Austria will soon bar the unvaccinated from entering a long list of public places, among them bars, cafes and hotels, the country's chancellor said, pointing to an unexpectedly rapid surge in Covid-19 cases.

The entry ban will come into effect next week and will apply to cafes, bars, restaurants, theaters, ski lodges, hotels, hairdressers and any event involving more than 25 people, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg told reporters on Friday. The move could affect a large swath of Austria's population, with some 36% of its residents still not fully immunized against the virus.

"The evolution is exceptional and the occupancies of intensive-care beds are increasing significantly faster than we had expected," Schallenberg said in announcing the new restrictions, as cited by Reuters.

After a fascinating week in America, some important trends are clear - with the most obvious being that voters expect much more from Joe Biden, increasing the need for the Democrats to get their agenda through Congress.

Headlines across America are proclaiming the Tuesday elections as a major setback for President Joe Biden. Even Gayle King of left-leaning CBS called election night "a major victory for Republicans," and CNN's Democratic political commentator, Van Jones, declared it a "five-alarm fire" for Democrats. While the election results have focused the attention of the left-leaning media on Democratic weaknesses, the voters were clearly paying attention to issues, too, because even in an "off, off year," the election had a record turnout.

Left-leaning Virginia casts its vote against the Democrats

Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic governor of Virginia whose last term ended in January 2018, lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin in a state claimed handily by Biden a year ago. With 99% of the vote in, Youngkin won by a 2% margin.

From July 2016 to July 2017, the popular McAuliffe had served as chair of the National Governors Association, and from 2001-2005 he was chair of the Democratic National Committee. The race is being seen as a significant upset because such strong gubernatorial credentials and campaign experience made him the natural go-to guy to be the next governor of a left-leaning state, running against a tycoon-turned-politician like Youngkin.

McAuliffe's strategy of turning Youngkin's Donald-Trump-style credentials against him failed in a mostly blue state, and Trump seized that failure to claim, "The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before." Youngkin made the cultural issues that energize MAGA voters the core of his campaign and turned the election map of Virginia into a blood-bath of red as a swath of counties voted Republican, except a handful in the most urban areas of the east coast and a single island of blue in the heart of the state, Albemarle County.

One particularly hot-button issue, which Youngkin repeatedly raised, was giving parents much more say in what is taught in the state's public schools. Youngkin had often quoted and criticized McAuliffe for proclaiming,

"I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."

In a CNN exit poll, more than half of voters said parents should have more say in what is taught in schools, indicating that core issue for Youngkin drove the voter turnout. Democrats also appear to have lost their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates with four races not yet officially called.

If anyone still doubts whether former US president Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, new revelations this week should put the question to bed for good, with an FBI document showing it to be a fabrication.

The revelations in question take the form of an indictment laid against a Russian citizen living in the United States by the name of Igor Danchenko. The accusation against him is that he lied to the FBI when being questioned about his role in the "Russiagate" affair. But the real scandal is not in the untruths he supposedly told officers, but in what the charges reveal about how Russiagate came into being.

The origin of the scandal was the infamous "Steele dossier," assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned by the American company Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump on behalf of the US Democratic Party. Steele then paid Danchenko to do the work for him.

What the indictment reveals for the first time is that Danchenko in turn made use of the services of somebody referred to as "PR Executive-1," who has been identified by the press as one Chuck Dolan. And it's here that things begin to get truly interesting.

Heroin is almost impossible to get in North America, where it has been virtually replaced by fentanyl, Vice News says - leading some sarcastic commenters to wonder if this means the CIA will ask Congress for more money for coups.

It has become increasingly hard to find heroin in the US and Canada, replaced by the more dangerous synthetic substance. What is sold as heroin in the streets is more often than not laced with fentanyl, according to a Vice report titled 'Drug Users Are Nostalgic for 'Old-School Heroin' as Fentanyl Takes Over'.

"Fentanyl sucks," one of the upset drug users interviewed by the outlet said. "It doesn't last long, it doesn't provide you much euphoria, so it doesn't offer me much utility. It's just fentanyl around now, and I fear it's going to be like that forever."

Australia has accomplished its goal of fully vaccinating 80% of people aged 16 and older, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said as the country eases Covid-19 restrictions.

"We did it! We have hit the target of 80% of all Australians aged 16+ fully vaccinated, as set out in the National Plan," Morrison announced on Facebook.

"A huge thank you to everyone. This has been a massive Australian national effort, and the work doesn't stop here," the PM said, adding that 36 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered nationwide. He thanked the country's healthcare workers and pharmacies for their efforts during the immunization campaign. Morrison said 99% of Australians aged over 70 have received at least one dose, and 90% of them are fully vaccinated.

Royal Marines commandos 'dominated' US troops and forced them into a humiliating surrender just days into a mass training exercise in the Mojave desert, it has been revealed today.

British forces took part in a five-day mock battle at the US Marine Corps' Twentynine Palms base in southern California, one of the largest military training areas in the world, and achieved a decisive victory against their American counterparts.

The Royal Marines, along with allied forces from Canada, the Netherlands and the UAE, destroyed or rendered inoperable nearly every US asset and finished the exercise holding more than 65 per cent of the training area, after beginning with less than 20 per cent.

Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced a lawsuit against the Biden Administration's unconstitutional Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employer vaccine mandate. As soon as the unlawful emergency temporary standard (ETS) is published in the Federal Register tomorrow, the lawsuit will be immediately filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. For more information on the court action, click here.

"We started with 15 days to slow the spread and now it's get jabbed or lose your job," said Governor Ron DeSantis. "We're supposed to be a government of laws, not a government of men. This OSHA rule is 500 pages of a government of bureaucracy, a government that is being run by executive edict, not a government bound by constitutional constraints. The State of Florida will immediately challenge the OSHA rule in court because it's inconsistent with the Constitution and not legally authorized through Congressional statutes. There is no federal police power and the federal government cannot unilaterally impose medical policy under the guise of workplace regulation. Individuals should make informed choices about their own healthcare. It is important to stand up for people's individual ability to make decisions for themselves. And the practical result is that this is going to exacerbate a lot of the existing problems that we are seeing with the economy."

The State Department is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the identification or location of key leaders of the group that launched a ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline back in May.

"The U.S. Department of State announces a reward offer of up to $10,000,000 for information leading to the identification or location of any individual(s) who hold(s) a key leadership position in the DarkSide ransomware variant transnational organized crime group," officials announced in a Nov. 4 statement.

"In addition, the Department is also offering a reward offer of up to $5,000,000 for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction in any country of any individual conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in a DarkSide variant ransomware incident," the statement noted.

Doesn't Putin respect Soviet Russian accomplishments including the sacrifices made to put down Hitler? How could Putin be a true anti-imperialist if he is an anti-revolutionary?

A scandal arose this week as President Putin took some time to denounce the Bolshevik Revolution at the Valdai Discussion Club saying:

"Just over a century ago, Russia objectively faced serious problems... Russia could have dealt with its problems gradually and in a civilised manner. But revolutionary shocks led to the collapse and disintegration of a great power... These examples from our history allow us to say that revolutions are not a way to settle a crisis but a way to aggravate it. No revolution was worth the damage it did to the human potential."

How could a statesman so critical of the abuses of capitalism, and so masterful in combatting structures of modern imperialism, bemoan the Bolshevik revolution which gave rise to Soviet Russia? Doesn't Putin respect Soviet Russian accomplishments including the sacrifices made to put down Hitler? How could Putin be a true anti-imperialist if he is an anti-revolutionary?

Peng Shuai, an ex-world number one doubles player, purportedly made a sexual assault claim about former vice premier Zhang Gaoli in a post on the Twitter-like Weibo on Tuesday. The post has since been removed.

China's online censors Thursday scrubbed out a tennis star's reported allegations that a powerful politician sexually assaulted her, the first time that the #MeToo movement has reached the highest echelons of the ruling Communist Party.

Peng Shuai, an ex-world number one doubles player, purportedly made the claim about former vice premier Zhang Gaoli in a post on the Twitter-like Weibo on Tuesday.

Peng reportedly alleged that Zhang, who is now in his seventies, had "forced" her into sex and they had an on-off relationship that lasted several years.