Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately defied Western economic sanctions and condemnation today by annexing Crimea as a part of Russia. “Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia in the hearts and minds of people,” Putin said. The Russian president is reversing what many of his countrymen believe to be an historic wrong. During the old Soviet Union Crimea was assigned to Ukraine, but was still under the same national government until Ukraine declared independence. Putin said today, “nobody could imagine that Russia and Ukraine could one day become different states.”

  Despite Russian troops massed on the border, Putin said he has no intent to take more Ukrainian territory. But Ukraine is hurriedly digging defenses and training 20,000 recruits to defend their country.

President Obama said yesterday, “We’ll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world.”

Mystery Jet: The NY Times reports that US officials say the missing Malaysian Airlines jet was diverted from its path by keystrokes entered into a terminal in the plane’s cockpit. Although all 239 people on board are being investigated, the focus is on the captain and first officer who would have had the knowledge and access to do that. The paper also points out that one of the mysteries is that no one on board, neither passenger nor crew, tried to make phone calls or post messages on social media as the jet went far off course for hours. It’s possible the plane was out of cellphone range and that the air phone system in business class had been intentionally turned off.

The search now involves 25 countries and covers 2.2 million square miles.

Nation: Fashion designer L’Wren Scott, whose clothes are worn on red carpets and runways by America’s most beautiful and famous women, was found dead in her NY apartment yesterday, an apparent suicide. She was found kneeling with a scarf around her neck tied to a door handle. The 49-year-old former model worked her way up to the position of international style setter, but her business is millions of dollars in debt. Since 2001 Scott had been together with Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, whose publicist issued a statement saying the rocker was “devastated” by the news.

>General Motors recalled 1.5 million cars yesterday, more than doubling the number of recalls in the last month. The most recent wave was for a variety of troubles, none considered dangerous. The recall in February was for faulty ignition switches linked to at least a dozen deaths that occurred when engines shut off while the car was rolling.

Universe: A team of American scientists say they have found evidence to support the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe. They say the evidence is in a distinctive twist in the oldest light detected by telescopes. It is the light emitted in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second when the Universe expanded faster than the speed of light from something smaller than an atom to the size of a marble. The Big Bang theory holds that the Universe is an enormous explosion that’s still expanding. The theory is the rate of expansion can be used to calculate the size of the Universe at the beginning 14 billion years ago.

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