Main News of September 10

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Armenia would like to acquire observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a post-Soviet Eurasian security bloc, and it will need support from China to get it, Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan said

* US prosecutors said Tuesday they are seeking to seize expensive New York properties purportedly purchased with funds stolen from Russian coffers in an alleged scam detailed by whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose 2009 death in a Russian jail has sparked a diplomatic rift between Washington and Moscow

* US President Barack Obama has agreed to discussions at the UN Security Council on a Russian proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under international control, a unnamed White House official told The Associated Press

RUSSIA

* Russia’s initiative to place Syrian chemical weapon stockpiles under international control will only be feasible if the United States and its allies pledge not to use force, Russian President Vladimir Putin said

* A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced a man charged with plotting to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin to 10 years in a maximum security penal colony, a correspondent for the RAPSI legal news agency reported

* A Russian lawyer said Tuesday that he had asked the Investigative Committee to start criminal proceedings against US President Barack Obama on charges of planning a “war of aggression,” but most Russian experts doubted the case would go anywhere

POLITICS

* Syria is ready to give up chemical weapons and join an international convention banning them, the country’s foreign minister said

* Russians are split about whether the international community should intervene in the Syrian civil war, according to a survey by the Public Opinion Foundation

* Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called on newly elected heads of Russian regions to get in contact with their former opponents and use their proposal

BUSINESS

* Uralkali, the world’s largest potash fertilizer producer, has reported a first-half net profit down 53 percent year-on-year, as the Russian company is entangled in a legal dispute with Belarus