Locals flock to festive Red Square despite Moscow virus spike

Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company returns to the stage after an enforced 18-month absence due to the coronavirus pandemic, at a specially built open-air theatre in the bard's home town. The cast rehearses Phillip Breen's production of The Comedy of Errors.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announces a snap lockdown in Australia's second-largest city, bringing the total number of Australians under stay-at-home orders to around 12 million. Melbourne and surrounding Victoria will join Sydney in a 'hard and fast' lockdown, Andrews says, as Australia battles an outbreak of the Delta variant.

Managers in Germany are not feeling overly optimistic about the coming months, a major business confidence barometer shows. Two major concerns are clouding their outlook.

One of America's largest events -- Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago -- is underway this weekend, to the delight of fans and to the despair of others. The four day music festival is expected to draw more than 100,000 people to downtown Chicago each day, at a moment when coronavirus cases are on the rise and vaccinations have plateaued. Lollapalooza has said their policy is for unvaccinated people to wear masks and show a recent negative Covid test.

Crowds of commuters emerge from a train station in Tokyo during morning rush hour. Last week Japan extended the virus state of emergency in Tokyo due to rising cases of the coronavirus in the capital.

Nearly 1,200 people received their Covid-19 vaccine jab in one day says an El Menzah vaccination centre official in Tunis, as the vaccination campaign speeds up in Tunisia, which has suffered the biggest number of Covid-19 deaths in North Africa. The country, which has been struggling to contain its outbreak of Delta variant, hopes to vaccinate half of its population by mid-October.

Indonesia's coronavirus death toll topped 100,000 on Wednesday as the country struggles to control the spread of the Delta variant. The impact of the pandemic can be seen at the Rorotan public cemetery, one of the biggest Covid burial sites in the nation.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces that the country is heading for a three-day lockdown after identifying a single case of locally transmitted Covid-19 suspected to be the Delta variant. New Zealand had not recorded any infections in the community for six months.

The governor of Nigeria's Katsina State has told locals to arm themselves against would-be attackers, saying security wasn't only the government's responsibility. Aminu Masari has blamed residents for giving in too easily to attackers amid ongoing kidnappings and raids by armed gangs.

Russia has reacted calmly to the changeover of power in Afghanistan. It was better prepared than the West for the Taliban takeover. It may even recognize the leadership of the terrorist militia.

Two cars are seen destroyed in Kabul after the United States said it carried out an air strike on Sunday night in Kabul on an IS-prepared car bomb. The US military said it was "aware of reports of civilian casualties" from the strike, which came after an attack outside the airport late last week killed more than 100 people, including 13 American troops.

One year after singer Akon laid the first stone of the $6 billion futuristic city he plans to build in his native Senegal, the site remains grassland. Construction of "Akon City," a project due to feature ultramodern twisting skyscrapers, was already meant to have begun near the Atlantic Ocean village of Mbodiene. But building work is yet to start, prompting residents who were hoping for jobs to wonder about its future.