NPR News

Blake Hounshell is managing editor of Foreign Policy.

It's the year 2012, and we are watching a massacre unfold, in real time, on Facebook pages and pixilated livestreams. A young boy lies on a filthy operating table, his nearly lifeless eyes staring upward as blood pours out of a gaping shrapnel wound on his neck. On the ground, a man, his face blown off. Women scream as they view a pile of bodies: husbands, sons, brothers?

The new CBS News/NY Times poll definitely contains the kind of information that could put a little spring in any president's step.

Manufacturing output increased 0.7 percent in January, the Federal Reserve announced today, adding that it had revised December's number sharply upward to 1.5 percent.

The AP reports that December number was the biggest gain since Dec. 2006. The AP adds:

"Overall industrial production, which includes output by mines and utilities as well as factories, was unchanged in January.

Good morning!

Our early headlines:

-- As Crackdown Continues, Syria's Assad Calls For Constitutional Referendum

-- Malachy, The Pekingese, Becomes Top Dog In The Land