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Washington has imposed a number of economic sanctions on Russia in retaliation for that country's push into Ukraine.

Getting European allies to do the same has not always been easy, since many of those nations trade with Russia and fear getting hurt themselves.

But the Europeans are not the only ones balking: The Pentagon also buys Russian military hardware.

When U.S. military and intelligence satellites are shot into space, all the rocket engines that propel them are made by a state-owned enterprise in Russia. They're sold to a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, which has an exclusive contract with the U.S. government to launch those satellites.

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The death toll from a car bomb in Nigeria's capital — the second in a month — has risen to 19, officials said Friday. The attack occurred days before the city is set to host a major international conference.

The explosion Thursday on a busy street in Abuja occurred near a bus station where 70 people were killed in an April 14 bombing, Reuters says. The Islamic extremist terrorist network Boko Haram claimed responsibility for last month's attack.

Police Superintendent Frank Mba told reporters that the toll from Thursday's blast had reached 19 dead and more than 60 wounded.

Abuja is hosting the World Economic Forum on Africa May 7-9. The conference is to feature Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. It attracts leaders, policymakers, philanthropists and business leaders from around the world to discuss Africa's economic growth prospects.

In other news, police in the country said the number of schoolgirls held by Boko Haram militants after a mass kidnapping last month was 276 — 30 more girls than in earlier reports. Police Commissioner Tanko Lawan also revised the number of girls and young women who have escaped to 53.

According to The Associated Press, Lawan said that confusion over the number of girls abducted stems from the fact that "students from other schools were brought into one school for final exams last month after all schools in Borno state were shut because of attacks by Islamic extremists. Communications are difficult with the military often cutting cellphone service under a state of emergency and travel made dangerous on roads where travelers are frequently attacked by the militants."

The mass kidnapping in Chibok in northeastern Borno state was among the most shocking attacks by Boko Haram in five years of separatist conflict, which has left thousands dead in the country's north and central regions.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, reporting from Dakar, Senegal, says there's still no word on the fate of the girls.

There are a number of theories, including forced marriages and/or being moved across the border to either Chad or Cameroon, Ofeibea says. Weeks after the April 14 kidnapping, "the people want answers," she says.

The parents have a sense of hopelessness and despair. They've held protests in Abuja and the city of Chibok this week.

It's the weekend, which means it's time for your review of the technology and culture headlines from NPR and beyond.

ICYMI

Eggcellent: Our most popular post this week was our Weekly Innovation choice — a kitchen tool that scrambles the egg inside its shell, making for a unique culinary creation. You can still get one through the Kickstarter campaign, which surged past $100,000 in pledges this week.

Tepid Twitter: Twitter made its revenue announcement this week, explained in more detail by CEO Dick Costolo in a conversation with All Things Considered. That Twitter's active users increased five percent during the quarter to 255 million wasn't good enough for Wall Street — its stock dropped 10 percent and hit a new low on the news. More interesting than the top line numbers was the debate over whether Twitter means less to us users now. The Atlantic made a case for Twitter's decline, rebutted by Slate's Will Oremus who says Twitter's on the cusp of something bigger.

The Big Conversation

Facebook's New Logins: At its f8 conference this week, Facebook announced a slew of changes, including a new login format that will let users be anonymous when they sign into other apps through Facebook, or select the information they share with those apps. Our Steve Henn reminds us that even though you could choose to share less with the third-party apps, you'd still be sharing data with Facebook.

FCC And The Open Web: The Federal Communications Commission chairman tried to reassure open Web advocates that its proposed new rules for the open Web would indeed outlaw anything that slows existing service or harms competition and free speech. Wheeler wrote the blog post after a backlash to the proposed rules, which would let Internet service providers sign deals with content providers for faster connection speeds to their sites. TechCrunch breaks down Wheeler's post.

Curiosities

Slate: Google Agrees to Remove Deceptive Crisis Pregnancy Center Ads

Google takes a position in a white-hot policy debate by pulling down misleading ads from anti-abortion centers.

iStrategy Labs: The SELFIE Mirror

This has happened, folks. The people behind the pizza button have created a mirror that will automatically take a selfie and tweet it out when you hold your smile in the mirror.

The Verge: Twitter is experimenting with a mute feature in its mobile apps

Twitter is letting some users mute the accounts they follow. The feature is handy if, for example, you don't want to see live-tweeting of certain events or if you are only following someone for social reasons. The option, already available on Tweetdeck and third-party apps, is showing up for some users on Twitter's iOS and Android apps.

The Syrian regime may be on the verge of an important gain in its civil war. Rebels say they have agreed to a conditional retreat from areas they hold in the city of Homs.

Opposition negotiators there, reached by Skype, say that under the deal they would leave battle-broken neighborhoods where they have been besieged for almost two years. More than a thousand fighters are set to leave with their weapons, and should be allowed to head to rebel-held territory north of the city.

In exchange, Syrian soldiers and their paramilitary supporters would regain control of almost all the rebellious areas of a city once known as the capital of the revolution.

A negotiator on the rebel side, who goes by the name Abu al Harith claims the regime would also receive Iranian hostages — military advisors to Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces who have been captured on a succession of battlefields and held in the city of Aleppo.

Rebel negotiators say the United Nations and Iranian diplomats helped broker the deal. U.N. offices in Syria and the Iranian embassy in Lebanon did not respond to requests for confirmation. The truce was reported in pro-Assad media, though, without mention of the hostages.

The road to the deal has been extremely bloody. Abu al Harith says a series of car bombs by the al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al Nusra were a key factor in pushing the regime to make the truce. In the last week, about 100 civilians were killed in pro-government areas of Homs.

"You've seen the bombings," he says. "Those were the replies to the National Defense Forces [a pro Assad militia] who didn't want any truce."

Abu Al Harith hopes the retreat will happen in the next 48 hours.

"There are no winners or losers," he insists. But if the fighters do leave this bitterly fought-for territory, it will be the latest in a series of victories for Assad.

NPR's Alice Fordham tweets at @alicefordham; producer Alison Meuse tweets at @AliTahmizian.

There have been hundreds of monster movies over the years, but only a handful of enduringly great movie monsters. Of those, only two were created for the screen: King Kong, the giant ape atop the Empire State Building, and his Japanese heir, Godzilla, the city-flattening sea monster who's a genuinely terrific pop icon. He not only stars in movies — Hollywood is bringing out a new Godzilla on May 16 — but he's even played basketball with Charles Barkley in a commercial for Nike.

It's been six decades since Godzilla first hit the screen, and to celebrate the big guy's birthday, Rialto Pictures is releasing Ishiro Honda's 1954 original — in a restored, 60th anniversary edition — in theaters. I've seen Godzilla many times since I was a kid, but watching it again, I was struck that it might be the best single film about the terrors of the nuclear age.

I suspect you know the plot. It begins when American H-bomb tests in the Pacific disturb the watery environment that's the home of Gojira, as the monster's called in Japanese. After sinking assorted ships, this enormous beast winds up in Tokyo, where he stomps on buildings, flosses with power lines and blasts citizens with his radioactive bad breath. When the army is unable to stop him, the only hope is a new invention called the Oxygen Destroyer. But its idealistic creator is reluctant to reveal it for fear it will become a weapon — just look at the destruction that followed from splitting the atom.

Yet even as the inventor says this, the movie itself is offering us the seductive spectacle of violent ruin. And make no mistake: Destruction is great to look at. There's an amoral pleasure to be had in watching Godzilla reduce Tokyo to fiery rubble, rather like the beauty of seeing those napalmed palm trees flare like matches in Apocalypse Now or the illicit thrill of seeing the White House get obliterated in Independence Day — before Sept. 11, of course. Quite clearly, it's this joy in destruction that helped make Godzilla influential, especially in Hollywood, which over the last half century has fed the worldwide audience's appetite for images of spectacular violence.

That said, Godzilla's real strength lies not in its effects — impressive for the time — but in its underlying emotional and cultural seriousness. It's not simply that the music is often doleful rather than exciting or that we see doomed children set off Geiger counters. The movie has a gravity that comes from being created in a Japan that knew what it was to have children die from radiation poisoning and to see its capital city in flames. Both drawn to and terrified of the monster's power, the movie's steeped in Japan's traumatic historical experience. It has weight. It means something.

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It's OK to sell pot in Colorado, but there's still nowhere but the mattress to legally stash the proceeds.

That's the continuing problem for legal marijuana dealers in the state, who are caught between the state's legalization of cannabis and federal laws that still classify it as a controlled substance.

Colorado had been crafting a plan to address the issue, but the proposed law was scotched late Thursday. It would have allowed state-licensed marijuana businesses, which can't legally access the regular banking system, to create a financial co-op, something akin to an uninsured credit union.

Republican state Rep. Kevin Priola, who sponsored an amendment to table the measure, says lawmakers need to "take some time to have this properly vetted." But representatives from both political parties had expressed reservations about the legislation.

Time magazine notes that in February:

"The Justice and Treasury departments issued guidance suggesting that banks could offer basic services to marijuana dealers, but financial institutions remain wary. Consensus is growing that it will take an act of Congress to change the situation."

Besides Colorado, where pot was legalized in 2013, the state of Washington has also approved its sale for recreational use. Washington faces the same problems concerning the financial end of the business.

As The Two-Way's Eyder Peralta reported in March, Colorado made $3.5 million in taxes and fees from legal pot in January, the first month of legal sales.

Director Amma Asante found the story behind her new movie, Belle, in a painting: artist Johann Zoffany's 18th century portrait of two beautiful, young English ladies, draped in silks and pearls. The twist? One is biracial.

Belle is based on the real-life story of that woman, Dido Elizabeth Belle, who was the daughter of a Royal Navy captain and the slave he met after capturing a Spanish ship.

As a young girl, Dido's father brought her to the grand country home of his uncle and aunt, who were already raising the daughter — white, of course — of another nephew. They agreed that girl was much in need of a companion like Dido. But instead of bringing Dido up as a servant, they chose to bring her up as a member of the family.

Dido's great-uncle was traditional, but with a progressive bent. As Britain's top judge, he eventually decided a key legal battle involving the slave trade, all while raising his mixed race niece who he adored.

Asante, who is herself black, tells NPR's Renee Montagne what makes the painting so remarkable:

"Around the time of the 18th century, we really were — people of color were — an accessory in a painting. We were there rather like a pet to express the status of the main person in the painting, who was always white. And for anybody who's lucky enough to see the painting what you see is something very, very different. You see a biracial girl, a woman of color, who's painted slightly higher in the painting, depicted slightly higher than her white counterpart. She's staring directly out at the painter, you know, with a very direct, confident eye. ... So this painting flipped tradition and everything that the 18th century told us about portraiture."

Everyone is on a voyage of self-discovery in Ida — the two central characters certainly, but also Poland-born, Britain-based director Pawel Pawlikowski, making his first film in the homeland he left at 14.

The austerely luminous black-and-white drama is set in 1962, an era the director can't remember all that well. (He was 5 at the time.) The title character is 18 and about to learn who she is, or was. That requires a journey through a landscape of secrets, some hidden by the Communist government, and others held tightly by people who joined the Nazis in robbing and killing Jews.

A novice nun raised in a Catholic orphanage, Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is about to take her vows. But first, the mother superior announces, Anna must visit her only living relative, her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza).

Wanda is a revelation. She's hard-drinking and promiscuous — there's a man in her bed when Anna arrives — and still capable of the scouring fury she used as a prosecutor nicknamed "Red Wanda." She's also blunt. Wanda tells Anna that she didn't take care of her niece when she was a child because "I didn't want to."

One more thing: "You're a Jew. They never told you?" Anna was born Ida Lebenstein, and survived a bloodbath that claimed her parents and a young boy she sees in a photograph. That boy, as much as the woman who was Ida's mother and Wanda's sister, is the reason her aunt takes Anna/Ida to visit some places from their past.

Along the way, the two women pick up a hitchhiking saxophonist (Dawid Ogrodnik) who loves Coltrane and soon develops a crush on the quietly radiant Anna. His sexy presence is not a quandary for the nun, who tells her aunt that she's had sinful thoughts but never carnal ones.

The relationship between Wanda and Anna parallels the one in Pawlikowski's best-known film, 2004's My Summer in Love, in which a rich teenage girl adopts and manipulates a naive working-class contemporary. But Wanda doesn't try especially hard to alter her niece's outlook, and it's not clear that she could.

Indeed, the two women's fates appear to have been written long ago, which is the movie's principal limitation. Both Wanda and Anna make changes — one permanent, the other temporary — that might be in response to what they learned on their trip together. Yet neither woman is essentially transformed, which makes the story, as scripted by Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, feel a little aimless.

Shot by Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, Ida evokes 1962 with homely locations and a palette centered on gray middle tones. The images suggest 1920s silent films, although with a mastery of natural light that wasn't technically possible then. The aspect ratio is the boxy Academy format, long obsolete although used recently in such neo-retro productions as The Artist and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Also in the silent-film tradition is the ethereal performance by Trzebuchowska, who had never acted before. While Kulesza drives the story, the younger woman embodies it, like a sainted character from a drama by Robert Bresson or Carl Theodor Dreyer. Whether she's Anna or Ida reflects a national trauma that seems not really part of her.

Ed Kelley and his wife have three children. They live in a comfortable suburb of Baltimore. And for a long time their life seemed perfect.

"We were churchgoing, we were involved in the community. we had a very close knit family all around us."

And he adored his 14-year-old son.

"He was funny he was getting good grades he loved playing sports, he was so humorous. Actually for the longest time he was sort of the center of the family."

And then one day, that happy 14-year-old boy disappeared. And in his place emerged a paranoid, delusional child who heard voices, believed he was a U.S. Marshal agent and boarded up the windows of the house. Psychiatrists diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia.

In the 15 years since, the Kelleys' lives have fallen apart as they have focused all their attention on trying to get their son help and found themselves battling against state and federal laws that often prohibit them from doing just that: helping.

"I know good people that have, their child has killed somebody or more than one person, I know somebody who's brother killed somebody, I know families who their house got burned down."

The vast majority of people will mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Statistically they're actually more likely to be victims of violence. But a small subset of that population, individuals who can no longer tell the difference between what's real and what's not, can be prone to violent acts.

And an uneasy fact has emerged from the two dozen mass shootings in this country over the past decade: the majority of the people pulling the trigger have been severely mentally ill and not receiving treatment.

After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School a year and a half ago, Congressman Tim Murphy, a Republican from Pennsylvania, sought to change the way those with serious mental illness are handled.

Murphy drafted a bill last year to lower the standard by which seriously mentally ill people may be forced into treatment. He's been met with fierce opposition. Some mental health groups fear people's civil liberties will be violated, others say it will be a return to state-run insane asylums.

Murphy, who's a practicing psychologist, is frustrated.

"I've got the pictures on my table over there of kids who died at Sandy Hook and I promised those parents I was going to do something. Because the Adam Lanzas of the world and the other people who have nowhere to go, who have not gotten treatment, who have not gotten a diagnosis, are out there dying with their rights on. Are you kidding me?

The nuts and bolts are like this: Severely mentally ill people, in the vast majority of states, can only be confined to treatment, usually about five days, if they are an imminent danger to themselves or others. But some states also have a lower standard — something called a "need for treatment."

That means a person can be court ordered to get counseling and stay on their medication.

Murphy's bill provides financial incentives for all states to adopt this lower standard. And it eliminates a quirky Medicaid rule that, if passed, could create more in-patient bed space.

And that has mental health advocates worried.

"I certainly know people who have said, 'If it wasn't for forced treatment, I wouldn't be alive today.' I also have listened to thousands of people who have been harmed by their forced treatment."

Gina Nikkel is the president of the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, which supports alternatives to inpatient care and medication when possible.

"They wake up 10 years later with medication and they have really lost 10 years of their lives."

But that's not how Ed Kelley sees it when his son loses his grip on reality and he has to try to get him to voluntarily take his meds.

"I hope that the people who are shouting and keeping the families from having their loved ones treated properly never have the experience my family and other families have had, because it would change their perspective."

Rep. Murphy is hoping to get his bill out of committee and onto the house floor next month.

Ukraine's government has ordered the expulsion of Russia's military attach, saying he had been caught "red-handed" receiving classified documents related to the country's cooperation with NATO.

The unnamed attach was taken into custody on Wednesday, has been declared persona non grata, and will be thrown out of Ukraine, officials say.

"On April 30, he was caught red-handed receiving classified material from his source," said Maryna Ostapenko, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's security service, the SBU.

The incident comes a day after acting President Oleksandr Turchynov acknowledged that his forces are either "helpless" to stop pro-Russia separatist rebels or actively colluding with them in the seizure of eastern cities.

At dawn on Wednesday, gunmen took control of the towns of Horlivka and Alchevsk after key buildings in the capital of the easternmost province, Luhansk, were seized the day before.

Turchynov said his government's goal is to prevent the spread of unrest ahead of presidential elections scheduled for May 25.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his assistance in securing the release of seven observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who have been held by pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine.

"The German chancellor reminded President Putin of Russia's responsibility as an OSCE member state and called on the president to exert his influence," Christiane Wirtz said, a spokeswoman for Merkel said.

"They also spoke about the significance of elections in Ukraine on May 25, which are crucial for the stability of the country," Wirtz said.

Get recipes for Hot Fudge Sauce Sundaes, Peach Berry Sundaes With Honey and Banana Splits.

Eight million people have signed up for subsidized private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, President Obama said this month. Millions more obtained new coverage through the Medicaid program for the poor.

Full implementation of the health law has renewed discussions of winners and losers, makers and moochers.

Here's a corrective to common misconceptions about who pays for health care.

1) Before Obamacare we had a free-market health care system.

Government has been part of the business of medicine at least since the 1940s, when Washington began appropriating billions of dollars to build private and government hospitals. The drug industry and its customers owe much to federally funded research.

Of course Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor, which both began in the 1960s, represent direct government transfers from some taxpayers to others. States have set rules for health insurance for decades.

If you're insured through an employer that files an income-tax return, your coverage is heavily subsidized by the feds. Tax deductions for private medical coverage cost the U.S. Treasury $250 billion a year.

Some would argue that private health insurance is own kind of subsidy. What the healthy pay in premiums finances care for the sick. Few patients except foreign potentates have paid their own medical bills for a long time.

2) I fully paid for Medicare through taxes deducted from my salary.

Scholars at the Urban Institute have calculated that the typical Medicare beneficiary who retired in 2010 will cost the system more than twice as much in health costs than she and her employer paid in Medicare taxes.

It's another subsidy. If Congress had designed Medicare to pay for itself rather than add to the budget deficit every year, payroll taxes would be far higher and your take-home pay would have been far lower.

3) Premiums from my paycheck fund my company health plan.

Probably not entirely. Or even mostly.

For family coverage, which cost an average of $16,351 last year, the average worker paid only 29 percent of the premium. For individual coverage, workers paid only 18 percent of the (lower) total cost.

Although premiums and out-of-pocket costs have been soaring for consumers, costs have been rising for employers, too — up by nearly 80 percent in a decade. Business spends more than half a trillion dollars annually on employee health care.

4) Government and employers pay for almost all health care.

But give workers and consumers credit. In 2012 households still paid the largest single share of health costs, according to federal actuaries. Part was premiums paid through employers and directly to insurers. Part was out-of-pocket expense.

The household portion of the health-spending pie shrank from 37 percent in 1987 to 28 percent in 2012. But it's still larger than the federal government's 26 percent share or business's 21 percent.

5) The insurance company is always the bad guy.

Human resources departments often trash-talk the company's insurance plan when telling employees the network of doctors shrank, the deductible rose or certain procedures aren't covered.

But more than half of all workers with health coverage are enrolled in so-called self-insured plans where the employer pays medical bills directly. The insurance company only processes claims.

If your company has at least 500 workers it is probably self-insured

In such plans the employer is the insurance company. And it's the employer calling the shots.

Iraqis are voting for parliament Wednesday for the first time since American soldiers withdrew more than two years ago. Without their support, and amid intense violence, the poll will test Iraq's fragile democracy to its limits.

The election is for the 328-seat parliament and offers more than 9,000 candidates on party lists. It will probably end up with no party winning a majority and lead to weeks or months of coalition haggling to form a new government.

It comes at a time of ongoing battles between Sunni Muslim extremists and Iraqi security forces. Al Qaida-linked groups have overtaken the city of Fallujah. That conflict and numerous bombings against civilian areas have claimed at least 2,600 lives this year, according to the United Nations.

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The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Tess Gerritsen, author of the astronaut novel Gravity, is suing Warner Bros., claiming the studio's failed to credit her as an inspiration for last year's film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Warner Bros. bought the film rights in 1999. Gerritsen says the studio owes her 2.5 percent of the film's profits and that it broke an agreement that the movie be released with a "based upon" credit. In the past, Gerritsen has been quoted saying that "Gravity is a great film, but it's not based on my book." But, according to The New York Times, her lawyer says that "Ms. Gerritsen in recent months was given information — he would not be specific — that caused her to believe that Alfonso Cuarn, who also directed "Gravity," winning an Oscar, based his screenplay on her book." Cuarn and his son Jons are credited with writing the screenplay.

Adam Johnson won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for The Orphan Master's Son, a novel set in North Korea. For Granta, he describes the bizarre reality of spending time there: "For a week, my minders had been steering me daily into shopping opportunities at various gifts shops and department stores. And I was ready to pay. I was dying to buy something, anything that would help my wife and children understand the profound surrealism and warped reality I'd experienced on my research trip to North Korea. But there was nothing to buy."

In an essay called "Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing," Daniel Jos Older argues that in order for children's books to begin to show perspectives other than white ones, editors, publishers, agents, and the rest of the book industry need to become more diverse — not just authors. He writes, "The publishing industry looks a lot like one of these best-selling teenage dystopias: white and full of people destroying each other to survive."

The Marxists Internet Archive, an online library of Marxist texts, is fighting a U.K. publisher to be able to put a copyrighted translation of Marx online without paying for it, because, you know, they're Marxists. The publisher Lawrence & Wishart — a historically leftist publisher — said they were met with a "campaign of online abuse" after they asked Marxists.org to take the copyrighted text down. A petition by a supporter of the Marxists Internet Archive, which has attracted thousands of signatures, states: "It is immensely ironic that a private publishing company is claiming the copyright of the collected works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the philosophers who wrote against the monopoly of capitalism and its origin, private property, all their lives." Lawrence & Wishart responded: "Income from our copyright on this scholarly work contributes to our continuing publication programme. Infringement of this copyright has the effect of depriving a small radical publisher of the funds it needs to remain in existence."

Frankenstein in Baghdad, a novel by the Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi, has won the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The prize, established in 2007 to combat the "limited international availability of high quality Arab fiction," comes with $50,000 and an English translation of the winning work. The prize website describes the novel like this: "Set in the spring of 2005, Frankenstein in Baghdad tells the story of Hadi al-Attag, a rag-and-bone man who lives in a populous district of Baghdad. He takes the body parts of those killed in explosions and sews them together to create a new body. The body is entered by a displaced soul, bringing it to life. Hadi calls the being 'the-what's-its-name,' while the authorities name it 'Criminal X' and others refer to it as 'Frankenstein'. Frankenstein begins a campaign of revenge against those who killed him, or killed those whose parts make up his body."

Australian officials are dismissing reports by a marine exploration company that wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 might have been located in the Bay of Bengal, thousands of miles north of the search area where the plane is presumed to have gone down.

GeoResonance, a private firm based in Australia, said earlier this week that in its own search for the jetliner that disappeared from radar on March 8, it had had found what appeared to be plane wreckage near Bangladesh.

"The company is not declaring this is MH370, however it should be investigated," GeoResonance said in a statement.

The company says it gave the information to Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian and Chinese diplomats in Australia on March 31 and to the Australian search team on April 4.

"The company and its directors are surprised by the lack of response from the various authorities," GeoResonance said.

But Angus Houston, the head of the search in the southern Indian Ocean, off Australia's west coast, said Wednesday that he believes that's where the plane went down.

"I think that we have been looking in the right place," Houston told Sky New Australia. "I'm confident the aircraft will be found."

On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the search for Flight MH370, with 239 people aboard, had entered a "new phase" and that after weeks of searching visually for floating debris, it is "highly unlikely" that any would ever be found.

"We are moving from the current phase to a phase which is focused on searching the ocean floor over a much larger area," Abbott said.

Abbott also acknowledged that it was possible that the fate of the airliner might never be discovered.

This post was updated at 9:30 a.m. ET.

The European Union has followed the U.S. in imposing a new round of sanctions on Russia for the Kremlin's intervention in Crimea and alleged support of separatist elements inside eastern Ukraine.

The sanctions, which specifically target Russian President Vladimir Putin's "inner circle," drew a response from Moscow, which described them in Cold War terms.

According to The Guardian, the EU has named 15 people for sanctions, including Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who has been charged with developing Crimea. Kozak was also named on Monday by the U.S.

Several leaders of the pro-Russian militia and protesters who have been occupying buildings in eastern Ukraine have also been named, according to the Guardian. They will be subject to asset freezes and travel bans.

The Washington Post says:

"The European Union has been more reluctant than the United States to target Russian businesses, in part because E.U. companies have far stronger economic relations with Russia than their U.S. counterparts. U.S. officials have indicated that they were ready to issue new sanctions last week but decided to wait for the European Union in order to project a unified front against what they say is Russia's escalating campaign to destabilize Ukraine."

Announced, the cast is: The Star Wars movie franchise has announced the cast for the upcoming Episode VII movie.

Actors John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson and Max von Sydow will join the cast of the new movie. The three stars of the original films – Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill – will reprise their roles as Han Solo, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker, respectively. Also back are Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Kenny Baker as R2-D2 and Peter Mayhew and Chewbacca.

"We are so excited to finally share the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII. It is both thrilling and surreal to watch the beloved original cast and these brilliant new performers come together to bring this world to life, once again. We start shooting in a couple of weeks, and everyone is doing their best to make the fans proud," director J.J. Abrams said in Tuesday's statement from Disney and Lucasfilms.

Variety notes that Girls' star Driver will likely play the villain. Here's more from Variety:

"While descriptions of characters were left out of the release, sources tell Variety Driver will play the main villain who is meant to have a Darth Vader look to him, Isaac's character will have a Han Solo look to him and Boyega would be a Jedi.

"It's unclear about Ridley who would play but sources have always said the children of Solo and Princess Leia would play a part in the film and that Ridley could possibly play their daughter."

A few weeks after David Letterman announced he'd be retiring from the CBS late-night television lineup, Craig Ferguson did the same.

Ferguson, host of The Late Late Show since 2005, told his studio audience during Monday's taping that he will step down at the end of the year. Ferguson's show airs after Letterman's, at 12:35 a.m. on weekdays.

The move was no surprise after CBS announced that Stephen Colbert will replace Letterman next year. There was a time that Ferguson, whose show won a Peabody Award in 2009, was considered a strong contender for that job.

But The Late Late Show has faded in the ratings, particularly with the arrival of Seth Meyers in February as competition in the same time slot.

"CBS and I are not getting divorced, we are consciously uncoupling," Ferguson said. "But we will still spend holidays together and share custody of the fake horse and robot skeleton, both of whom we love very much."

He told the audience it was his decision to leave, adding, "CBS has been fine with me."

CBS Entertainment Chairwoman Nina Tassler said Ferguson "infused the broadcast with tremendous energy, unique comedy, insightful interviews and some of the most heartfelt monologues seen on television."

The Scottish-born Ferguson, 51, became a U.S. citizen during his tenure on the show.

He already has a new job lined up, as host of Celebrity Name Game, a syndicated game show set to debut later this year.

But he joked about his plans with the audience.

After his stint ends, "I'll go and do something else. Probably, I'm thinking, carpentry. But I haven't made my mind up yet. ... I feel like doing this show for 10 years, that's enough," he said.

Guest LL Cool J told Ferguson that "I hate to see you go."

It's been an unusually busy period of personnel changes in the late-night television arena. Jimmy Fallon took over the Tonight show on NBC from Jay Leno in February and was an instant sensation, ascending to the top of the ratings against Letterman and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel. Letterman announced that he would be leaving CBS after more than three decades in late-night TV.

Chelsea Handler also has said she will be leaving her late-night show on E!

CBS said it plans to continue The Late Late Show and will be searching for another host. There's another opening at Comedy Central, which is looking to replace The Colbert Report when it ends at the end of the year.

Billie Holiday will not be singing unless she "feels it." That's practically her thesis statement in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, Lanie Robertson's play about a drug-ravaged nightclub show near the end of Holiday's tortured life. War stories and bawdy jokes are never a problem — and neither is pouring a drink — but if the audience wants a show, they have to wait until Lady Day can give them something real.

Take away the booze and drugs, and you find a similar spirit in the show's current Broadway production, appearing through August at Circle in the Square Theatre. Star Audra McDonald, who just this morning got a Tony nomination for her performance, has been widely praised for accurately imitating Holiday's singing voice, but she and her director Lonny Price are just as committed to emotional authenticity.

"Not unlike Billie, I think Audra is incapable of falsity," says Price, who has directed McDonald in several productions, including a 2007 Broadway revival of 110 in the Shade and this spring's New York Philharmonic staging of Sweeney Todd. "She won't settle, and if it's not truthful to her, she won't play it. I know she pushes me harder than other actors do, and I may push her harder than other directors do."

McDonald agrees, and she feels her longstanding friendship with Price allows them to cut past formalities and get right to improving the work. "We know each other's tricks," she says. "He knows when I'm being lazy about something and saying, 'Well, I don't feel like working on this today.' And if I feel that he's going for something that feels too general, or if I'm not getting the specific note I need, I will push him until he gives me an answer we both agree on."

That dynamic is especially useful in Lady Day. Though Robertson provides a structure for Holiday's gig at the titular Philly dive — she tells increasingly revealing stories as she ingests increasingly harmful substances — he leaves the creative team plenty of interpretive room. "When you read the play in script form, it's one long paragraph with songs," McDonald says, meaning there aren't a lot of stage directions to suggest how scenes should be played.

Plus, the show's 13 numbers — including "God Bless the Child" and "Strange Fruit" — are classics from Holiday's repertoire, not musical theater tunes. "That's really the biggest challenge of the piece," Price says. "In a show where songs don't reveal character and certainly don't move the plot, it's about getting that character to a place where those songs feel inevitable."

In other words, Price and McDonald have to clarify why Billie is "feeling" each number before she sings it, or nobody is going to be satisfied.

Take the jaunty ditty "Pig Foot (and Bottle of Beer)": McDonald croons it while she's in the audience, right after chatting up the crowd. (The theater is designed like an actual club, with many patrons seated at caf tables and drinking cocktails during the show.)

"We did that so she can get excited to be in the audience," Price explains. "She feels good to be around people who like her, and being in the middle of them, she thinks, 'Let's have a party! Let's sing 'Pig Foot'! Now, she could sing 'Pig Foot' from the stage, and maybe there'd be another way to get her there. But her being around those people creates a party atmosphere that's believable for a silly, celebratory song."

That's not the only time Holiday draws on her fans. She constantly talks and flirts with them to find inspiration for the next moment. "My biggest partner every night is the audience," McDonald says. "That's who she's afraid of. That's who she's wanting love from."

As a performer, it requires an enormous amount of faith to interact with the audience during a scripted show. There's no guarantee they'll respond in a certain way, but marks still have to be hit and songs still have to be sung. McDonald must stay responsive and alert, finding reactions that will both acknowledge what the audience is doing and create a truthful transition to the next scene.

"This is not a show that lets me drift away mentally, because I never have any idea what I'm going to get," she explains. "As Lonny says, it's like the audience is my co-star and there's a new understudy on in the part every night. But that's why I've leaned on him to make sure I know what my 'verb' is for every single beat of this. What does she want? Why is she doing this?"

And besides, interacting with the crowd adds even more authenticity to her performance as a nightclub singer in a bar and grill. "We accept any and all reactions in this show," McDonald says. "Because that's real life. That certainly would have been real life for Billie Holiday in this particular moment.

Mark Blankenship edits TDF Stages (https://stages.tdf.org) and tweets as @IAmBlankenship

North Korea has conducted live artillery drills near a disputed western maritime border with the South just days after President Obama and his South Korean counterpart urged Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

The exercises occurred near Yeonpyeong Island, which was hit by North Korean shelling in 2010, killing four people and causing significant damage.

NPR's Jason Strother reports from Seoul that Pyongyang gave South Korea a heads up ahead of the artillery test. He says South Korean fishermen on islands close to North Korea's Yellow Sea coast were warned by Seoul to stay out of the water.

South Korean military officials said the North fired 50 rounds, but that none landed in South Korean territory.

Such drills are not uncommon, but the latest come on the heels of Obama's visit to South Korea – part of a four-nation swing through Asia aimed at bolstering U.S. security and trade ties with traditionally allies in the region.

North Korea test-fired short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in March. Satellite imagery has also led analysts to conclude that Pyongyang might be preparing for another nuclear test.

And earlier this week, the North ratcheted up the rhetoric against Seoul and its leader, among other things, describing the South Korean leader, Park Geun-hye, as a "despicable prostitute."

The European Union has followed the U.S. in imposing a new round of sanctions on Russia for the Kremlin's intervention in Crimea and alleged support of separatist elements inside eastern Ukraine.

The sanctions, which specifically target Russian President Vladimir Putin's "inner circle," drew a response from Moscow, which described them in Cold War terms.

According to The Guardian, the EU has named 15 people for sanctions, including General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who has been charged with developing Crimea. Kozak was also named on Monday by the U.S.

Several leaders of the pro-Russian militia and protesters who have been occupying buildings in eastern Ukraine have also been named, according to the Guardian. They will be subject to asset freezes and travel bans.

The Washington Post says:

"The European Union has been more reluctant than the United States to target Russian businesses, in part because E.U. companies have far stronger economic relations with Russia than their U.S. counterparts. U.S. officials have indicated that they were ready to issue new sanctions last week but decided to wait for the European Union in order to project a unified front against what they say is Russia's escalating campaign to destabilize Ukraine."

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been at the heart of racial controversies before.

Sterling, one of the longest-tenured owners of an NBA franchise, is alleged to have made racist comments in an audio tape that was first posted by the celebrity gossip site TMZ.

He is also a prominent real estate mogul in LA who, ironically, has been honored for his philanthropy by the local NAACP.

The NBA says it will announce findings Tuesday afternoon from its investigation into the controversy.

The Two-Way

What Can The NBA Do With Donald Sterling?

Poutine, if you don't know, is a Canadian dish made up of French fries topped with cheese curds and gravy. And if you don't know, you really haven't been living your life to its fullest. Seriously, what have you been doing? Go get some poutine. Then come back and read about this poutine burger — an open-faced hamburger topped with poutine — we ate from Spritzburger in Chicago. We'll wait. We have to. We can't move.

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A 2-week-old boy born to a Pakistani couple visiting India is being denied permission to return home with his parents because he lacks the proper travel documentation.

The story begins with Mai Fatima, her husband, Mir Muhammad Mahar, and their two children. The couple, from Ghotki, Pakistan, were expecting a third child when they came to Basanpir, India, 2 months ago to visit Mai Fatima's father.

But her father died during their visit; she subsequently gave birth to a boy on April 14.

On April 25, the couple and the baby, named Sohail, left for Pakistan on the Thar Express. They were stopped near the border at Munabao. The Times of India reports that immigration officers instructed them to either go to Pakistan, leaving the child behind, or stay behind and complete documentation for their baby. (We should note here that several Indian news outlets are reporting that Pakistani officials didn't allow the child in, while Pakistani news organizations are saying it was Indian officials who didn't allow the child to leave.)

"They refused to let us go because my passport did not have Sohail's photo," Mai Fatima told the Hindu newspaper.

Her husband Mahar rushed to New Delhi, the Indian capital, to get the required documentation, and the newspaper said the couple's visa will be extended until that can be done.

Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper quoted Pakistan's high commissioner in India as saying the child's details will be registered "as soon as the woman contacts them and verifies her Pakistani origin with documents."

Stories of families divided by the India-Pakistan border are not new. The two countries were formed almost simultaneously in 1947, and have shared a deep mistrust for much of the time since then.

North Korea isn't exactly known for its light touch: It has referred to its foes as a "rat-like group of bastards," a "shameless political dwarf" and even a "swish of skirt."

That aforementioned "swish of skirt" is the target of North Korea's latest diatribe.

The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, which is the body tasked with uniting the two countries, called South Korean President Park Guen-hye a "capricious whore who asks her fancy man to do harm to other person while providing sex to him." The "fancy man" in question: President Obama, who visited ally South Korea last week for two days.

The comments were reported by KCNA, North Korea's official news agency.

The story went on to call Park a "dirty comfort woman for the U.S. and despicable prostitute selling off the nation." That epithet is likely to anger many South Koreans because of the Korean women who were kept as sex slaves by the Japanese during World War II.

The Guardian notes:

"While Pyongyang is known for its aggressive rhetoric, recent remarks have been unusually personal.

"Earlier this month state media ran misogynist articles, including one headlined "We accuse Park the bitch", labelling her as a lunatic, idiot and 'cold-blooded animal' and emphasising the fact that she has never married or had children.

"Those remarks were presented in the form of quotes from ordinary North Koreans, while the latest tirade, carried by state news agency KCNA, is presented as a statement from an official body."

A court in Egypt has sentenced 683 people to death, including the top leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. In a separate court ruling, the activities of youth group that spearheaded the 2011 uprising were banned.

It's the latest mass trial aimed at the Muslim Brotherhood of Mubarak's successor, ousted President Mohammed Morsi. The defendants were charged with an attack on a police station in the city of Minya in 2013 that killed a policeman.

Mohammed Badie, the Brotherhood's spiritual guide, was among those convicted. The Associated Press writes: "If his sentence is confirmed, it would make him the most senior Brotherhood figure sentenced to death since one of the group's leading ideologues, Sayed Qutb, was executed in 1966."

NPR's Leila Fadel reports that the case was heard by the same judge, Said Youssef, who sentenced 529 people to death in March; however, all but 37 of the earlier sentences were commuted by Youssef on Monday.

In March, the U.N. Human Rights office described the mass death sentences "unprecedented in recent history" and the U.S. State Department called them "unconscionable" and as having a "flagrant disregard for basic standards of justice."

The AP reports:

"Monday's ruling sparked an outcry among families of the defendants outside the court, with women fainting and relatives wailing and crying out 'Why? This is unfair!'"

"'My three sons are inside,' said a woman who only gave her first name, Samiya, as she screamed in grief. 'I have no one but God.'

"Lawyer Ali Kamal, said the hearing lasted only eight minutes. Security forces surrounded the court building and blocked roads, preventing families and media from attending the proceedings."