Nation & World Glance

King Charles III won’t appear on new Australian bank notes

CANBERRA, Australia – King Charles III won’t feature on Australia’s new $5 bill, the nation’s central bank announced Thursday, signaling a phasing out of the British monarchy from Australian bank notes, although he is still expected to feature on coins.

A new Indigenous design will replace the previous portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II, Australia’s Reserve Bank said, a move which honors “the culture and history of the First Australians.”

“The other side of the $5 banknote will continue to feature the Australian parliament,” the bank said in a statement.

The $5 bill is Australia’s only bank note to feature the monarch.

It said the decision followed consultation with the government, which supported the change.

Black history class revised by College Board amid criticism

BATON ROUGE, La. – High school senior Kahlila Bandele is used to courses that don’t address the African American experience. Then there’s her 9 a.m. class. This week, it spanned topics from Afro-caribbean migration to jazz.

The discussion in her Advanced Placement course on African American studies touched on figures from Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X to Jimi Hendrix and Rihanna. In her AP European History course, she said, “we’re not discussing Black people at all” – even though they were colonized by Europeans.

Her school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is one of 60 schools around the country testing the new course, which has gained national attention since Florida Gov. Ron Desantis threatened to ban it in his state. The rejection has stirred new political debate over how schools teach about race.

The official curriculum for the course, released Wednesday by the College Board, downplays some components that had drawn criticism from Desantis and other conservatives. Topics including Black Lives Matter,

slavery reparations and queer life are not part of the exam. Instead, they are included only on a sample list states and school systems can choose from for student projects.

The College Board, which oversees AP exams, said revisions to the course were substantially complete before Desantis shared his objections.

FBI searches Biden’s vacation home; no classified documents

WASHINGTON – The FBI searched President Joe Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Wednesday without turning up any classified documents, the latest turn in an extraordinary series of searches of his and his predecessor’s properties.

Agents did take some handwritten notes and other materials relating to Biden’s time as vice president for review, just as they had when they searched his Wilmington home last month where they also found classified items. Investigators searched his former office at a Washington think tank that bears his name in November, but it isn’t clear whether they took anything.

The Biden searches, conducted with his blessing, have come as investigators work to determine how classified information from his time as a senator and vice president came to wind up in his home and former office – and whether any mishandling involved criminal intent or was merely a mistake in a city where unauthorized treatment of classified documents is not unheard-of.

Law enforcement searches of property are a routine part of criminal probes, but there is nothing ordinary about the FBI scouring a sitting president’s home, even as Biden and his aides have sought to contrast his actions with those of his predecessor.

Former President Donald Trump is facing a special counsel criminal investigation into his retention of several hundred classified documents and other government records at his Mara-lago estate in Florida – and his resistance to giving them up, which led to an FBI warrant and search to seize them last August.

Russia said eyeing eastern Ukraine push; Kyiv targets graft

KYIV, Ukraine – Russia is mustering its military might in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, officials said Wednesday, in what Kyiv suspects is preparation for an offensive as the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion approaches.

Also Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government continued its crackdown on alleged corruption with the dismissal of several high-ranking officials, prominent lawmaker David Arakhamia said.

Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform in a country long gripped by graft. The latest allegations come as Western allies are channeling billions of dollars to help Kyiv fight Moscow and as the Ukrainian government is introducing reforms so it can potentially join the European Union one day.

Ukraine’s Security Service said on the Telegram messaging app that an operation on Wednesday targeted “corrupt officials who undermine the country’s economy and the stable functioning of the defense-industrial complex.” It identified one as a former Defense Ministry official accused of embezzling state funds through the purchase of nearly 3,000 bulletproof vests that would inadequately protect Ukrainian soldiers. Summing up the day’s focus on fighting corruption, Zelenskyy declared in his nightly video address Wednesday: “We will not allow anyone to weaken our state.”

Day of disruption in UK as hundreds of thousands join strike

LONDON — Thousands of schools in the U.K. closed some or all of their classrooms, train services were paralyzed and delays were expected at airports on the biggest day of industrial action Britain has seen in more than a decade, as unions stepped up pressure on the government Wednesday to provide better pay amid a cost-of-living crisis.

The Trades Union Congress, a federation of unions, estimated that up to a half-million workers, including teachers, university staff, civil servants, border officials and train drivers, went on strike across the country.

More walkouts, including by nurses and ambulance workers, are planned for the coming days and weeks.

Months of strikes have disrupted the daily routines of Britons as a bitter dispute between unions and the government over pay and working conditions drags on. The simultaneous strikes across multiple industries on Wednesday marked an escalation of the unions’ protest actions.

Union bosses argue that despite some pay raises, such as a 5% offer the government proposed to teachers, the U.K.’S soaring inflation has plunged scores of public sector workers into financial difficulty because their wages have failed to keep pace. Teachers, health workers and many others say their wages have fallen in real terms over the last decade, and the surge in living costs that began last year exacerbated the problem.

The Trades Union Congress, or TUC, said Wednesday that the average public sector worker is 203 pounds ($250) a month worse off compared with 2010, once inflation is taken into account. Inflation in the U.K. stands at 10.5%, the highest in 40 years, driven by skyrocketing food and energy costs. While some expect price increases to slow this year, Britain’s economic outlook remains grim. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund said the country will be the only major economy to contract this year, performing even worse than sanctions-hit Russia.