World/Nation
<p>The Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment parades in Hyde Park in London, Thursday. The regiment was undergoing their annual inspection to validate their ability to conduct state ceremonial duties for the year. 160 horses were paraded accompanied by the mounted Band of the Life Guards and Band of the Blues and Royals.</p>
• U.S., Europetarget Putin's inner circle
WASHINGTON - Raising the stakes in an East-West showdown over Ukraine, President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered economic sanctions against nearly two dozen members of Vladimir Putin's inner circle and a major Russian bank that provides them support. He warned that more sweeping penalties against Russia's robust energy sector could follow.
Russia retaliated swiftly, imposing entry bans on American lawmakers and senior White House officials, among them Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer and the president's deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes.
It's far more than just a U.S.-Russia dispute. European Union leaders said they, too, were ready to close in on Putin's associates, announcing sanctions on 12 more people linked to Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. That brought the number of people facing EU sanctions to 33.
The Western aim is twofold: to ratchet up the costs for Putin's annexation of Crimea and to head off any further Russian military inroads into Ukraine.
• Air search expands for missing plane
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Search planes flew from Australia on Friday to scour rough seas in one of the remotest places on Earth for objects that may be from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
In what one official called the "best lead" of the nearly 2-week-old aviation mystery, a satellite detected two large objects floating off the southwest coast of Australia about halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic.
The area in the southern Indian Ocean is so remote it takes aircraft longer to fly there - four hours - than it allows for the search.
The discovery raised new hope of finding the vanished jet and sent another emotional jolt to the families of the 239 people aboard.
A search Thursday with four planes in clouds and rain found nothing, and Australian authorities said early Friday efforts were resuming with the first of five aircraft - a Royal Australian Air Force P3 Orion - leaving at dawn for the area about 1,400 miles from western Australia.
• Pelosi: Health care law a plus for Democrats
WASHINGTON - A defiant House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared firmly Thursday that the health care law looms as a political winner for her party this fall, despite ceaseless Republican attacks and palpable nervousness among some of her rank and file who fear their re-election may be in jeopardy because of it.
"We just couldn't be prouder" of the legislation, Pelosi told a news conference where she said the law already has resulted in "better coverage, more affordable, better quality" insurance for nearly 12 million people.
The California Democrat's appearance was timed for the fourth anniversary of the bill's signing by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, an occurrence that few other congressional Democrats seem inclined to herald at a time when party strategists seek a strategy to blunt criticism from Republicans and their allies.
The first test of their strategy ended inauspiciously for Democrats in Florida recently, where Republicans won a special election for a House seat after a costly campaign in which the health care law played a heavy role in television advertising.
Pelosi has said the defeat was due more to the make-up of a district long in Republican hands. Other Democrats speaking privately concede the health care law played a role. Opinion surveys indicate the public generally wants to improve the law rather than repeal it.
- The Associated Press