Midday Roundup: Fort Hood's eight minutes of terror

Still seeking answers. U.S. Army investigators have released a detailed timeline of the events that led up to last week’s shooting at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Spc. Ivan Lopez killed three soldiers and wounded 16 more in a rampage that lasted just eight minutes. Lopez started shooting at the administrative office of his unit, the 49th Transportation Battalion, after getting angry about the way his request for leave to deal with a family matter had been handled. Investigators have not named a clear motive for the attack, but the dispute over the leave request seems to have triggered Lopez’s violent reaction. After leaving the administrative office building, he drove to the motor pool building where he worked, firing more rounds at his co-workers.

Saying no to fascism? Ukrainian police forces have cleared pro-Russian protestors from a regional administration building in the city of Kharkiv, but armed gangs continue to occupy government facilities in other cities. Ukrainian officials say Moscow is fueling the unrest in an attempt to tear the country apart and gobble up the pieces. Following the Crimean vote to rejoin Russia, other pro-Russian parts of Ukraine are calling for their own referendums. In Luhansk, a city of about 450,000 people, a man told a crowd outside an occupied state security building that protestors wanted Russian reinstated as the region’s official language. “We will not let fascism pass,” he shouted, leading the crowd in chants of “Russia! Russia!”

Cost estimates. After a month of searching turned up no definitive sign of the missing Malaysian Airlines plane that disappeared March 8, observers are now wondering who’s going to foot the bill for the massive recovery effort. A British analyst estimates the search, which has involved, planes, ships, and submarines belonging to eight countries, has cost as much as $42 million, so far. Malaysia’s acting transport minister told reporters the cost of the search is “immaterial,”but then his country hasn’t offered to pay up either.

Ill-advised? A San Diego couple are defending their decision to sail from California to New Zealand amid a worldwide backlash over their decision to travel with their two young daughters. The U.S. Navy rescued Eric and Charlotte Kaufman and their children yesterday just off the coast of Mexico after their 37-foot sailboat began taking on water and their 1-year-old became ill. “We understand there are those who question our decision to sail with our family, but please know that this is how our family has lived for seven years, and when we departed on this journey more than a year ago, we were then and remain today confident that we prepared as well as any sailing crew could,”the Kaufmans said in a statement issued from the USS Vadergrift. Rescuers ended up sinking the family’s boat.

Obsolete. Microsoft will stop supporting its aging operating system, Windows XP, today. While the move makes sense—the software is 12 years old—the decision could turn into a public relations nightmare. An estimated 30 percent of business computers around the world still use XP, and with Microsoft no longer releasing updates and security patches for the system, analysts say those computers will be vulnerable to hackers.