March 8, 2012 (Thursday)
Armed conflict and attacks
- 2011–2012 Syrian uprising:
- Abdo Hussameddin, the Syrian deputy oil minister, announces that he is resigning and joining the Opposition. (BBC)
- Syrian dissidents reject a call by Kofi Annan to stop fighting and seek peace talks. (Reuters)
- Police in Dublin remove the Occupy Dame Street camp during an overnight raid. (The Irish Times) (RTE)
- British Prime Minister David Cameron announces that two engineers – Briton Chris McManus and Italian Franco Lamolinara – who were abducted by Islamic extremists in Nigeria in May 2011 were killed during a rescue attempt by British and Nigerian forces. (BBC)
Business and finance
- Greece secures a debt-restructuring deal with private lenders. (New York Times)
- Inflation levels in China fall substantially. (CNNMoney)
- Spanx inventor Sara Blakely becomes the youngest self-made female billionaire on Forbes' list. (Forbes)
- Toyota recalls 700,000 cars over safety concerns. (The Guardian)
Disaster
- Evacuation orders are issued for the Australian towns of Griffith and Forbes due to floods moving west through the Murray–Darling basin. (Bloomberg)
Law enforcement and crime
- A gunman kills one person and injures seven others before himself being shot dead at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (CNN)
- Former Los Angeles Police Department detective Stephanie Lazarus is found guilty of a high profile 1986 murder. (NPR)
Science and health
- The first full map of the debris field of the remains of the RMS Titanic is announced. (Wall Street Journal)
- A study suggests that donor stem cells may prevent organ rejection in imperfectly matched transplant cases. (Los Angeles Times)