The US Department of Justice announced Sept. 17 that a US scientist and his wife have been indicted for conspiring to sell nuclear weapons information to an individual they believed worked for the Venezuelan government. Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Mascheroni, were arrested that day by the FBI and appeared before the US District Court for the District of New Mexico. The defendants used to work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and possessed classified nuclear weapons knowledge. According to the indictment, between March 2008 and August 2009, Pedro Mascheroni, who is a naturalized US citizen, negotiated a deal with an undercover FBI agent he believed to be a Venezuelan official in which he would help the country develop a nuclear weapon in exchange for over $700,000. No actual members of the Venezuelan government have been charged in the case. If convicted, the couple faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

An armed commando of some 40 men with assault rifles ambushed a patrol of the State Ministerial Police (PME) in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero Sept. 18, killing eight and leaving a ninth seriously wounded. The police were attempting at arrest a homicide suspect in El Revelado, Teloloapan municipality, near the border with Mexico state. The bodies of some of the dead officers are reported to have been mutilated when they were recovered. (La Jornada Guerrero, BBC News, LAHT, Sept. 18)

Judges for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City Sept. 17 upheld a verdict in favor of Royal Dutch Shell PLC in a case brought by families of Ogoni protesters who were executed by the Nigerian government in 1995, apparently in retaliation for speaking out against the oil company. The court ruled that the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) does not apply to corporations, relieving Shell of liability for alleged complicity in human rights abuses in Nigeria. The plaintiffs had accused Shell of enlisting Nigerian military forces to help stop protests in the country, resulting in the violation of human rights among the Ogoni people.

Turkey allowed Armenians to hold mass Sept. 19 at the Church of the Holy Cross—an iconic 10th century landmark on Akdamar Island in Lake Van, southeast Anatolia—for the first time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Turkish officials hailed the service as a sign of tolerance and reconciliation. But the mass was attended by only some 1,000—a fraction of the 5,000 expected. An Armenian boycott saw thousands cancel their trips after Turkish authorities refused to display a 440-pound cross on the church's roof, claiming it was too heavy and could damage the structure. The 16.5-foot-tall cross instead was displayed next to the church's bell-tower. Worshippers were largely from the Armenian diaspora. Protests against the event were held at the Armenian genocide memorial at Tsitsernakaberd in Yerevan, Armenia's capital; and among Armenians in Jerusalem.

Protesters in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinval, symbolically demolished a "Wall of Lies" attached with news clips from the Western media about the Georgia war of two years ago. The wall was built near the former site of the local parliament building, demolished by Georgian forces in August 2008. The action came one day before the 20th anniversary South Ossetia's declaration of independence from Georgia, to be marked on Sept. 20. (Voice of Russia, Sept. 19) A car bomb in Vladikavkaz's central market Sept. 9 left 17 dead and scores wounded. The aftermath of the blast has seen protests by Ossetians against ethnic Ingush, who are apparently being blamed for the attack. (RFE/RL, Sept. 16; RT, Sept. 15)

Forty Tajik soldiers were killed Sept. 19 in an ambush by suspected militants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The soldiers were part of a 75-man convoy moving through the Rasht Valley, an area known as a haven for Islamists insurgents. Five officers are reported to have been among the 40 soldiers killed. No insurgents were reported killed. The soldiers were searching for members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who escaped from a prison in Dushanbe on Aug. 25. One guard was killed during the jailbreak.

French uranium company Areva and its subcontractor Vinci have evacuated all their expatriate employees working at the Arlit and Imouraren mines in northern Niger following the abduction of five French and two African workers. Both Niger and France fear they were seized by militants of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Niger's ex-foreign minister Idi Ango Omar told Anfani radio that private security groups employed at the mines were run by former Tuareg rebels, and denounced the arrangement—in an evident attempt to link the Tuareg insurgency to al-Qaeda. (France24, Sept. 19)

Sino-Japanese tensions over detention of the captain of a Chinese fishing trawler escalated as Beijing observed the 79th "Invasion Day" on Sept. 18, with large numbers protesting outside Tokyo's diplomatic missions. The day is officially observed all over China every year to remember Japan's invasion, and the initial clashes with Chinese troops at Shenyang in 1931. Rallies were held outside Japanese missions in Beijing, Shenyang and Shanghai, with protesters shouting slogans like "Japan, get out of the Diaoyu Islands," "Boycott Japanese goods" and "Don't forget national humiliation."