• The dollar recouped just a little of its broader losses in the Asian session, rising 0.15 percent against a basket of currencies .DXY. The euro stood at $1.0718 EUR= after touching a three-week top of $1.0736.
Against the yen, the dollar was hovering at 108.65 JPY= having been as low as 108.39 earlier.
• Deutsche Bank, one the world's biggest sterling bears, said on Tuesday that UK Prime Minister Theresa May's surprise call for a general election is a "game-changer" for the currency, and that it will raise its forecasts for the pound in the coming days.
May's move should result in a larger and more stable majority in parliament, thereby reducing the likelihood of a so-called 'hard Brexit', the bank's currency analysts said.
"We have been structurally negative on sterling for the last two years but are now changing view. This morning's announcement of a snap general election on June 8 is a game-changer for both the UK's Brexit negotiations and sterling," they said.
May's announcement paves the way for a lengthier negotiating process with the rest of the European Union, which is more in line with the EU approach, they said.
Sterling rose sharply on Tuesday, hitting a 2016 high of $1.2725.
As recently as March 23, Deutsche Bank analysts reiterated their call for a fall to $1.06 by the end of this year.
• When U.S. President Donald Trump boasted early last week that he had sent an "armada" as a warning to North Korea, the aircraft carrier strike group he spoke of was still far from the Korean peninsula, and headed in the opposite direction.
• Two Russian TU-95 Bear bombers were intercepted in international airspace off the coast of Alaska by two US F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft on Monday, the Pentagon confirmed to CNN
• Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen held onto their lead as the frontrunners to narrowly beat other candidates in the first round of the presidential election, a Cevipof poll for Le Monde newspaper showed on Wednesday.
Le Pen dropped by 2.5 percentage points to 22.5 percent of voting intentions since early April, and Macron fell 2 percentage points to 23 percent in the first round.
Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has surged to the fore in recent weeks, was clipping at their heels at 19 percent, the poll showed, while conservative leader Francois Fillon stood at 19.5 percent.
• The Chinese navy has tested its new guided-missile destroyer, Xining, in a first-ever live-fire exercise.
The full-on drill was carried out on the Yellow Sea, which is situated between China and the Korean Peninsula.
• China's central bank has relaxed its management of cross-border capital flows put in place just months ago to shore up the yuan currency, and is no longer demanding that banks match outflows with equal inflows, banking sources said on Wednesday.
• Oil prices were stable on Wednesday as OPEC said it was committed to draw down a global supply overhang that has dogged markets since 2014, although bloated U.S. output and inventories still weighed on crude.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $54.92 per barrel at 0741 GMT (3:41 a.m. ET), close to its last close.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were also almost unchanged at $52.43 a barrel.
Reference: Reuters,Daily Mail
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