* Brazil will step up its Paris Accord targets at COP26 as it tries to recover credibility for its environmental policies and its stewardship of the Amazon rainforest, the country's top diplomat for climate talks said in an interview.
* An expert panel voted overwhelmingly to recommend the US Food and Drug Administration authorize the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, saying the benefits of inoculation outweigh the risks.
* China reported 59 new confirmed coronavirus cases for Oct. 26 compared with 43 a day earlier, the country's health authority said on Wednesday.
* Russia on Wednesday reported 1,123 new COVID-19 deaths, its highest one-day toll of the pandemic amid a surge in cases that has forced officials to partially reimpose some lockdown measures.
* Poland reported over 8,361 daily COVID-19 cases and 133 deaths on Wednesday, the health minstry said. Since the pandemic began Poland, a country of around 38 million, has reported 2,990,509 cases and 76,672 deaths.
* Hungary reported a jump in daily COVID-19 cases to 3,125 on Wednesday, its highest daily tally since April, the government said, urging people to take up vaccines that are widely available nationwide.
* Bulgaria's tally of coronavirus infections has risen by 6,813 in the past 24 hours, a record daily increase as the European Union's least vaccinated country grapples with a fourth wave of the pandemic, official data showed on Wednesday.
* The Czech Republic reported 6,274 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, almost doubling in a week as the country struggles to contain a new wave of the pandemic. The latest number is the highest since April 7 in the country of 10.7 million.
* US consumers, itching for a change of scene after more than a year-and-a-half of constricted pandemic life, are as eager to travel as at any time since COVID-19 sent the world into rolling waves of lockdowns, and now a record number of Americans plan to get out of the country in the next six months.
* Spain, which hit the grim milestone of 5 million cases during the pandemic, will give a booster injection manufactured by Pfizer or Moderna to people who received Johnson & Johnson's single-shot vaccine.
* Australia's drugs regulator on Wednesday provisionally approved a booster dose of Pfizer Inc's COVID-19 vaccine for people above 18 years old as first-dose vaccination levels in the country's adult population neared 90%.
* Brazil registered 442 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday and 13,424 new COVID-19 cases, according to Health Ministry data. The country has now registered a total of 606,246 COVID-19 deaths and 21,748,984 total confirmed cases.
* Mexico added 4,538 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 392 more fatalities on Tuesday, health ministry data showed, bringing the country's overall death toll from the pandemic to 286,888 and the total number of cases to 3,788,986.
* Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Ed Bastian said travelers should be prepared for initial long lines when the United States lifts international travel restrictions for fully vaccinated travelers on Nov. 8.
* Democratic and Republican US lawmakers urged President Joe Biden's administration not to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey and said they were confident Congress would block any such exports.
* Tech shares slipped and short-term Treasury yields jumped as investors expect inflation to prompt interest rate hikes, with a hotter-than-forecast reading in Australia the latest sign of prices pressuring central bankers to act.
* Sudan's armed forces chief defended the military's seizure of power, saying he had ousted the government to avoid civil war, while protesters took to the streets on Tuesday to demonstrate against the takeover after a day of deadly clashes.
* Security and medical sources said on Tuesday unknown gunmen attacked a village in Diyala province, east of Iraq, killing 11 people and wounding 15 people.
