It’s hard to determine the good guy in the Syrian conflict

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NEED TO KNOW:

It's hard to determine the good guy in the Syrian conflict. More than 220,000 people have been killed and millions displaced as forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad try to protect his hold on power and crush the Syrian rebels. It's been more than four years. And all sides are guilty of terrible crimes.

Amnesty International says the government has killed more than 11,000 people using barrel bombs, for instance. Barrel bombs are large canisters filled with explosives and scrap metal. They are huge. And no one has ever applauded their accuracy. When dropped in cities and towns, widespread civilian causalities are inevitable. Rebel groups have also used imprecise weapons — like mortars and improvised rockets — in crowded government-controlled neighborhoods. Amnesty says more than 600 civilians died in such attacks last year alone. Both sides are guilty of torture, arbitrary detention and kidnapping.

Then there are the terrorists. Jabat al-Nusra is the Al Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria. And the Islamic State, of course, has gained a huge amount of Syrian territory in recent years. Its abuses are well-documented.

An American-led air campaign was supposed to slow terrorist advances in Syria and help hasten an end to the conflict. It started nearly a year ago, but little has changed. Over the weekend a Syrian human rights groups said an airstrike intended to target the Islamic State killed 52 civilians northeast of Aleppo instead.

The results of all this violence are sickening. In its report released on Tuesday, Amnesty interviews civilians who say body parts and the corpses of decapitated children line the streets of Aleppo.

Now the United Nations is attempting to restart peace talks. In Geneva on Tuesday, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura will meet with representatives from the government and the rebels. Representatives from Al Qaeda or the Islamic State will not take part.

Meanwhile, the life expectancy for Syrians has dropped by 20 years.

WANT TO KNOW:

Someone stole $1 billion from Moldova. That's an eighth of its GDP. Moldova is Europe's poorest country and it desperately needs that money back.

The money first went missing last November but the government has yet to retrieve it, writes GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Dan Peleschuk. Investigators believe the huge amount of cash vanished in a series of dubious loans dealt out by three major banks. One of those banks was state-owned. No one knows who the recipients were.

Like so many governments all over the world, Moldova's suffers from corruption. Many blame the leaders of the country for stealing public funds and driving ordinary Moldovans into poverty. So, on Sunday, 10,000 people took to the streets. It is an impressive number for a country whose total population is just 3.5 million. (That's one-third the size of New York City.)

The turnout was big enough to make some wonder if Moldova could go the way of Ukraine, where a popular protest movement managed to oust one of the world's most wildly corrupt rulers.

STRANGE BUT TRUE:

They call it a wildlife conservation center. It's in Thailand, and it's run by Buddhist monks. Tourists flock there to pose with the center's many tigers. Some even hug and pet them. Sounds like a fun place, right?

Well, the government and animal rights groups don't think so. They want to shut it down. Turns out the whole thing is not so nice for the tigers. Called the “Tiger Temple,” it’s more of an extreme petting zoo than a holy site, writes GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Patrick Winn, who is based in Bangkok.

“For more than a decade, the temple's primary focus has been charging tourists up to $150 for a highly coveted experience: a cuddle session with a giant tiger,” Winn writes. “But now this unusual business may finally be winding down.”

Authorities are banning the monks from charging tourists to frolic with the endangered cats. And it has declared the temple's 140-plus tigers — many of them bred on-site — state property that can be seized any time.