Reeling from the bloodshed in Kiev, the Ukrainian government has announced a tenuous promise to shop shooting at the protesters who've spent weeks in the streets to express ambivalence about their homeland's embrace of Russia and deep anger at their leaders' ever-hardening authoritarian posture. Presidential elections would come early, in a major concession, along with an easing of presidential powers. But it's not clear either will be enough for demonstrators who want the ouster of pro-Russia President Victor Yanukovych. The deal comes, curiously enough, after the European Union finally imposed sanctions on Ukraine.

There are no peace deals in Venezuela. In a very visible statement of power, troops have been sent into the restive western provinces that have been among the hotbeds of rage aimed at the late Hugo Chavez's anointed successor. It's more evidence of a national crackdown after an anti-government rally more than a week ago was put down with deadly force. A jailed resistance leader has called for the demonstrations to continue all the same.

Sorry, journalists. If you're in Egypt, covering the chaos more than two years after the Arab Spring and a year or so after the military ousted the country's Islamist president, there's a good chance you've been put into jail alongside various other activists and dissidents.

The "calm" in Palestine is shaky. How shaky? There's an increasingly prevailing sense among freedom fighters that Hamas, a long-rued militant group, isn't radical or bold enough any longer.

Oh, and there's a humanitarian crisis still unfolding in the Central African Republic, too. In case you hadn't heard. A thousand people have died and a million more have been displaced in a civil war that broke out in November.

On second thought, China tells the United States, letting President Obama meet with the Dalai Lama might make us very, very angry.

A French railway looking to bid on a $2.2 billion light-rail project in Maryland might have to pay reparations first. Its trains, decades ago, helped transport Nazi-held prisoners to Holocaust death camps.

Not to be too reductionist, but President Obama's budget plan—in which he bids adieu to "austerity"—will come across like a big thumbs-up to progressives and mainstream Democrats and a giant middle finger to the Republican elites and their Tea Party puppets.

American Muslims no longer have civil rights. A judge examined said spying by New York cops was a "lawful tool" in the fight against terrorism.

It starts at home. After unveiling major plans for improving traffic safety, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's sport-utility vehicle was tracked by a TV station exceeding the posted speed limit and coasting through stop signs.

A rich person will try to buy enough signatures so that Californians can vote this fall on splitting into six boringly named states (except for Jefferson, but that's just obvious). Because there might not be room, US senators from the new states would have to sit on folding chairs in the Capitol hallway.

YOU CAN LOOK AWAY ONCE THE SINGING STARTS. BUT THEN YOU WON'T WANT TO.