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Paris St-Germain score 9 as they win French title –
Paris St-Germain were crowned French champions with two months to spare as Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored four in a 9-0 demolition of bottom side Troyes. Edinson Cavani, Javier Pastore and Adrien Rabiot put them 3-0 up inside 19 minutes before Ibrahimovic struck three within 10 minutes in the second half. Matthieu Saunier scored an own goal and Cavani made it 8-0 before Ibrahimovic added his fourth. [BBC]

• Paris St-Germain won the league with 62 days and eight games to spare, a record for any of Europe’s ‘big five’ domestic leagues.
• In 115 appearances in Ligue 1, Zlatan Ibrahimovic now has 102 goals and 35 assists.
• This win was the sixth time this season that PSG have scored four goals or more in a Ligue 1 game.
• This title is PSG’s sixth overall and their fourth in a row

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Armed conflicts and attacks

• March 2016 Ankara bombing
  • An explosion occurs in central Ankara, Turkey, with at least 34 people killed and 125 wounded. (The Independent) (The Telegraph)
• Turkey–PKK conflict (2015–present)
  • Turkey declares a curfew in the town of Yüksekova on the border with Iran as Turkish forces prepare an offensive against the PKK. (AP)
• 2016 Grand-Bassam shootings
  • Gunmen attack two hotels in the Ivory Coast town of Grand-Bassam. At least 15 people are reportedly killed. Witnesses claim the attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is [the] greatest”) during the gunfire. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claim responsibility for the attack. (CNN) (The Telegraph) (Daily Nation)
• Syrian Civil War
  • The al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate, assaults the Free Syrian Army’s 13th Division in Maarrat al-Nu’man, killing seven FSA fighters with 40 captured. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Nusra seized anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles, a tank, and other arms from the U.S.-backed division. (AP via ABC News)

Disasters and accidents

• Five people are dead after a building collapses in the Indian city of Meerut caused by heavy rain. (India Today)
• Heavy rain in Pakistan has led to fifteen deaths in two days including at least eight deaths in a coal mine collapse in the Orakzai Tribal Area. (AP via Fox News)
• Six people have been killed in Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, with two Mississippi fishermen missing, in this week’s flooding in the America’s Deep South. More than 24 inches of rain has fallen in some of the hardest-hit areas with more rain today that is expected to lead to additional flooding later this week. (Fox News) (UPI)
• A Pacific Northwest windstorm strikes Western Washington, killing at least one person, leaving 300,000 residents without power, and closing several bridges. (KING-TV)
• A six-seat Cessna 206 crashes into a market in the Beni Department of northeastern Bolivia, killing all four aboard the plane and injuring three others. (Another report states seven were killed with 15 injured). The plane was flying from Santa Ana del Yacuma to Trinidad, Bolivia. (AP via ABC News) (Reuters via Hindustan Times)

International relations

• Malaysia bans the recruitment of foreign workers after protests over plans to recruit 1.5 million people from Bangladesh. (Economic Times)
• China–Pakistan relations
  • China‘s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will be deployed in Pakistan to protect the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor that connects the Chinese-operated Gwadar Port in Balochistan, Pakistan to China’sXinjiang region. Neighboring India has voiced concern about the planned move. (NDTV)
• United States officials say North Korea has apparently lost contact with one of its submarines. The U.S. was watching the sub off North Korea’s eastern coast when it vanished earlier this week. Officials are unsure whether the missing vessel is adrift or has sunk. (STV) (The Guardian)
• Israel–Palestine relations
  • The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Israel prevented Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi from entering the West Bank to meet with Palestinian officials. The Israeli spokesman would not comment. Israel and Indonesia do not have formal diplomatic relations. (AP via The Washington Post) (AFP via Business Standard)

Law and crime

• Israeli–Palestinian conflict

• • Israeli Defence Forces arrest 15 Palestinian suspects overnight. (Jerusalem Post)
• Authorities in Belarus detain prominent businessman Yury Chyzh, once a close adviser to Alexander Lukashenko and included in the EU’s sanctions list, on suspicion of large-scale tax evasion. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

Politics and elections

• Elections in Germany
  • Regional elections take place in the German states of Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt with the governing Christian Democratic Union performing poorly, the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany winning in Rhineland-Palatinate, and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany performing well in all three states. (BBC), (AP via International Business Times)
• Hundreds of thousands in Brazil’s major cities, some estimates say more than 3 million people, protest the weak economy and political corruption, and call for President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment.(Reuters) (Bloomberg) (Bloomberg Business)

Sports

• 2016 Six Nations Championship
  • Scotland’s win over France gives England the title. (The Guardian)
• 2015–16 Ligue 1
  • Paris Saint-Germain win the title with eight games to spare, after a 9–0 win at Troyes. (BBC Sport)
• 2015–16 NCAA Division I men’s basketball season
  • The field of 68 teams for the NCAA Tournament is announced. Kansas is the top overall seed, with North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia rounding out the #1 seeds. In a minor controversy, the brackets for the South and West regions are leaked several minutes before being officially announced. (ESPN, overall field) (ESPN, bracket leak)

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