’s network to its platform. Microsoft has been building its cloud computing ...

Bloomberg The North American International Auto Show said it’s canceling the industry’s biggest event scheduled in June and will resume the show in 2021. The venue, TCF Center, will be repurposed as a field hospital for Covid-19 cases, the organisers said. The Detroit Auto Show will resume on June 11, 2021, with the public show scheduled for June 19-26. “Although ...

Bloomberg WeWork continued to cut more staff as part of a months-long effort to lower expenses after its failed initial public offering last year, the company said. The New York-based co-working firm axed about 250 jobs in its development department, according to two people familiar with the matter. The reductions aren’t related to the impact of the coronavirus, one of ...

Bloomberg Getting the $350 billion in loans for small businesses in the record US stimulus package into business owners’ hands before a wave of closures will strain the nation’s network of lenders and regulators as never before. The magnitude of the plan is unprecedented for the Small Business Administration (SBA), an agency that distributed $28 billion in fiscal year 2019 ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump abruptly abandoned his ambition to return American life to normal by Easter, heeding advice from the government’s top doctors that re-opening the US economy in two weeks risks greater death as the coronavirus outbreak accelerates. In a stark shift from two weeks of measured optimism, the president said his guidelines for Americans to practice “social distancing” ...

Bloomberg Coronavirus deaths in Italy and Spain rose above 17,000, keeping Europe focussed on further restricting people’s movements and avoiding a health-care collapse. Italy, the country with the most reported deaths, recorded 756 new fatalities on March 29. Spain’s Health Ministry said 838 people died from the virus over a period of 24 hours, its highest daily number yet. Both ...

Bloomberg Russia moved towards a lockdown across the world’s largest country by area to try and halt the spread of coronavirus, following Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s order for residents to stay in their homes. Heads of all Russia’s regions should adopt similar restrictions as those announced in the capital and surrounding areas, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at a televised ...

Bloomberg Venezuela National Assembly President Juan Guaido called for a broad coalition to form a “national emergency government” to replace Nicolas Maduro’s regime and get financing to save lives as the coronavirus crisis spreads. Such a government “must be broad and include all the necessary political and social sectors to confront this severe emergency,” Guaido said in a video message ...

Bloomberg In small groups and large crowds, through inner-city lanes and down interstate highways, hundreds of thousands of India’s poorest are slowly making a desperate journey on foot back to their villages in a mass exodus unseen since the days immediately after India’s independence in 1947. For many, it’s a matter of life and death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s order ...

Bloomberg French President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating surged in March, even though doubts about the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis grew in recent days, two opinion polls show. Macron’s rating rose 11 percentage points from February to a nearly two-year high of 43% this month, according an Ifop poll published in Le Journal du Dimanche on March 29. The ...