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Harriet Tubman to be first African-American on U.S. currency –
Anti-slavery crusader Harriet Tubman will become the first African-American on the face of U.S. paper currency, and the first woman in more than a century, when she replaces former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. The U.S. Treasury Department said on Wednesday that Tubman, who was born into slavery in the early 1820s and went on to help hundreds of slaves escape, would take the center spot on the bill, while Jackson, a slave owner, would move to the back. Introduced alongside a slew of changes to the $5 and $10 notes as well, the redesign gives the Treasury “a chance to open the aperture to reflect more of America’s history,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said. A new $10 bill will add images of five female leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, including Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to the back, while keeping founding father Alexander Hamilton on the front. The reverse of a new $5 note will show former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., officials said. Former President Abraham Lincoln will remain on the front. [Reuters]

Victoria Wood dies aged 62 after cancer battle –
Comedian, singer and writer Victoria Wood has died after “a short but brave” battle with cancer aged 62. Her publicist said the star “died peacefully at her north London home with family” on Wednesday. Wood’s long-time comedy partner Julie Walters said she was “too heart sore to comment – the loss of her is incalculable”. Wood found fame in the 1980s and was best known for her BBC sketch Acorn Antiques and comedy Dinnerladies. She won five Baftas including two for her one-off ITV drama Housewife, 49. [BBC]
Victoria Wood in 2012

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Clockwork | A Time-Lapse & Hyper-Lapse Reel – In 4K from Tyler Fairbank on Vimeo.

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Victoria Wood’s best One-liners [The Independent]

“Sexual harassment at work. . . is it a problem for the self-employed?”

“My children won’t even eat chips because some know-all bastard at school told them a potato was a vegetable.”

“My boyfriend had a sex manual but he was dyslexic. I was lying there and he was looking for my vinegar.”

“Jogging is for people who aren’t intelligent enough to watch television.”

“People think I hate sex. I don’t. I just don’t like things that stop you seeing the television properly.”

“In my day we didn’t have sex education, we just picked up what we could off the television.”

“We’d like to apologise to viewers in the north. It must be awful for them.”

“I sometimes think that being widowed is God’s way of telling you to come off the Pill.”

“I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don’t know who got my moped but I’ve been driving that Peugeot for years.”

“Life’s not fair, is it? Some of us drink champagne in the fast lane, and some of us eat our sandwiches by the loose chippings on the A597.”

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• War in Afghanistan (2015–present)
  • April 2016 Kabul attack
    • The death toll from yesterday’s Taliban attack on the National Directorate of Security in Kabul rises to 64, with 347 others wounded, according to the Afghan Interior Ministry. (Reuters)
• War in Donbass
  • A Ukrainian military spokesman says three of its soldiers were killed by a mortar attack in the country’s east, the heaviest toll reported in the region in nearly two months. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
• War in North-West Pakistan
  • Pakistani Taliban militants, in two attacks, kill seven police officers who were guarding medical workers administering polio vaccinations in Karachi. (The Guardian)

Arts and culture

• Former slave Harriet Tubman replaces Andrew Jackson on the United States twenty-dollar bill while Alexander Hamilton keeps his place on the ten after the public consultation process. (The New York Times) (Reuters)

Business and economics

• The Kuwait Oil Workers Union ends their three-day strike that had cut Kuwait’s crude production by nearly half. (Gulf News) (CNBC)
• Mitsubishi admits that its fuel efficiency tests broke Japanese rules for about 625,000 “ultrasmall” vehicles sold in Japan. (BBC) (UPI)
• The European Union accuses Google of abusing the dominance of its Android by preloading its own apps. (Irish Times)
• Volkswagen emissions scandal
  • Volkswagen and United States officials agree in principle on a deal where the automaker could buy back up to 500,000 diesel cars. (Reuters)

Disasters and accidents

• 2016 Ecuador earthquake
  • A magnitude-6.1 aftershock has struck off the coast of Ecuador at 3:33 a.m. local time, the US Geological Survey says, in the same area as the massive earthquake on Saturday. (USGS), (Reuters via Asia-Pacific News)
  • People in Ecuador start burying their dead as the death toll from the earthquake passes 500. (AP)
  • President Rafael Correa announces a sales tax increase, and a one-time levy on millionaires as the country deals with the enormous damage from this disaster. (AP)
  • The death toll rises to 570 with 163 people listed as missing. Those made homeless climbs to over 23,500. (AP)
• European migrant crisis
  • Up to 500 people are feared to have drowned off the coast of Libya in the Mediterranean last week, in what would be the deadliest migrant shipwreck in months. (The Guardian)
• A small-plane crashes near Chugiak, Anchorage in Alaska, killing at least four people, according to the Anchorage Fire Department. (Alaska Dispatch News)
• Hundreds of people are evacuated following a large explosion at an oil facility in Coatzacoalcos in southern Mexico. (BBC)

International relations

• Yemeni Crisis
  • The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the United States agree to carry out joint naval patrols to prevent Iranian arms shipments reaching Yemen, the Gulf bloc’s secretary general Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said on Wednesday, following a meeting with United States Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Iran denies it supplies weapons to the Houthis in Yemen. (Reuters)
• Ukraine–European Union relations
  • The European Union proposes offering Ukraine visa-free travel to its members. However, it is still unclear how fast the liberalization process will be dealt with in the European Parliament and European Council, where some EU member states might want to slow down the process. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
• NATO–Russia relations
  • NATO reopens informal talks with Russia for the first time in nearly two years. According to the Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg “NATO and Russia have profound and persistent disagreements, today’s meeting did not change that.” (Euronews)
• United Kingdom–United States relations
  • The United Kingdom’s Foreign Office issues a travel advisory for gay people concerning travel to parts of the United States due to new legislation in North Carolina and Mississippi. (The Independent)

Law and crime

• A women’s rights group files a lawsuit in the Philippine Commission on Human Rights against Rodrigo Duterte for his rape remarks. (The New York Times)
• Australian media reports that a deal has been reached on an alleged kidnapping case against Tara Brown and the Australian 60 Minutes crew. (9 News)
• The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany rules that an anti-terrorism law is unconstitutional and violates right to privacy. (DPA)
• The U.S. state of Utah declares pornography a “public health risk” in a move Governor of Utah Gary Herbert says is to “protect our families and our young people”. The bill, signed by the governor, does not ban pornography in the state but does call for greater “efforts to prevent pornography exposure and addiction”. (BBC)
• Anders Behring Breivik, a convicted mass murderer in the 2011 Norway attacks, wins a human rights case against the government of Norway. (BBC)
• Flint water crisis
  • The first criminal charges are laid against three people, two state officials and a municipal official, involved in the Flint water crisis. (New York Times)
• Panama Papers
  • In a letter to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the United States Department of Justice announces it is opening a criminal investigation into tax avoidance schemes exposed by the Panama Papers with U.S. attorney Preet Bharara asking the ICIJ for help. (BBC)
• Two people are burned alive amid xenophobic riots in Lusaka, Zambia. The riots started after rumours spread that Rwandans were behind recent ritual killings in the city. More than 250 people have been arrested after more than 60 Rwandan-owned shops were looted in two days of violence. (BBC)
• Drug policy of Canada
  • Canada‘s Minister of Health Jane Philpott says federal legislation to legalize marijuana will be introduced in spring of 2017. (CBC)
• The United States Supreme Court rules that almost $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in attacks blamed on Iran, including the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. (Reuters)

Politics and elections

• Yasri Khan, a senior member of Swedish Green Party (part of the Government coalition), who was refusing to shake hands with a female reporter on grounds that it violated his Muslim faith, announces that he is quitting politics. (The Local)
• Philippine presidential election, 2016
  • Philippine presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte reneges on his apology and denies a statement by his party, PDP-Laban, which said he was sorry for his rape comments. (The Manila Bulletin)
• 2016 Macedonian protests
  • Protests continue against President Gjorge Ivanov in Skopje, Macedonia. Opposition leader Zoran Zaev said he will only take part in EU-brokered negotiations with the government if certain conditions are met. (The Irish Times)

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