Portal:Current events/2016 March 8

• Spillover of the Syrian Civil War
  • Mortar shells fired from Syria kill at least one person and injure another in the Turkish border town of Kilis. (Reuters)
• Israeli–Palestinian conflict
  • Three terror attacks are reported that result in the deaths of four Palestinians and an American tourist with 12 Israelis wounded, including two Israeli policemen, as United States Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Israel for a two-day visit that includes meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.One of the attacks occurred less than a kilometer from where Joe Biden was at the time. (AP via WWTV) (AP via ABC News) (CNN)
  • The deceased American is Taylor Force, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer from Lubbock, Texas, who was in the first year of an MBA program at Vanderbilt University. Force was part of a 33-person Vanderbilt group that was in Israel to study global entrepreneurship. (CNN) (Houston Chronicle)
• Spillover of the Libyan Civil War
  • Tunisia's army and security forces kill another five suspected terrorists in an operation near the Libyan border. (AFP via Yahoo! News)
• Military intervention against ISIL
  • The United States military says ISIL's so-called minister-of-war, Abu Omar al-Shishani, né Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, appears to have been killed in a U.S. air strike near the town of Al-Shaddadi in Syria. (Reuters via msn.com)

• International Women's Day is celebrated. The International Women’s Day theme for 2016 is "Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality". (The Washington Post)

• 2015–16 Zika virus epidemic
  • The World Health Organization cautions pregnant women against traveling to areas where there is ongoing transmission of Zika virus, echoing earlier alerts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other health agencies in areas where virus infection has been prevalent. Director General Margaret Chan says evidence strongly suggests sexual transmission is more common than previously assumed. (The Washington Post)

• Export restrictions placed by the commerce department of the United States against China's state-owned ZTE for alleged violations of U.S.-imposed export controls on Iran takes effect. (Reuters) (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
• European migrant crisis, Enlargement of the European Union
  • The European Union and Turkey agree on broad principles for a plan to ease the migration crisis which includes returning thousands of migrants to Turkey. For this, the EU will swiftly ease visa requirements for Turks and speed up Ankara's EU accession talks. A final agreement is to be ready for next week's two-day EU summit in Brussels, Belgium. (Voice of America) (BBC) (March 17-18, 2016, EU agenda)
  • The United Nations and human rights groups warn the tentative EU deal with Turkey that would return irregular migrants in exchange for political and financial rewards could be illegal. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi says it's unclear whether migrants, set to be returned, would be afforded the refugee protection as stated in international law. Amnesty International's Gauri van Gulik says this is outsourcing Europe's refugee responsibility. "The EU is treating Turkey as the only solution it has to the refugee crisis," van Gulik added. (Reuters) (Los Angeles Times)
• North Korea–South Korea relations
  • South Korea imposes direct sanctions against North Korea that blacklists dozens of Northern companies and people for the first time, and bans ships that have visited North Korean ports in the previous 180 days from its waters. (The Washington Post) (AP via USA Today)
• Israel–Palestine relations
  • A Pew Research Center survey of Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis, via face-to-face interviews from October 2014 through May 2015, finds deep divisions in Israeli society – not only between Israeli Jews and the country’s Arab citizen minority, but also among the religious subgroups that make up Israeli Jewry. An overwhelming majority (98%) of Israeli Jews agree all Jews should have the right to move to Israel and receive immediate citizenship. Close to half (48 percent) support the expulsion or transfer of Arabs from Israel, yet most secular Jews disagree (58%) with this, as do 54 percent of those in the center politically (more so from the left). Meanwhile, Israeli Arabs, currently about one-in-five of the country's adults, generally do not think Israel can be a Jewish state and a democracy at the same time. Fewer Arabs (down 24 points) think a peaceful, two-state solution is possible, from 74% in 2013 to 50% now. Both groups are skeptical of the peace process: Israeli Arabs question the sincerity of the Israeli government in seeking a peace agreement, while Israeli Jews are equally skeptical about the sincerity of Palestinian leaders. (Pew is a non-partisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C.) (Pew Research Center)
  • Israeli President Reuven Rivlin says the Pew study brings up troubling challenges that need to be dealt with immediately. The finding that 48 percent of Jewish Israelis believe Arabs should be transferred out of Israel is particularly troubling to Rivlin. MK Yousef Jabareen, chair of the Knesset Lobby for Jewish-Arab Coexistence, said, "The transfer of citizens, for whatever reason, is a crime against humanity, and I am frightened to see that half of those polled support such a step." Human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International Israel and the Anne Lindh Foundation's Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel, denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the results of the study. (The Jerusalem Post)
• Australia–United States relations, Territorial disputes in the South China Sea
  • The U.S. military is in discussions with Australian officials about the possibility of basing long-range bombers, whose striking distance would include the South China Sea, in Australia. (Reuters)

• Media freedom in Turkey
  • An Istanbul court places the Cihan News Agency under state control. The seizure of the Fethullah Gülen-linked news agency comes just days after the Turkish government seized control of the opposition Zaman newspaper. (Reuters)
• Acting on requests from neighboring Italy, Swiss authorities arrest 15 people sought as suspected members of the 'Ndrangheta organized crime syndicate, a Mafia-type organization centered in Calabria, Italy. (AP)

• Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016, Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016
  • Voters in the U.S. states of Mississippi, Michigan, Hawaii and Idaho vote in primary elections and caucuses. (Presidential Election News)
  • Hillary Clinton wins the Mississippi Democratic primary. (The New York Times)
  • Bernie Sanders wins the Michigan Democratic primary. (NBC News) (Washington Post)
  • Donald Trump wins both the Michigan and Mississippi Republican primaries and the Hawaii caucus. (The Independent)
  • Ted Cruz wins the Idaho Republican primary. (CNN) (Washington Post)
• The United States Federal Communications Commission announces an expansion of the federal Lifeline program, which currently offers monthly subsidies for phone and basic cell service, to include broadband Internet service, pending approval at the Commissioners' March 31 meeting. (The Hill) (Reuters) (Multichannel News)
• Philippine presidential election, 2016
  • The Supreme Court of the Philippines, in a 9-6 ruling, reverses the Commission on Elections order that had disqualified Senator Grace Poe from running in the May 9, 2016, presidential election. The petitioners plan to file a motion for reconsideration. (Philippine Daily Inquirer)

• U.S. carrier Alaska Airlines reschedules Flight 870 from Anchorage, Alaska, to Honolulu, Hawaii, to depart at 2:00 p.m. local time (23:00 UTC) so passengers can view 2016's only total solar eclipse for 1 minute and 59 seconds, 695 miles north of Honolulu at 37,000 feet. (KING-TV) (Alaska Airlines) (The Verge) (NASA TV stream)
• Boston College (U.S.) researchers, in findings published in the eLife scientific journal, have uncovered the global spread of an ancient group of retroviruses that affected about 28 of 50 modern mammals' ancestors back as far as 30 million years ago. (Headlines & Global News) (American Association for the Advancement of Science)