2012’s Most Underreported Stories

By Jason Colella, Co-Owner & Sr. Political Editor

A lot has happened in 2012 but many important stories fell by the wayside never to mentioned again, but here at FPP we are proud to bring you the two most underreported stories of the year. Each member of the editorial board picked one story, so without further ado our choices.

Discovery of Higgs Boson

One of biggest stories of the year, you’re likely not overly familiar with and most likely the biggest science story of the year, was the probable discovery of the Higgs Boson. On July 4th, a team of researchers at the Large Hadron Collider part of CERN in Europe announced this groundbreaking discovery. The particle is named after the first person to theorize its existence -- Peter Higgs; although, the name Leon M. Lederman gave it in his book -- “the god particle” is more widely known outside of the scientific community. A boson is one two fundamental particle types along with gluons. Bosons make up the forces we encounter and include things like photons; whereas, gluons include quarks and electrons. The particle is so important because of the integral role it plays in the Standard Model and until the discovery it meant the entire model was based off the hypothetical existence of this elusive particle. It, in effect, is responsible for giving other particles mass. This means without it the physical world all-around us would not exist. It does this through a highly complex piece of particle physics called a Higgs Field. This particle existence will lead to many new scientific discoveries that will further grow our understanding of particle physics and hopefully one day link it to astrophysics.

Syrian Civil War

When Bassel al-Assad was killed in a car crash in 1994, his bother Bashar al-Assad, who was training to an ophthalmologist in London, was forced to come back to Syria to begin his training to become the next heir to the Syrian Presidency. And then, when his father Syria’s longtime president Hafez al-Assad died in 2000, as expected, Bashar became the next president. Initially seen a reformer even gaining the nickname The Hope, Bashar has proved to be just the opposite -- a bloody and despotic tyrant.

The Arab Spring protests had gained a footing in a number of countries by March of 2011 when Syria caught the revolution’s pulse. On the Ides of March (15th), the country broke out in massive protest, these were violent and viscously put down by the military. This act lite a national revolutionary spirit that still rages on today. The government’s army is now engaged in a full-fledged civil war against the Syrian National Coalition and its leader Moaz al-Khatib. This group is recognized by many nations as the legitimate government of Syria including the US. The Syrian National Coalition has support from many Arab nations including Qatar, who played an instrumental role in the Libyan Revolution. The most recent UN estimate puts the death in Syria at 60,000 plus nearly 1.2 million refugees, but those estimate are seen as low by many experts on the subject.