Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he is pulling back his troops from the eastern Ukraine border. “We have pulled them back. Today they are not at the Ukrainian border but in places of regular exercises, at training grounds.” As many as 40,000 soldiers were holding exercises in a position to invade. Putin also said he’s urging separatists to postpone their May 11 referendum.

The Girls: The US has offered help to Nigeria, including military and police advisers, hostage negotiators, and psychologists in the effort to recover hundreds of girls kidnapped by the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram. The US is not offering direct military aid. Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has been slow to act against the group trying to overthrow secular government. His wife Patience was even critical of protesters calling for action. She told one of the protest leaders, “You are playing games. Don’t use schoolchildren and women for demonstrations again.”

World: The sunken South Korean ferry was overloaded with cargo that was not properly secured, according to government prosecutors. The ship was carrying twice its cargo limit, they said, and routinely made trips with too much weight. Divers have pulled 260 bodies from the overturned ship, leaving 42 people still missing. One experienced diver died when his oxygen failed.

> Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring Internet bloggers to register with the government and be responsible for the accuracy of what they say. It’s an effort to curb critical voices and bring them under control.

Got a Yen?: The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has filed to sell stock in the US, a sign of the growing power of China in Internet business. Alibaba, with its distinctly non-Chinese name, is the Amazon.com and PayPal of China. It both sells goods and owns a payment system that together rake in the yen. Last year Alibaba sold $248 billion worth of stuff, more than Amazon and eBay together. Its initial public offering could be the biggest ever.

The Obit Page: Cornelius Gurlitt, the German recluse who was found last fall to be in possession of a trove of stolen artworks collected by his father during the Nazi era, has died at age 81. Gurlitt died without heirs and the ownership of the 1,280 works by Chagall, Picasso, Matisse and other artists is in dispute. They were discovered in 2012 during a tax evasion investigation. Gurlitt’s father was one of few art dealers allowed by the Nazis to trade in modern “degenerate art,” but many of the pieces were stolen or bought at distress prices from their Jewish owners.

Old News: Monica Lewinsky, the woman who brought down President Bill Clinton in more ways than one, is publishing an account of the affair in Vanity Fair Magazine. It’s titled “Shame and Survival.” That’s it. That’s all we’ve got to say about that.

Chicken Noodle News: Former CNN host Larry King said on the Today Show that he misses daily live television, but he’d have a hard time participating in the network’s wall-to-wall coverage of the missing Malaysia Flight 370. King told host Willie Geist, “And the tough time I would have at CNN now, I think, would be doing this airplane story. Because I think I’d crack up laughing. I think I would have – you know, how many times can you cover a plane? Six weeks and all we know is it made a left turn.
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Where Rob?: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford “voluntarily” returned home last week after trying to enter the US in Chicago to check into a rehab facility. Ford is reported to have had a conversation with border agents after which he withdrew his request to enter the US. In other words, they wouldn’t let Toronto’s drug addled comic book mayor into the US. For a while Ford was considered missing, causing Jimmy Kimmel to ask, “How do you lose a 330 pound man?”

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