March 4, 2015 (Wednesday)
Disasters and accidents
- South of Sicily, Italy's Coast Guard saves 941 trafficked migrants aboard five motorized dinghies and two larger vessels near southern Italian ports. Authorities cannot account for ten people. (AP)
- At least 33 miners die in a suspected gas explosion at the Zasyadko coal mine in rebel-held Donetsk region of Ukraine. (BBC) (Reuters via News24)
- Turkish Airlines Flight TK726, landing in dense fog in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, skids off a slippery runway, however, there are no serious injuries. (ABC News)
- A toxic chemical fire forces the closure of the Port of Vancouver (Canada's largest and North America's fourth largest port). Authorities later manage to contain the fire, and identify the chemical as trichloroisocyanuric acid. (CBC)
Science and technology
- Scientists report the finding of a 2.8-million-year-old jawbone (the "Ledi jaw") forming a potential link between the 3.2-million-year-old hominin (human-like primate) Lucy (Australopithecus) found in the same area, and the 2.35-million-year-old remains of Homo habilis found at nearby Hadar. If assigned to the genus Homo, the new remains represent the oldest known human, some 400,000 years older than previously found. (BBC)
- Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his team of researchers find the Musashi, one of Japan's biggest and most famous battleships which was sunk by American forces in 1944, on the floor of the Sibuyan Sea. (CNN)