Portal:Current events/2015 March 8

March 8, 2015 (Sunday)

Armed conflicts and attacks

Boko Haram
- Forces from Niger and Chad launch a ground and air offensive against Boko Haram Islamist militants in northeastern Nigeria. (BBC)
A rocket and shelling attack in Kidal, northern Mali kills three people, including a UN peacekeeper. (Al Jazeera)
A bomb explodes outside French supermarket Carrefour in Alexandria, Egypt, killing one person and wounding six. (AP via News24)

Arts and culture

American writer and producer Sam Simon, co-creator of the longest running animated sitcom, The Simpsons, dies at the age of 59 after a 3-year battle with terminal colorectal cancer. (BBC)

Law and crime

A unknown gunman in a vehicle kills Dreekius Oricko Johnson, 28, and wounds former Tennessee Titans and New York Jets running back Chris Johnson in Orlando, Florida. (USA Today via MSN)
Assassination of Boris Nemtsov
- A court in Moscow charges two men of Chechen origin, Zaur Dadayev and Ansor Gubashev, who were among five arrested March 7, with the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. The others also arrested, Gubashev's younger brother Shahid Gubashev and two others named only as Bakhayev and Eskerkhanov, are still only suspects. (AFP via MSN)
- A sixth suspect in Nemtsov's murder, Beslan Shavanov, 30, who had been holed up in a building in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, blows himself up. (CNN)

Science and technology

The U.S. Army, working with the U.S. Navy and NASA, through its Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator transport helicopter re-design program, in the latest issue of Army Technology Magazine, takes note of some new designs Sikorsky-Boeing (the Sikorsky Defiant, which like the existing Sikorsky X2 and Sikorsky S-97 Raider, features a faster pusher propeller) and Bell Helicopter (the V-280 Valor, which resembles a slimmed-down version of the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey, and comes in three versions: a troop- and equipment-carrying utility style, a medevac, and an attack chopper) have come up with since they were selected by the Pentagon in August 2014. (Popular Science via MSN)