Portal:Current events/2019 March 8

March 8, 2019 (Friday)

Disasters and accidents

Crisis in Venezuela
- 2019 Venezuelan blackout
  - A nationwide power blackout enters its second day in Venezuela. Information Minister Jorge Rodríguez and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López claim the country appears to be the victim of a cyberattack intended to "derail the whole system". Venezuelan National Assembly-declared Acting President Juan Guaidó stated that "state corruption and mismanagement (...) have left the electrical grid in shambles". (AP) (Forbes)
A truck overturns on a highway in Chiapas, Mexico, killing 25 Central American migrants who were hiding inside. (Reuters)

Law and crime

Shoreham Airshow crash
- Pilot Andy Hill is acquitted of eleven counts of manslaughter arising from the 2015 accident, in which a jet flown by Hill struck a road in Shoreham, England. (The Guardian)
Chelsea Manning is jailed for refusing to answer questions from a federal grand jury in Virginia looking into the release of documents to WikiLeaks. (NBC News)
Actor Jussie Smollett is indicted on 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false hate crime police report in January in Chicago. (Yahoo! News)

Politics and elections

Politics of Finland
- The entire coalition government of Finland resigns after a failure to deliver on healthcare reform, a month ahead of the country's general election. The coalition, made up of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä's Centre Party, the conservative National Coalition Party and the Eurosceptic Blue Reform Party, were unable to agree on a package that would have slowed healthcare spending over the next decade. The government will be interim until April elections. (Reuters)