Portal:Current events/2014 March 12

• Three Taliban insurgents are killed by a team of Afghan police and private commandos after attacking a former National Directorate of Security headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The Taliban claims they killed four commandos and five policemen, which police deny. (AP via ABC)

• Judge Katherine B. Forrest of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, orders Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre to pay more than $825,000 for defrauding investors while a trader at Goldman Sachs. (Reuters)

• Malaysia Airlines Flight 370:
  • China requests activation of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters meaning international space agencies join an "unprecedented" search for the Malaysian airliner which disappeared over an ocean Saturday. (Al Jazeera)
  • A crowdsourcing search effort after the vanished airliner finds a silhouette in the water of similar size and shape to the lost plane. Also, a Chinese satellite sights sizable pieces of debris. (CNN) (news.com.au)
• An explosion in the New York City neighbourhood of East Harlem kills 8 and injures over 70. (Pix 11) (WABC-TV)
• At least 350 apartments are evacuated due to a fire in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood. (KNTV)

• Fiji's Health Department confirms that eleven people have died and over 10,000 people have been infected in an outbreak of the type three strain of dengue fever. (ABC Online)

• 2014 Crimean crisis
  • Russia says planned U.S. financial aid to Ukraine is illegal. (Reuters)

• A new law levying criminal penalties on yeshiva students who dodge military service in the Israeli Defence Forces passes the Knesset with near unanimous support as the entire opposition boycotts the vote; Yoni Chetboun from Jewish Home is the lone no-voter. (Times of Israel)

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee calls for a World Wide Web equivalent of the Magna Carta, on the 25th anniversary of his proposal for the World Wide Web. (BBC News)