Main News of November 22

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* The death toll in a grocery store collapse in the Latvian capital Riga rose to 50 on Friday as more bodies were recovered from the rubble, city mayor Nil Ushakov said

* Hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Kiev hours after the announcement that Ukraine had suspended a landmark trade deal with the EU and opted instead for stronger ties with Russia, local media said

RUSSIA

* US asset management giant BlackRock pulled more than $100 million from its Russian investments over a seven-day period beginning last week, the Prime news agency reported

* All but two of the 30 people detained during a Greenpeace protest in the Arctic Sea had been released on bail from Russian detention facilities by Friday evening, the environmental group said on its Twitter account

* A top aide to Lithuania’s president said Friday that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych admitted Kiev backed off this week from signing landmark trade deals with the EU under pressure from Russia

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has arrived in Geneva on Friday evening to meet with representatives of other nations negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program

* Aviation authorities in Russia said Friday that the crash of a passenger plane in the city of Kazan last weekend had nothing to do with the age of the craft

* Three European Space Agency satellites designed to study Earth’s magnetic field, launched from Russia Friday afternoon, have reached their target orbit

* A Russian court has ordered the return of a strategically important naval fuel installation to the navy after it was allegedly sold off illegally by a key suspect in a massive property scam, military prosecutors said

BUSINESS

* Russian investigators said Friday that they have charged the head of Russia’s largest potash producer with abuse of office, just as he was brought to Moscow after spending several weeks under house arrest in Belarus

POLITICS

* The European Court of Human Rights has asked Russia to report on a suspect in the Bolotnaya Square rioting case who has been on hunger strike for 65 days

SPORTS

* Spartak Moscow is seeking to recover some 15 million rubles ($450,000) in compensation from a football fan whose swastika-waving antics at a recent game incurred a big fine for the Russian football club, spokesman Alexei Matveyev told R-Sport