Mystery Plane: Vietnamese search aircraft spotted pieces of wreckage believed to be from the missing Malaysian Airlines 777 jetliner.  They reported no evidence of survivors.

  Investigators say two passengers boarded with stolen passports. The passports belonged to an Austrian man and an Italian, both of whom lost their passports in the last two years. They were listed as passengers, but were not among the 239 people presumed lost with the plane. Investigators are looking at security video to try to identify the two men who got on the plane with the stolen passports. They bought their tickets in the same place and had consecutive ticket numbers.

Investigators also now suspect that the flight may have turned back. There are discrepancies in where the plane should have been at the time contact was lost.

Ukraine: Dozens of trucks carrying Russian soldiers rolled into Crimea yesterday to reinforce troops already occupying the disputed region of Ukraine. Amphibious warfare ships were seen unloading about 200 trucks in eastern Crimea Friday night.

Russia continues to deny that its troops are in Crimea, saying the unidentified soldiers already there are indigenous self-defense forces. Under the wing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Crimean parliament has set a March 16 referendum on seceding from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation.

An unidentified State Department official has told news outlets that Secy. of State John Kerry told the Russian foreign minister that annexing Crimea would end diplomatic efforts for a resolution. The official is quoted saying Kerry “made clear that continued military escalation and provocation in Crimea or elsewhere in Ukraine, along with steps to annex Crimea to Russia, would close any available space for diplomacy, and he urged utmost restraint.”

Nation: The Conservative Political Action Committee announced that Rand Paul is the winner of their presidential straw poll for the second year in a row. Paul won 31percent of the vote. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was second, retired surgeon Ben Carson, third, and NJ Gov. Chris Christie, fourth.

World: NSA leaker Edward Snowden is looking to move out of Russia. Snowden has appealed for asylum in a European Union country, but acknowledges that the US is trying to prevent that. In a letter to the EU parliament Snowden said he carried no documents out of Hong Kong and, “I would also add, for the record, that the United States government has repeatedly acknowledged that there is no evidence at all of any relationship between myself and the Russian intelligence service.”

A Loss For Words: A spelling bee in Jackson County, Mo. that lasted 90 rounds and took two weeks to complete, finally ended yesterday. Two weeks ago fifth-grader Sophia Hoffman and seventh-grader Kush Sharma lasted 66 rounds. They were so good that the judges ran out of words and had to suspend the bee until they drew up a new list. Yesterday the two kids went head to head in another 30 rounds until Hoffman misspelled “stifling” and Sharma took the win with “definition.”

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