Eurotopics.net

In Austria, a comprehensive lockdown will be reintroduced for at least three weeks starting Tuesday. Schools and almost all shops will have to close, and restrictions on leaving home will apply around the clock. "Do not meet with anyone," Chancellor Sebastian Kurz told the population in dramatic terms. Austria currently has one of the highest infection rates in Europe. How did it come to this?

A few days after the resignation of Boris Johnson's director of communications Lee Cain his chief adviser Dominic Cummings also has left. Just a few weeks before the Brexit transition phase ends, two longtime companions of Johnson's - both of whom are considered staunch Brexiteers - are leaving Downing Street. Does this bode well for a deal with the EU?

A fire broke out in the intensive care unit of a hospital in the city of Piatra Neamţ in northeastern Romania on Saturday. Ten Covid-19 patients died and seven people suffered severe burns, including a doctor on duty in the ward. A short circuit is suspected to have caused the blaze. Romania's media are appalled and examine the causes.

The lockdowns and partial lockdowns imposed by most European governments amid the second wave of the pandemic threaten to leave companies and individuals on the brink of financial collapse. This has reignited the discussion about what measures should be taken to help them. The press debates who needs support most urgently and whether state aid is at all the right approach.

In Minsk, a 31-year-old demonstrator has died of head injuries inflicted during his brutal arrest. He had tried to stop a snatch squad dressed in civilian clothing from removing the red and white ribbons residents had placed on a fence in the courtyard of an apartment building in the Square of Change. He is not the first casualty of the protests against the regime, which have not subsided despite the government's harsh crackdown.