China treads carefully amid the anger and grief of MH370 relatives

Beijing (CNN) -- Over the past few days, the families of the 154 Chinese passengers who were aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have been oscillating between grief and visceral anger as the search for the plane carrying their loved ones continues.

In emotional scenes at a Beijing hotel where many of them have been staying for more than two weeks, some distraught relatives collapsed and had to be taken to hospital.

Other relatives angrily defied police admonishments and marched to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing earlier this week. Wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with "Pray for MH370," they shouted their demand for "evidence" the airliner ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean, and called the Malaysians "liars," accusing the authorities in Kuala Lumpur of withholding information

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Obamacare Enrollment Reaches 6 Million

WASHINGTON -- The number of people who have chosen a health care plan through a state or federal exchange topped 6 million on Thursday, putting the administration ahead of revised projections with several days before the enrollment deadline.

The number, which was announced by President Barack Obama during a conference call on Thursday, reflects a major uptick in interest in health care coverage ahead of the deadline. The administration has revised that end date a bit so that people in the queue by March 31 have time to complete their application process should they run into issues.

Original projections had approximately 7 million people signing up for private plans through the state and federal Obamacare exchanges during the six-month enrollment period. That number was revised significantly downward after major technical problems plagued the federal website upon its launch.

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OF COURSE Health Insurance Will Cost More Next Year ... It Does Every Year

Those figures refer to job-based health insurance, so prices are different than the cost of individual coverage available via Obamacare's health insurance exchanges, which are for people who don't get coverage from employers. Comprehensive data on the individual market are harder to come by, but a report from online insurance broker eHealth about the products they provide shows rate increases are the norm for these plans, too.

The average premium for an individual rose 32 percent between 2005 and 2012, according to the company's report.

Here, the newspaper appears to take President Barack Obama's administration to task for not believing something it never claimed to believe in the first place: That, within the remarkably short period of 24 months, decades of health insurance rate hikes would suddenly reverse themselves.

And here's how the Daily Mail characterized the Health and Human Services secretary's banal statement: "Sebelius admits Obamacare will raise health insurance premiums in 2015."

Granted, Obama and his deputies shoulder blame for making it easy for people to believe that acknowledging something as obvious as increasing health insurance premiums constitutes news.

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Landmark libel case still relevant in the digital age

WASHINGTON (AP) - Singer Courtney Love hadn't been born and tweeting was reserved for birds when The New York Times won a landmark libel case at the Supreme Court in 1964.

But when a California jury decided recently that Love shouldn't have to pay $8 million over a troublesome tweet about her former lawyer, she became just the latest person to lean on New York Times v. Sullivan, a case decided 50 years ago Sunday, and the cases that followed and expanded it.

The Sullivan case, as it known among lawyers, stemmed from Alabama officials' efforts to hamper the newspaper's coverage of civil rights protests in the South. The decision made it hard for public officials to win lawsuits and hefty money awards over published false statements that damaged their reputations.

In the decades since, the justices have extended the decision, making it tough for celebrities, politicians and other public figures to win libel suits.

Newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations were the primary means of publishing when the Sullivan case was decided. Today, the case applies equally to new media such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Because of the ease of publishing online, more people may claim the protections granted by the decision and others that followed.

"It seems reasonably clear that the protections afforded by Sullivan and the cases that came after it apply to both media and nonmedia speakers," said Lee Levine, a First Amendment lawyer who co-wrote a recent book on the case.

"Technology has afforded everyone - and not just people who can afford to buy a printing press or own a broadcast station - the ability to disseminate information to the world. That has increased the opportunities for those people to publish defamatory statements to a very broad audience," Levine said.

Levine said it's unclear whether that opportunity will lead to more libel suits, cases brought over the publication of false information that injures someone's reputation. More ways to communicate could mean more suits, or there could be fewer because people may discount what they read online, and it may not be worth suing individuals who don't have corporations' wealth.

How the Ukraine crisis ends

Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.

Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.

Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States.

The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom, starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709 , were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia

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Hillary Clinton Leads Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz By Wide Margins In Presidential Poll

Voters are more polarized, however, as to whether Clinton would make a good president: 50 percent of respondents said she would, while 47 percent said she wouldn't, according to Fox.

The results underscore that the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 is still wide open, as no single candidate appears to have a definitive edge over Clinton.

Of course, none of the candidates mentioned have confirmed that they will run in 2016 -- both Clinton and Bush have said they will announce their decision sometime this year.

The poll questioned 1,002 registered voters nationwide and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points. 

Putin Rebuffs Obama As Ukraine Crisis Escalates

MOSCOW/SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine, March 7 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin rebuffed a warning from U.S. President Barack Obama over Moscow's military intervention in Crimea, saying on Friday that Russia could not ignore calls for help from Russian speakers in Ukraine.

After an hour-long telephone call, Putin said in a statement that Moscow and Washington were still far apart on the situation in the former Soviet republic, where he said the new authorities had taken "absolutely illegitimate decisions on the eastern, southeastern and Crimea regions.

"Russia cannot ignore calls for help and it acts accordingly, in full compliance with international law," Putin said.

The most serious east-west confrontation since the end of the Cold War - resulting from the overthrow last month of President Viktor Yanukovich after violent protests in Kiev - escalated on Thursday when Crimea's parliament, dominated by ethnic Russians, voted to join Russia. The region's government set a referendum for March 16 - in just nine days' time.

European Union leaders and Obama denounced the referendum as illegitimate, saying it would violate Ukraine's constitution.

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Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk: Crimea 'was, is and will be an integral part of Ukraine'

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- We're leaving. No, you're not.

That's where the crisis in Ukraine stood Thursday after lawmakers in Crimea voted in favor of leaving the country for Russia and putting it to a regional vote in 10 days.

It's an act that drew widespread condemnation, with Ukrainian interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk calling the effort to hold such a referendum "an illegitimate decision."

"Crimea was, is and will be an integral part of Ukraine," he said.

It's not clear how easily the region could split off from Ukraine, if the referendum endorses the move.

The developments came as Yatsenyuk joined in emergency talks in Brussels, Belgium, called by leaders of the European Union who support the Kiev government and want to de-escalate the crisis.

The EU and the United States announced plans to freeze the assets of Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted as Ukraine's President after he turned his back on a trade deal with the EU in favor of one with Russia. That prompted months of protests that culminated in February with bloody street clashes that left dozens dead and Yanukovych ousted

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Russia Says It Would Retaliate For U.S. Sanctions Over Ukraine

MOSCOW, March 4 (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday that it would retaliate if the United States imposed sanctions over Moscow's actions in Ukraine.

"We will have to respond," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement. "As always in such situations, provoked by rash and irresponsible actions by Washington, we stress: this is not our choice."

"We have frequently explained to the Americans ... why unilateral sanctions do not fit the standards of civilised relations between states," Lukashevich said.

Lukashevich did not describe any measures Moscow might impose in retaliation but said the Russian response would not necessarily mirror the U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee is consulting the Obama administration on possible measures including visa bans and asset freezes against individuals, suspension of military cooperation, and economic sanctions.

In Kiev on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday condemned Russia's "act of aggression" in Ukraine and said Moscow, which has taken control of the Crimea region, was looking for a pretext to invade more of the country. (Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

UN Envoy Forced Out Of Crimea By Hostile Pro-Russian Crowd

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine, March 5 (Reuters) - A U.N. special envoy was forced to abandon a mission to Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea region on Wednesday after being stopped by armed men and besieged inside a cafe by a hostile crowd shouting "Russia! Russia!"

A reporter for Britain's ITN television, James Mates, said the envoy, Dutch diplomat Robert Serry, had taken shelter in the cafe to escape the armed men who stopped him. He agreed to leave Crimea to end the stand-off.

A Reuters photographer saw him being escorted by police through a crowd of about 100 angry demonstrators, some waving Russian flags, near the headquarters of a foreign observer mission.

Crimea is under control of Russian forces who seized it last week, although Moscow says "self defence" units of men in uniform without insignia are not under its command.

"UN special envoy Robert Serry with me in coffee shop. Outside local militia block the door," Mates tweeted.

"He refused to go with men blocking car, got out and walked until he found coffee shop. He's asked ITV News team to stay with him," Mates said.

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Kerry on Ukraine: Solution is tough, but situation better than yesterday

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- Foreign ministers from around the world didn't strike a deal over the Ukraine crisis Wednesday, but U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said they agreed on one key thing: They'd rather talk than fight.

"All parties agreed today that it is important to try to resolve these issues through dialogue," Kerry told reporters after a series of meetings in Paris with foreign ministers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia.

Kerry described the talks as "the beginning of a negotiation" and called them "very constructive." Finding a resolution will be difficult, he said, "but I'd rather be where we are today than where we were yesterday."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius offered an optimistic assessment.

"For the first time, something has moved in the process," he said, "and we will continue to talk."

Meanwhile, Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement that an agreement with the United States had been reached to help implement a February 21 deal over the transition of power in Ukraine. But Kerry did not mention that agreement in his remarks.

The closely watched talks between top diplomats came after days of simmering tensions in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.

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