March 4, 2014

• Kerry arrives in Kiev and offers $1 billion in loan guarantees, with sanctions to punish Russia coming later this week.
• Mounting tension between Russia and Ukraine, in pictures.
• John Oliver's satirical news podcast "The Bugle" blocked by China.
• Views on gay marriage reveal new distinction between public policy and private beliefs: many who support it think gay sex is immoral.
• New study concludes sex at 70 is the same as sex at 20—with more medical records.
• Related: First recorded magic trick was known as the old "cups and balls."
• Legalizing marijuana is to the states that are doing it much as Obamacare is to the federal government: a test of modern government’s ability to innovate.
• New research shows ancient dental plaque to be "a Pompeii of the mouth."
• Forbes's annual billionaires list finds new mega-rich for the first time in Algeria, Lithuania, Tanzania, Uganda.
• Sweden's roads are the world's safest, thanks to its "Vision Zero" plan, reducing deaths by half since 2000.
• TMN's Rosecrans Baldwin learns how to hunt and kill in Montana, and it's not unlike The Empire Strikes Back.
• Kentucky Baptists "point people to Christ" with free handguns and steak dinners.
• One in 10 soldiers has expressed suicidal tendencies before deployment, according to new research.
• So far, Kepler has found 12 other planets that could support water-based life forms.
• Global mass production has made bananas highly susceptible to an extinction not unlike the Irish potato famine.
• Stunning portraits of Mongolia's transgender population, who often live in secrecy.
• James Wood finds poetic hay in homesickness.
• "Indie author tries and fails to drop out of Tournament of Books."