There is the geopolitical story which is just beginning to unfold. Then there is the immediate shock of the human tragedy summed up just after the plane’s downing by the NYT’s Sabrina Tavernise: “Headphones and computers were scattered throughout a field of sunflowers. In another field, a Dutch passport lay open. Bodies fell from the sky, looking like rags or clumps of ash.”

+ Joep Lange and many other AIDS researchers were on the plane, enroute to a research conference in Melbourne. BBC on some of the passengers.

+ A family that lost two members on the still-missing Malaysian Airlines flight lost two more on Flight MH17.