Members of the Russian parliament have written to FIFA asking it to consider excluding Jurgen Klinsmann’s USA team from the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil. Alexander Sidyakin and Michael Markelov, two members of the Duma, addressed their concern about the “U.S.’s military aggression against several sovereign states” and named Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria among those suffering from U.S. aggression.

More than 130,000 people are said to have died in Syria’s civil war. United Nations reports of atrocities, Internet images of attacks on civilians, and accounts of suffering refugees rend our hearts. But what is to be done – and by whom?

Canada’s hockey teams twice dashed the U.S.’s Olympic dreams last month, and now they have the beer to celebrate their victory. The Canadian government confirmed on Twitter they had received the payment for the bet President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made on the gold medal match between the women’s teams and semifinal match between the men’s teams.

As a result of the recent events that have taken place in Venezuela, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) have both called for discussions. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would like to see the conflicts resolved within the context of UNASUR and has rejected attempts by the OAS to address the situation.

The sidewalks are empty on Alvaro Obregon Avenue. Restaurants and souvenir shops lining the once popular thoroughfare are gutted and shuttered. The sign in front of an abandoned karaoke bar is now ripped and dilapidated, riddled underneath with three spray-painted tombstones. The thousands of spring breakers who flooded over each March from the nearby Texas resorts are gone. The drug war drove them off, leaving a void of tourism in a city that years ago gave up trying to cater to such crowds.

Less than a week before Crimea's referendum, emotions are running high. Residents of the southeast Ukrainian peninsula who want to see their region cede from the nation and officially become part of Russia sense victory is round the corner. The U.S. and Europe say the vote -- and the Russian invasion that prompted it -- are illegal, but CBS News' Elizabeth Palmer reports that thousands of pro-Russia demonstrators on the streets of regional capital Sevastopol don't care.

The question can be risky. When a Moscow historian who compared Putin to Hitler for invading Ukraine posed it in a newspaper column last Sunday, he was fired from his job at Russia’s most prestigious university. Elsewhere, however, many now believe it has become reasonable to ask. Has Vladimir Putin lost his grip on reality?