5. Bloodshed and confusion

Three months in and the uprising in Syria is growing ever bloodier. Between Friday and Sunday over 150 people were killed in the biggest protests the country has seen yet. Most of Friday's dead were shot in the central city of Hama after thousands took to the streets for the second Friday in a row. Security forces shot dozens of unarmed protesters. Scores more were killed over the weekend in the restless northern town of Jisr al-Shoghour, just a few miles from the Turkish border, after tanks and helicopters reportedly bombarded the city. Jisr al-Shoghour is now braced for an attack. Many of its residents have fled. Hundreds are said to be fleeing to Turkey. Some of those injured in earlier clashes have already been taken across the border, afraid of seeking medical treatment at home. Their fears have been stoked by claims made by the government on Monday that 120 of its forces had been killed by "armed gangs" in the town, widely read as pretext for further crackdowns. The interior minister Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar said the state would react "decisively".

Exactly what happened in Jisr al-Shoghour remains unclear. Most are inclined to dismiss the government's version of events. But although the numbers may have been exaggerated—state media doubled, tripled and then increased the figure six-fold over the course of an hour—the government has sustained some casualties.

Some in the town—a tribal area which rose up against the rule of Hafez in 1980—admit taking up arms. But they deny killing large numbers of government troops. Growing defections may cause the army to splinter but the military as a whole is unlikely to turn on Mr Assad, one of few ways the crisis might end without further bloodshed.

The world has so far hesitated to tell Mr Assad to go, afraid of what might fill the power vacuum. Arab countries remain ominously silent about the Syrian government's actions but France has now declared Mr Assad's rule illegitimate. Whether it can convince Russia and China to abstain rather than veto a forthcoming UN security council resolution is uncertain.

(www.economist.com)

6. The End of aids?

On June 5^th 1981 America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the outbreak of an unusual form of pneumonia in Los Angeles. When, a few weeks later, its scientists noticed a similar cluster of a rare cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma in San Francisco, they suspected that something strange and serious was afoot. That something was AIDS.

Since then, 25m people have died from AIDS and another 34m are infected. The 30th anniversary of the disease’s discovery has been taken by many as an occasion for hand-wringing. Yet the war on AIDS is going far better than anyone dared hope. Some 5m lives have already been saved by drug treatment. In 33 of the worst-affected countries the rate of new infections is down by 25% or more from its peak.

Even more hopeful is a recent study which suggests that the drugs used to treat AIDS may also stop its transmission. If AIDS is defeated, it will be thanks to an alliance of science, activism and altruism. The science has come from the world’s pharmaceutical companies, which leapt on the problem. Much of the activism came from rich-world gays. Having badgered drug companies into creating the new medicines, the activists bullied them into dropping the price. That would have happened anyway, but activism made it happen faster.

The altruism was aroused as it became clear by the mid-1990s that AIDS was not just a rich-world disease. Three-quarters of those affected were—and still are—in Africa. Thanks to an enormous effort by Western philanthropists and some politicians, a series of programmes has brought drugs to those infected.

The result is patchy. Not enough people—some 6.6m of the 16m who would most quickly benefit—are getting the drugs. And the pills are not a cure. Stop taking them, and the virus bounces back. But it is a huge step forward from ten years ago.

What can science offer now? A few people’s immune systems control the disease naturally (which suggests a vaccine might be possible) and antibodies have been discovered that neutralise the virus (and might thus form the basis of AIDS-clearing drugs). But a cure still seems a long way off. Prevention is, for the moment, the better bet.

(www.economist.com)