News Headlines - 20 March 2014

▽Obama extends sanctions against Russia to include wealthy Putin allies | theguardian.com

President Obama has extended financial sanctions against Russia to include wealthy supporters of Vladimir Putin and a bank close to the Kremlin, in a bid to deter Russian military incursions into eastern and southern Ukraine.

▽MH370: search leads to remotest stretch of ocean in the world - Telegraph

The search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight moved to one of the remotest spots of ocean on the planet on Thursday after new satellite images located a possible crash site for the plane some 1,500 miles south west of Australia.

▽Corruption Report Against South Africa President Prompts Impeachment Calls

South Africa's top anti-corruption official has found that President Jacob Zuma "benefited unduly" from government money spent to improve his personal home. She is calling for Zuma to pay back some of the nearly $23 million (R246 million) - but the opposition and some ordinary citizens are calling for something more: impeachment.

▽Two million extra middle-income earners pay 40p tax under Coalition - Telegraph

More than two million additional middle-income earners will have been dragged into the 40p rate of income tax under the Coalition, independent economists have said.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies suggested that higher-rate taxpayers will be ￡546 a year worse off after Mr Osborne ignored calls to raise the 40p threshold in his Budget. It currently stands at ￡41,450.
The institute said that the number of people paying the 40p rate will have risen from three million in 2010-11 to almost five million in 2015-16.

▽BBC News - Hitachi to move rail business to UK from Japan

The manufacturer of the first bullet trains says it hopes the move will help it to expand the rail business to 4,000 workers from the current 2,500.
It hopes to increase revenue from 2bn to 3bn euros ($4bn; ￡2.5bn).
Last July, Hitachi won a ￡1.2bn deal to make the next generation of inter-city trains in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, where it is building a factory.