A ferry sunk off the coast of southern South Korea Wednesday, killing 25 passengers and leaving about 270 missing. Officials said there were 179 survivors. The death toll was expected to rise as water temperatures in the area the boat sank are around 54 degrees Fahrenheit, which is cold enough to cause hypothermia after 90 minutes of exposure. There were a total of 475 passengers aboard, 325 of them high school students on a class trip, all traveling to a resort island. The cause of the sinking remains unknown. (Read full story.)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian novelist and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, died Thursday at the age of 87 in southern Mexico City. Marquez was known for his style of “magical realism” in his stories about Latin America, blending elements of reality and wild fiction into his stories that showed to the world what the region was like.

Diplomats from Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement Thursday to work on stopping the violence along the Russia-Ukraine border after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, formerly an area in Ukraine, last month. The decision was reached after seven hours of negotiations and requires all sides to refrain from violence and intimidation; however, it does not require Russia to withdraw its estimated 40,000 troops in place near the Ukrainian border. It also does not set up any negotiation talks between the nations. (Read full story.)

Astronomers from NASA announced Thursday they have found a planet 500 light-years, or 3,000 trillion miles, from Earth that they say is the most Earth-like planet they’ve ever detected. The planet, named Kepler-186f, is rocky and similar in size to Earth, and its climate appears to be not too hot or cold. The planet was discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope in the constellation Cygnus.

Contact Emily Mills at [email protected].