Russia has offered a deal—a deal for "peace"!—in the face of shoulder-hunching tension and war drills and military clashes in eastern Ukraine. It goes like this: Boot out the nationalists who've camped out in Kiev, dear friends in Ukraine, and we'll magick away the pro-Russian demonstrators who've been taking over your towns along our border.

Fighting has continued despite the overtures and diplomatic discussions, clashes Ukraine refers to as "anti-terrorist operations." Ukraine's foreign minister, in fact, is feeling mighty bellicose and big for his britches: "We will now fight with Russian troops if ... they invade Ukraine."

It's unbecoming to keep staring. But I cannot look away. Cliven Bundy says he's "not a racist"—even if he "did wonder that." It all became clear, he says, after pondering the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Park [sic]: "He didn't want this prejudice thing like the media tried to put on me yesterday. I'm not going to put up with that because that's not what he wanted."

"If you're buying, we're selling." Mississippi businesses are, wonder of wonders, pushing back against a new law that would allows them to legally discriminate against their LGBTQ neighbors.

Another nuclear detonation by North Korea seems more and more likely (which I guess means that's one fewer bomb they can actually missile off at someone?), and President Obama is all, like, threatening some sanctions with even "more bite."

Hopefully that goes better than the rest the president's recent diplomatic efforts. Two major initiatives capsized on the same day: a hoped-for trade deal with Japan and another try at peace between Palestine and Israel.

CNN is buying an island in the Indian Ocean and moving there. The hunt for the Malaysian airplane that vanished could take "years."

After toys on a baby's gravesite kept vanishing, cops in Ohio set up a surveillance camera to see who might be behind it. They finally found a suspect—a woman who says she was worried roving dogs might have gotten them.

Some drunk Australian got it in his head to storm the locked cockpit on a flight to Bali, triggering a hijacking alert. He was tied up in the back of the plane and then arrested.

Cover Oregon, once a font of glimmering hopes but now just a fiasco in countless ways, apparently won't be saved. The state's health insurance exchange will be retired in favor of HealthCare.gov, the federal website. Making that move will save tens of millions of dollars.

Methamphetamine deaths have gone up in Oregon, according to stats from the state medical examiner's office. Meth contributed to more than half of illegal-drug-related deaths last year, topping heroin.

What the pope says on the phone shouldn't be seen as church policy, the very nervous Roman Catholic Church is saying. What now? Pope Francis called up a divorced woman (he does that, calling people, not just divorcees) and told her it was still okay, despite her divorce, to consume consecrated wafers and wine during weekly church services.

You native Oregonians probably have the same feelings about Tom Peterson that I did for the Empire Carpets or Menards guys, back in Chicagoland. Mr. Peterson is battling Parkinson's disease and now lives in an assisted care facility. His wife, as ever, is by his side.