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In Syria, a team of international weapons experts has begun the process of destroying the country's chemical weapons arsenal.

"The inspectors used sledgehammers and explosives to begin the work," NPR's Deborah Amos reports for our Newscast unit. "They are on a tight deadline to destroy more than 1,000 tons of nerve gas and banned weapons within a year."

Personnel from the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons make up the team. On Friday, a U.N. spokesperson said the team hoped to begin onsite inspections and destruction of production facilities in the coming week.

The inspectors' progress comes as Syrian President Bashar Assad maintains his government did not use chemical weapons on its citizens. In recent weeks, a U.N. report found that the poison gas sarin was used in an attack that killed hundreds of civilians — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the incident a "war crime."

In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Assad admitted that he has made mistakes. And he said he would like for Germany to help mediate an end to Syria's civil war, which has lingered for more than two years. Amos reports:

"Stepping up interviews to Western news outlets, Assad told Der Spiegel magazine he wants negotiations, but [he] limited the partners. Not with rebels unless they put down their weapons, he said. Assad again denied his military had used chemical weapons, despite his pledge to allow a U.N. team to dismantle his arsenal."

Iran has arrested four people who it says were intent on sabotaging facilities in its nuclear program. The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran says the four are now being questioned.

"Some time ago, a number of people were arrested in one of the (nuclear) facilities when they were involved in planning activities," Ali Akbar Salehi said Sunday, according to Iran's state-run Tasnim News Agency.

Before their arrest, the suspects' activities had been monitored, Salehi said. He added that their interrogation is now under way.

"We let them do their activity to some extent, so that they would be arrested at the right time," he said, according to Tasnim.

He added that Iranian authorities had also identified "a number of other sabotage plots."

As for who Iran might hold responsible for the alleged plot, the AP reports that Salehi told the semiofficial Fars news agency, "Hostile countries are not interested in finding way out of current situation and they are trying to block agreement on the nuclear case though acts of sabotage."

Decoding the possible meaning of that statement, the AP says, "In Iranian official terminology, hostile countries are usually a reference to Israel and the United States. But the attempts at historic diplomacy... with Washington suggested the term was aimed at Israel."

Salehi also said that Iran has taken steps to protect itself from cyber attacks such as the Stuxnet virus, which struck the country's uranium enrichment facilities in 2010.

"We have carried out the necessary measures in this field, and since the outbreak of the Stuxnet virus, the Atomic Energy Organization has embarked on countering such malwares," he said, according to Tasnim. "To this end computer protection systems were upgraded, and we also separated the systems that were connected to the Internet."

Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.

Naghmeh Abedini's Iranian-American husband converted from Islam to Christianity 13 years ago. Since then, Saeed Abedini has made many trips to Iran, most recently to build an orphanage.

But he was detained by Iranian authorities in 2012. "We were working with [the government]" on the orphanage, Naghmeh Abedini tells Martin, "and very unexpectedly, they put him under house arrest, and we were shocked when they took him." In January, he was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of disturbing national security.

Saeed Abedini is serving his sentence at Evin Prison, which his wife calls "one of the most horrific prisons in the world." Some prisoners are allowed to call their families several times a week, but he is not granted that liberty. His parents visit weekly, though, and are able to speak with him about how he's faring.

He has told his family he has lost some of his eyesight and memory after time spent in solitary. He has also endured beatings, and, says Naghmeh Abedini, "was told he would be released if he would deny his Christian faith and return to Islam."

“ Pretty much one of the most powerful things that happened to him, that converted him, is that he had a vision, or some kind of encounter with Jesus, where he saw Jesus and he told Saeed that he's coming back soon and to go preach the gospel. And so he converted and started sharing his faith.

Mountain climbing requires stamina and skill, but at some point — especially on the world's tallest and riskiest peaks — it becomes a game of chance. In August of 2008, if you were one of the dozens of people trying to climb to the top of K2, the odds of your living to tell your story weren't good: During the last push to the summit, and the immediate descent that followed, 11 people died.

In the documentary The Summit, filmmaker Nick Ryan tries to piece together what happened in what has been called the deadliest event in modern mountain climbing.

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