Main News of September 13

WORLD

* The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has received Syria’s request to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, the organization said, as US, Russian and UN officials discussed Moscow’s plan for placing the country’s chemical weapons under international control in a bid to avoid US airstrikes

* The US and Russian foreign ministers and a UN envoy met in Geneva to discuss Moscow’s proposal for placing Syria’s chemical weapons under international control – an idea meant to avert US airstrikes against the Middle Eastern country but yielding few tangible results beyond that for now

* Iran can provide guarantees in the near future that its nuclear program is peaceful, but only if its right to develop atomic energy is respected, President Hassan Rouhani said

* One of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize awards went to President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and his country’s policemen for their crackdown on “applauding in public,” according to live webcast of the awarding ceremony

* Two friends of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty in US federal court in Boston on Friday to charges they hindered the investigation into the April 15 attack, US media reported

RUSSIA

* Up to 37 people died when a fire gutted a psychiatric institution outside the central Russian city of Veliky Novgorod, according to officials

* The Russian Navy is bolstering its strength in the Mediterranean Sea from seven to ten warships, its top commander told journalists

* A recently gaining water level of the Amur River near the flood-hit city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Russia’s far eastern Khabarovsk Territory went on a slight decline for the first time in several days, local meteorologists reported

* The Bolshoi Theater’s ballet artistic director Sergei Filin, who suffered serious injuries in an acid attack in January, will return to Moscow on Saturday after six months of treatment in a German hospital