Main News of April 22

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* A deputy Russian foreign minister on Monday criticized the European Union’s decision to ease its sanctions against Syria to support the country's opposition

* A deputy head of the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Leonid Slutsky, demanded on Monday that Georgia’s breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia be granted access to PACE activities on a par with Kosovo

* Russia and the United States are committed to boosting their efforts to jointly fight terrorism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* The Antares rocket, designed in US to carry a commercial space freighter to the International Space Station (ISS), blasted off early on Monday Moscow time from the launch pad in the Wallops Island

RUSSIA

* Russia put Hermitage Capital equity fund head William Browder on an international wanted list after Moscow’s Tverskoi Court issued an arrest warrant for the UK-based businessman on Monday, the Interior Ministry said

* Parents whose children are not allowed to wear Muslim headscarves to school in a southern Russian region have appealed to the Supreme Court, defense lawyer Murad Musayev said

* The international committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, recommended on Monday that the house approve an intergovernmental agreement with Kyrgyzstan on settling the Central Asian nation’s debt to Russia

* Russia’s branch of Interpol said it had no information on any links between the two men suspected of the deadly bombing of the Boston marathon and a militant organization based in Russia’s North Caucasus

* Tension mounted on Monday between the Russian republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya, as the Ingush Republic's leader ordered security to be beefed up at border checkpoints following a recent skirmish between the restive regions’ police forces

* A spokesman for the Kremlin said in an interview aired on Monday that state officials should not own real estate abroad, as it could leave them open to “pressure”

* Russia’s Constitutional Court has confirmed voters' rights to contest election results in court, the court said on its website

* Mikhail Fedotov, the chairman of the Kremlin human rights council, has proposed scrapping the law on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the Kommersant daily reported

BUSINESS

* Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the government on Monday to work out a range of measures to boost growth and spur Russia’s faltering economy, but warned against changes to the country’s new fiscal rules

CRIME

* Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is suspected with his brother of planting bombs at the finish line of last week’s Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 200, was charged Monday from his hospital bed with using a weapon of mass destruction against persons and property, resulting in death, a crime that could carry the death penalty

* Six people were shot dead in the city of Belgorod in southwest Russia on Monday afternoon, police said