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fake passports. The piracy theory, however, gained new life when it was reported that the plane's transponders had been turned off, making it more stealthy; and that signals from the plane indicated that it kept flying for several hours after the last radio contact, possibly turning west toward the Indian Ocean.
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US urges Moscow to reject Sunday's vote in Crimea to join Russia and secede from Ukraine
• LONDON (AP) -- The West braced Friday for a vote by the Crimean Peninsula to secede from Ukraine -- and likely be annexed by Russia -- as the last attempt for diplomacy broke down despite threats of costly international sanctions and other imminent penalties against Moscow for forcibly challenging a pro-European government in Kiev.
• Russia's top diplomat said Moscow will make no decisions about Crimea's future, including whether to embrace it as a new territory, until after a local referendum Sunday to decide whether it should remain part of Ukraine.
• But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the vote's results are all but a foregone conclusion, and urged Russia's parliament against accepting any offer to claim Crimea as its own.
• "We believe that a decision to move forward by Russia to ratify that vote officially within the Duma would, in fact, be a backdoor annexation of Crimea," Kerry told reporters in London after six hours of talks Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
• Kerry instead called on Moscow to support broad autonomy for Crimea -- still as part of Ukraine -- instead of a move by the strategic peninsula to secede. And he predicted the probability of "if the people of Crimea vote overwhelmingly, as one suspects they will, to affiliate or be associated with Russia."
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For Obama, CIA spat highlights complicated role in managing post-Sept. 11 programs
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- For President Barack Obama, a public spat between his trusted ally at the CIA and a loyal Democratic senator has put into sharp focus his complicated role in managing the post-Sept. 11 anti-terror programs he inherited from George W. Bush.
• The president wants to stay neutral in the feud that erupted last week between Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and CIA Director John Brennan, who served as (Continued on page 28)
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