Austria's government announced Saturday a second mass shutdown and a curfew starting next week until the end of November, in an attempt to halt rocketing coronavirus infection numbers.
Canada will aim to welcome 1.2 million immigrants from 2021 to 2023 to make up for a shortfall this year blamed on the pandemic, the immigration minister announced Friday.
Belgium, the country with by some measures the world's worst coronavirus outbreak, will impose tighter lockdown rules from Monday, closing non-essential businesses and restricting household visits.
Slovakia on Saturday begins a programme to screen its entire population for coronavirus with antigen tests in what would be a global first, but critics have said the plan is poorly thought out.
The United States passed nine million reported coronavirus cases on Friday and broke its own record for daily new infections for the second day in a row, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University, as Covid-19 surges days before the country chooses its next president.
One of the three victims of an extremist knife attack in a church in France Thursday was a 44-year-old Brazilian mother of three, the Brazil foreign ministry announced.
