People have forgotten about Syria, but not because things have gotten better there. Instead, Syria has simply been knocked off the front page by the French action in Mali, Lance Armstrong’s confession, and countless other, fresher stories.
Yesterday, evidence emerged of another horrific mass killing in Syria. More than 70 bodies were found by a river near the town of Aleppo; some had hands tied behind their backs and gun shot wounds to the head. The UN estimates that more than 60,000 people have been killed in a conflict between the Assad government and opposition groups that has lasted for a year. The opposition blames the government, and the government blames the opposition forces, and in the meantime Syrians keep getting slaughtered.
Predictably, the news of the latest massacre brought another call for international intervention and action by the UN Security Council. There will be no UN action, of course, because the Security Council is deadlocked, with China and Russia resisting any action that might be taken against the Assad government. Even the U.S., Great Britain, and France are just pushing for resolutions that threaten sanctions. UN resolutions aren’t likely to do much good when armed men are kicking in your door and taking members of your family out for execution.
We’re paying no attention to it, but Syria should be teaching us two valuable lessons and reminding us of a third, sad reality of the modern world. The first lesson is that the UN is a weak institution that will rarely take decisive action; contrast the French action in Mali to the UN’s dithering about Syria, and you get a good idea of the difference between a nation and an “international institution.” The second lesson is that the cries of the “Arab street” about mistreatment of Arabs are hollow and hypocritical. Where are the mass protests in front of Syrian embassies throughout the Arab world when each new outrage is unveiled? We should all remember the lack of any meaningful Arab response to the murder of thousands of Syrians the next time we hear angry Arab denunciations of claimed Israeli misconduct toward the Palestinians or American unfairness.
And the cold, cruel reality is that the world has only so much appetite for horror and outrage before it turns off the TV. The BBC story linked above refers to the “Syria crisis,” but that’s not quite right. A true “crisis” involves a crucial point of decision. That doesn’t exist here, because the world seems to have accepted that the Assad regime will remain in power and continue to kill its opponents. If there were a policeman in front of the yellow tape surrounding the Syrian crime scene, he would be saying: “There’s nothing to see here. Move along.”
ars has apologized for its blunder, but I think its apology tells us something more significant about Iran than the fact that Fars was initially duped by The Onion. In the apology, 
In Egypt — where only days ago raging mobs stormed the U.S. embassy and ripped down our flag — the 
So-called “baby boxes” are locations, typically found outside a hospital, where a parent can leave an unwanted infant, ring a bell to summon someone to come to the child’s aid, and then vanish from the child’s life. There are almost 200 such “baby boxes” spread throughout Europe, and since 2000 some 400 babies have been left in them. Proponents of the practice say it is a regrettable, but nevertheless necessary, safety valve that protects a child’s life — apparently arguing that, without such an option, infants might die from neglect or an intentional act by a parent.
I obviously don’t support abandonment of infants — I can’t fathom what might motivate a parent to take such a drastic action — but are “baby boxes” really a top priority in a world where outrages against children are sickeningly commonplace? At least the relatively few infants left in “baby boxes” are in a place where they will be found, and cared for, and ultimately made available for adoption. Consider, by comparison, the countless children who are left to die from exposure in countries where there are limits on how many children families may have, or are physically mutilated as a result of primitive beliefs, or are sold into sexual slavery, or 
The Syrian situation is one of those instances that reveal the remarkably cold-blooded nature of foreign policy in the modern world. Unfortunately for the Syrians, their dusty country is one of the few places in the Middle East that lacks oil reserves. Nor is it a place that has served as the launching ground for successful terrorist attacks. As a result, for all the hand-wringing, neither Europe, nor the United States, nor any other country has sufficient skin in the game to do anything to depose the evil Assad regime and stop the awful civilian carnage in Syria. And any effort to take military action under the umbrella of the UN inevitably will be blocked by the Russians and the Chinese, who aren’t fans of international interventions, anyway.
Currently the internt is “governed” (if you can call it that) by a a collection of non-profit entities. The result has been a lot of freedom and not much regulation. Governments, however, are concerned that they don’t have sufficient control over this massive, still developing communications medium. The U.N. proposal, backed by governments in China, Russia, Brazil, India, and other countries, would give the ITU more authority over cybersecurity, data privacy, technical standards and the Web’s address system.
This is just the latest in a series of would-be cease fires announced by the United Nations. The cease fires were supposed to stop the systematic killing of women and children, but the Syrian government has either ignored them or taken advantage of them. The UN announces that a cease fire will take effect in the future, and Syria continues to shell residential areas and murder civilians while the world waits to see if the cease fire will somehow take effect at the announced deadline. Then the deadline passes, the killing continues, and the whole “peace process” starts all over again.
Fighting between 
The UN has shouldered the burden of designating a kid to represent each of these population milestones. Resident Of Earth No. 6,000,000,000 is 
Here’s the latest case in point: Syria — 
The reality is that urging “tough” United Nations resolutions doesn’t mean much in the face of guns and mercenaries. And saying that a foreign leader should leave doesn’t mean much, either. The days when pronouncements of American presidents left people quaking in their boots are long since over. If there is no resolve to take actions, words ring hollow — but even meaningless words and lack of action nevertheless can have negative consequences.
The price increases are largely supply-driven and are expected to be long-lasting, according to the experts. Weather conditions, such as droughts, floods, and cyclones, have interfered with normally farming and harvest patterns and have kept food from the marketplace. Other factors affecting supply include the increasing efforts to use food as fuel — the heavily subsidized corn ethanol industry in the United States is a good example — and the spread of cities into areas that used to be agricultural producers. And as we all know from the law of supply and demand, when available supply does not meet demand, prices will increase. That is precisely what has happened.
Who is Mazlan Othman, you may ask? Why, she is a Malaysian astrophysicist who heads up the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and therefore is the perfect person to deal with the issue of alien first contact. She explains that, when aliens first communicate with Earth, “we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all sensitivities related to the subject,” and the UN “is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.” One can only imagine what kind of meaningless, politically correct drivel the slow-moving UN political processes would produce as Earth’s “coordinated” response to an alien contact.
There are lots of weird facets to this news item. For example, why is the United States “required” to file a report about its internal affairs with the United Nations Human Rights Council? (If we didn’t file the report, would the Council “flunk” us?) Why should we be reporting to 
