In the hours leading up to the diplomatic duel in the Security Council, the steady drumbeat of violence continued unabated in Syria, where government forces pushed rebels back from strongholds near Damascus.

With a draft Security Council resolution put on the table by Morocco that calls for President Bashar al-Assad to step aside to speed a democratic transition, Russia stressed its opposition to any such plan even while attempting to distance Moscow from the man himself.

“The Russian policy is not about asking someone to step down; regime change is not our profession,” Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. during a stop on his Asia tour.

Read The Full Story: The New York Times

It also comes at a time when there is increasing urgency to get the deal done before European economic headwinds or any political wildcards from the 2012 election create volatility in U.S. financial markets. The conventional wisdom is that Facebook is worth a cool $100 billion today, which means that if the company decides to offer 10 percent of its shares on the stock market, it would raise an astounding $10 billion from investors.

The $100 billion figure is obviously based on a few back-of-the-envelope calculations. On Wall Street, the money men and women like to think in terms of nice, fat round numbers. And make no mistake, the more money Facebook raises in the capital markets when it goes public, the more money in fees Wall Street bankers can collect from Zuckerberg & Co.

Read The Full Story: Washington Post

After months of scouting, the National League chose athlete Jackie Robinson to be the face of integration in baseball. Other candidates had been heavily considered before him, including Satchel Paige, Silvio Garcia, and Josh Gibson. But, while he wasn’t necessarily the best baseball player, a special combination of characteristics made Robinson the perfect candidate to pioneer integration: He was a star athlete in college; he was comfortable playing on an integrated team (as he had in the minor leagues); he had expressed interest in civil rights; and had helped open an officer candidate school for African-American soldiers—with help from boxer Joe Louis, who had also been drafted.

Read The Full Story: Biography.com

At Slate, John Dickerson explains how Mr. Romney “mute” Mr. Gingrich’s voice:

Romney is up, and he’s got Gingrich pinned down. It’s not just that Romney’s attacks are working. They are also robbing Gingrich of his voice. As a Gingrich ally explained, the sniping back and forth hurts Gingrich because it keeps him from offering the kind of positive message that helped him win in South Carolina. The wounded speaker is vowing to fight the battle all the way to the convention, questioning Romney’s character all the way. If week after week of bitter rhetoric is the pattern for the primary to come, the question will not be whether Gingrich can win—he can’t—but how much damage he does to Romney and the party.

Read The Full Story: The Wall Street Journal

The last thing you want is for others to think your actions were influenced by race. So you’ve held off talking to him about performance issues that you’d likely have raised with your non-minority employees. You’re relieved that a potentially thorny situation was averted, even pleased with your capacity to be so racially sensitive.

But in fact, recent research suggests, you have not done your company, your employee, or yourself much good. However well-intentioned, striving to create the appearance of colorblindness by sidestepping the specter of race can be more of an obstacle than an asset to good management practice.

Read The Full Story: CNN

President Pamela Gann told college staff members and students about the falsified scores in an email Monday, according to The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/w1WGD8 ).

Gann wrote that a “senior administrator” had taken sole responsibility for falsifying the scores, admitted doing so since 2005, and resigned his post.

Gann said the critical reading and math scores reported to U.S. News and others “were generally inflated by an average of 10-20 points each.”

Robert Franek, the senior vice president of publishing for The Princeton Review, which provides preparation for the SAT and also ranks colleges, said he had never heard of a college intentionally reporting incorrect data.

Read The Full Story: Newsday

Sam Addy, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research, released the results of a cost-benefit analysis concerning the HB56, the controversial immigration law that proponents say helps lower state’s unemployment rate and opponents say hurts its economic well-being and image.

Read The Full Story: AL.com

“We’re gonna get out there and take care of these folks,” Jefferson County Commissioner Joe Knight said.

Center Point also may take advantage of equipment and manpower offered by neighboring cities under a mutual aid agreement that kicks in after events such as the Jan. 23 tornado. But Center Point also is soliciting bids from private contractors and is still weighing its options, Mayor Tom Henderson said Monday.

Read The Full Story: AL.com

Aging stars had a great weekend at the box office. Liam Neeson — who somehow stole Samuel L. Jackson’s shine as Hollywood’s favorite unlikely action hero — enjoys the top spot this weekend for The Grey, which exceeded expectations and took home $20 million.

Meanwhile, Tom Cruise went from couch-jumping career suicide to comeback story with Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol, which grossed $200 million domestically and $571 million globally, making the fourth M:I film the most profitable yet.

While Kate Beckinsale (Underworld: Awakening) and Katherine Heigl (One for the Money) duked it out for second and third place, respectively, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard’s Red Tails swooped in for the fourth slot, defying the expectations of critics that predicted a crash after it’s surprisingly successful opening weekend.

Read The Full Story: BET