Cheery bunch, aren't they. Here's an excerpt from the AOL article I got it from:

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.
Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.
"It's not just Apophis we're looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue," Schweickart, a member of the Apollo 9 crew that orbited the earth in March 1969, told an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco.
Full article:http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/un-urged-to-take-on-asteroid-threat/20070218175909990002?ncid=NWS00010000000001

So you got that? First off, 1 in 45,000 are actually really good odds. Better than winning the lotto. Better than being struck by lightning. Probably better than being in a plane crash. Second, it's not like it's the first time. Both Earth and our Moon are littered with craters from past collisions with space rock.

Who should take care of the problem? Good question. The article suggests that the UN should take care of it, but I'm not so sure they have the capability to do it. A joint project between the US, Russia, and China would be much more preferable and probably more successful. Anyway you look at it, someone's got to do something about it. Otherwise your just inviting disaster.

Anyway, not to be all pessimistic, but this is a dire risk that we can't just ignore. And the fact that it is so imminent is even more reason not to ignore this. Because even if this one misses us, it doesn't mean the next one won't.