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OTTAWA -- A lawyer for Hassan Diab says a French appeal court's order that the Ottawa sociology professor stand trial for a decades-old synagogue bombing is the latest misstep in a long odyssey of injustice. Donald Bayne tells a news conference the decision delivered today in Paris flies in the face of the evidence. Source

HARARE, ZIMBABWE -- Zimbabwe on Wednesday buried three top officials, including two cabinet ministers, in a single ceremony at a shrine reserved almost exclusively for the ruling elite as a virulent wave of the coronavirus takes a devastating toll on the country. Source

MONTREAL -- Quebec reported 1,328 new cases of COVID-19 over the last 24 hours and 53 new deaths, keeping up its recent trend of case counts near or below 1,500. The average number of new cases per day in the past week is now 1,442. Source

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS -- The head of the World Food Program said Wednesday that the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to strengthen vulnerable supply chains to impoverished nations struggling to feed their populations. David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations' Nobel Peace Prize-winning food program, said that the pandemic put further stress on supply chains getting food to the hungry. Source

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES -- The U.S. military said Wednesday it again flew a B-52 bomber over the Middle East “to deter potential aggression” amid tensions with Iran, the first such flight under U.S. President Joe Biden. Source

In the David and Goliath saga surrounding the struggling retail chain GameStop, Goliath has fallen. Two Goliaths, actually. A pair of professional investment firms that placed big bets that money-losing video game retailer GameStop's stock will crash have largely abandoned their positions. Source

Battling a COVID-19 resurgence driven by what health officials say is a more infectious variant, South Africa is preparing to roll out its first vaccines to front-line health-care workers. A delivery of one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine was expected to arrive Wednesday at Johannesburg's international airport. Source

OTTAWA -- The Canadian Armed Forces is grappling with a surge in the number of troops who have been infected with COVID-19 over the past month, even as a growing number of service members have started receiving vaccinations from the illness. Source

TORONTO -- COVID-19 case numbers in Ontario have dropped to levels unseen in more than two months with fewer than 1,700 infections reported Wednesday. The 1,670 new cases are down from the 1,740 reported by the province a day earlier. Source

Poorer countries face a best-case scenario of a six- to eight-month lag behind richer nations in getting access to COVID-19 vaccines, philanthropist Bill Gates said on Wednesday. In an interview with Reuters, Gates called the rollout of the first COVID-19 shots a "super-hard allocation problem" that was putting pressure on global institutions, governments and drugmakers. Source