Day: November 30, 2013

The U.S. has volunteered to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons aboard a ship, in order to meet an international deadline that would prevent a military strike on the war-torn country.

Weapons would be destroyed using hydrolysis on a U.S. vessel at a yet-to-be-determined Mediterranean port, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Saturday. OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan declined to specify which vessel was to be used.

The plan is to destroy 500 tons of chemical weapons, including nerve agents, Al Jazeera reports. The operation is a part of an international deal to meet a Dec. 31  deadline to rid Syria from chemical weapons. Syria’s civil war has lasted three years, killing more than 100,000 people.

[Al Jazeera]

An American man detained in North Korea apologized for his actions during the Korean War, according to the country’s state-run news agency.

Merrill Newman, 85, has been held in North Korea for more than 30 days after attempting to board a flight from Pyongyang to Beijing. The Palo Alto, Calif. resident allegedly released a statement Sunday, according to KCNA.

“After I killed so many civilians and (North Korean) soldiers and destroyed strategic objects in the DPRK during the Korean War, I committed indelible offensive acts against the DPRK government and Korean people,” the Korean War veteran said.

Newman visited North Korea as a part of a tourist group in October, and then allegedly “perpetrated acts of infringing upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and slandering its socialist system.”

U.S. officials said they were “deeply concerned” about Newman and another detained American citizen. “Given Mr. Newman’s advanced age and health conditions…

Jimmy Fallon clearly loves to sing, and this week he got some help from actress Rashida Jones and actual-singer Carrie Underwood. On Thursday’s episode of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the trio performed holiday-themed versions of the year’s most popular songs. They parodied everyone from Robin Thicke and Daft Punk to Lorde and the Lumineers, singing about Thanksgiving food comas, Hannukah celebrations, and Black Friday shopping nightmares.

But Carrie Underwood might have taken the proverbial cake with her solo rendition of Miley Cyrus’s Wrecking Ball, singing, “You made me cook a Butterball / And then a green bean casserole / And all you did was sit and watch football / And ignore all of your family.”

Watch the highly entertaining (and seemingly never-ending) sequence of pop parodies above.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan said the Catholic Church has been unfairly “caricatured as being anti-gay” in the same-sex marriage debate.

In a recorded interview for NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Dolan said he believes there has been a “stampede” toward legalizing same-sex marriage, and that the Catholic Church has been “out-marketed” on the issue. Dolan added the Church will continue to oppose same-sex unions, and compared it to battle over abortion rights.

Gay marriage has returned to the national spotlight since the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in June, which denied benefits to gay couples. Hawaii and Illinois the two latest states to join the now 16 states that recognize same-sex marriage.

[New York Daily News]

A beloved dog named “world’s ugliest dog,” which became the subject of a children’s book, died Thanksgiving morning.

Elwood, a hairless Chinese crested and Chihuahua mix except for a tuft of white hair atop his head, died unexpectedly, according to his owner Karen Quigley. The famed dog was crowned “world’s ugliest dog” in 2007 at the Marin-Sonoma County Fair in California, where he quickly gained fans and inspired the children’s book Everyone Loves Elwood.

Quigley said Elwood had been battling health issues recently, but was doing well as of late.

[AP]