Ban Ki-moon (Hangul: 반기문; Hanja: 潘基文; born 13 June 1944) is the eighth and current Secretary-General of the United Nations, after succeeding Kofi Annan in 2007. Before going on to be Secretary-General, Ban was a career diplomat in South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the United Nations. He entered diplomatic service the year he graduated from university, accepting his first post in New Delhi, India. In the foreign ministry he established a reputation for modesty and competence .

Ban was the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea from January 2004 to November 2006. In February 2006, he began to campaign for the office of Secretary-General. Ban was initially considered to be a long shot for the office. As foreign minister of South Korea, however, he was able to travel to all of the countries that were members of the United Nations Security Council, a maneuver that turned him into the front runner.

On 11 October 2006, he was elected to be the eighth Secretary-General by the United Nations General Assembly and officially succeeded Annan on 1 January 2007. Ban has led several major reforms regarding peacekeeping and UN employment practices. Diplomatically, Ban has taken particularly strong views on Darfur, where he helped persuade Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to allow peacekeeping troops to enter Sudan; and on global warming, pressing the issue repeatedly with former U.S. President George W. Bush. Ban has received strong criticism from OIOS, the UN internal audit unit, stating that the secretariat, under Ban's leadership, is "drifting into irrelevance".

The Syrian uprising is an ongoing, violent internal conflict in Syria. It is part of the wider Arab Spring, a wave of upheaval throughout the Arab world. Public demonstrations across Syria began on 26 January 2011 and developed into a nationwide uprising. Protesters demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, the overthrow of his government, and an end to nearly five decades of Ba’ath Party rule.

Since spring 2011, the Syrian government has deployed the Syrian Army to quell the uprising. Several cities have been besieged, but nevertheless the unrest continues. According to witnesses, soldiers who refused to open fire on civilians were summarily executed by the Syrian Army. The Syrian government denied reports of defections, and blamed "armed gangs" for causing trouble. Since early autumn 2011, civilians and army defectors began forming fighting units, which began an insurgency campaign against the Syrian Army. The insurgents unified under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and fought in an increasingly organized fashion; however, the civilian component of the armed opposition lacks an organized leadership.

Wolf Isaac Blitzer (born March 22, 1948) is an American journalist who has been a CNN reporter since 1990. Blitzer is currently the host of the newscast The Situation Room and was the host of the Sunday talk show Late Edition until it was discontinued on January 11, 2009. Blitzer previously hosted Wolf Blitzer Reports, which was replaced by The Situation Room.

The son of Jewish refugees from Poland, Wolf Blitzer was born in Augsburg, Germany and raised in Buffalo, New York. Blitzer graduated from Kenmore West Senior High School and received a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University at Buffalo in 1970. While there, he was a brother of Alpha Epsilon Pi. In 1972, he received a Master of Arts in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. While at Johns Hopkins, Blitzer studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he learned Hebrew.

Blitzer has said that he has frequently been asked about his name, which has been characterized as seemingly "made-for-TV". In a Wayne's World Saturday Night Live sketch which was aired during the Persian Gulf War, Wayne and Garth picked Blitzer as having the "worst name" of any war correspondent, with Garth remarking, "It's so obvious the guy made it up for the war!" Blitzer explains that his surname goes back for generations, and his first name, 'Wolf', is the same first name as his maternal grandfather.