Portal:Current events/2015 March 9

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Current events of March 9, 2015 (2015-03-09) (Monday)

A Carolinian Amtrak passenger train (running north from Charlotte, North Carolina to New York City) hits a tractor-trailer in Halifax, North Carolina resulting in two cars of the train derailing with several people receiving minor injuries. (AP via MSN)
Two helicopters crash in a remote area of northwest Argentina leaving at least ten dead. (AP)

Celebrity British lawyer Amal Clooney files a case in the United Nations on behalf of former Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. (Philippine Star)
U.S. President Barack Obama signs an executive order declaring Venezuela a national security threat to the U.S. (Reuters via MSN)(White House text of the order)
The U.S.'s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director, James Comey, announces an increased reward of $5 million (up from 1 million, issued in 2012) for information leading to the return of a former FBI agent Robert Levinson (who disappeared March 9, 2007 in Iran and who was paid by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to gather information about Iran's nuclear program). (AFP via MSN)
The Obama administration, through White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, criticizes a letter, sent by 47 Republican U.S. Senators to Iranian mullahs who are in government leadership (the main author was Arkansas's junior U.S. Sen., Tom Cotton), as a back-door effort (and a rush to war) with Iranian hard-liners to defeat a possible deal with Iran over its nuclear program. The letter points out that without Congressional ratification, especially in the Senate, any agreement is not a treaty, merely a type of executive order that the next President and the next Congress could revoke or greatly modify. (Washington Post, via MSN) (Text of letter, from Sen. Cotton's Senate website)

A man kills five people in the Japanese city of Sumoto, Hyōgo in a prolonged stabbing attack. (ABC and AFP via ABC Australia)
American film director Randall Miller pleads guilty to involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing and will spend two years in county jail and another eight on probation in regards to the February 20, 2014 death of camera assistant Sarah Jones by a freight train on a bridge over the Altamaha River in Wayne County, Georgia (six other crew members were also injured) during filming of a biopic about singer Gregg Allman called Midnight Rider. (BBC)
In a five-day national dragnet last week, Operation Cross Check, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rounds up 2,059 people who had been convicted of crimes and had been living in the country illegally. Most were not violent criminals (none were implicated in terrorism; almost all the 912 misdemeanors were for driving under the influence, DWI; 476 of the felons were charged with an immigration violation, though some were convicted of manslaughter, robbery, rape, and child pornography). (Tribune Washington Bureau, via MSN)

Solar powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 begins its circumnavigation of the earth. (BBC)
Explorers of a stalactite cave in Israel's Galilee region uncover a small collection of 2,300-year-old silver coins and jewelry believed to have been hidden from the time of Alexander the Great of Macedonia. The discovery could be the first of its kind to be found from that period in this area. (Reuters via MSN)