Summary: At least 58 Iraqi Catholics died and more than 70 were wounded when police stormed a Baghdad church where gunmen were holding dozens of parishioners hostage, threatening to kill them if al-Qaida-prisoners were not released. Since the war began, Iraq has lost half of its 1.5 million Christians. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 31, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Microsoft Network (MSN.com), promoting its new Bing! search engine, featured a demo search of “angry Americans.” It caught my attention, because history has shown that times of economic uncertainty — as we’re currently experiencing while bogged down in two wars in the aftermath of 9/11 — can be a fertile breeding ground for extremist ideologies, as we saw in Germany during the Great Depression following a humiliating defeat in World War I.

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Summary: The two top-ranking leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, were killed in a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation on Sunday, April 18, 2010, in what Vice President Joe Biden called a “potentially devastating blow” to the terrorist operation. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on April 21, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the U.S. Senate confirmed President Barack Obama’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, after debate over whether he mismanaged international disarmament talks with North Korea. Meanwhile, suspected militants shelled Baghdad’s protected Green Zone in the first such bombardment in more than three months.

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Summary: From Oprah Magazine: “Boring” might not be the first adjective that comes to mind to describe President Barack Obama, but it was “No Drama Obama” who assured the nation with his steady composure and won the White House. Aubrey Immelman, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota, says the variable that most distinguishes Obama from the two previous presidents is conscientiousness.

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