Summary: Iraq Body Count, a British group monitoring Iraqi civilian deaths, said in its 2010 annual report that the number of fatalities has dropped slightly since 2009 but warned of lingering, low-intensity conflict in the years ahead. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 29, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that an Afghan soldier killed a U.S. service member and wounded two Italian soldiers in western Afghanistan, while Pakistani authorities appealed for calm after a bombing against a Shiite Muslim procession marking the holy day of Ashoura killed 43 in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi.

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Summary: Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 Christmas message … “Urbi et Orbi” … “To the City and to the World” … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 25, 2009, Aubrey Immelman featured Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 Christmas message and posted the Immelman family’s 2009 Christmas greeting. In a rare second post for the date, Immelman reported separately that the terror alert level was raised when a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to light an explosive powder aboard a commercial jetliner before it landed in Detroit.

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Summary: Iraqi Christians are approaching their grimmest Christmas since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and wondering if they have any future in their native land. They have suffered repeated violence and harassment since 2003, when the interreligious peace rigidly enforced by Saddam Hussein fell apart. Now the Christian community of Iraq, almost as old as the religion itself, is sensing a clear message: It is time to leave. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 19, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that U.S. Navy warships fired missiles at suspected al-Qaida training camps in Yemen, with that government’s support, according to Pentagon sources. One U.S. official said President Barack Obama personally ordered the missile strikes in northern Yemen.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 17, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that an Associated Press-GfK poll showed a double-digit jump, to 52 percent, in President Barack Obama’s marks for handling the Afghanistan war after he capped a three-month strategy review by announcing a big troop increase, boosting U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 100,000.

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Summary: A five-page unclassified summary of the 2010 White House review of Afghanistan war strategy says U.S. and NATO forces had made “notable operational gains,” halting the Taliban’s momentum in many areas and disrupting al-Qaida. But it stressed the gains were fragile and reversible and that major challenges remained. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 17, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), compiled from U.S. Department of Defense News Releases.

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 10, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported what we know about Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, based on information from U.S. intelligence sources, and featured personality profiles of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri developed at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics.

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Summary: Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
warned North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il — whom he labeled the “bad guy” — that the United States’ commitment to defend South Korea was “unquestioned” as the Communist state’s military fired shells across the disputed sea border. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 8, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that a suicide car bomb in Baghdad flattened a court building and an explosives-rigged ambulance blew down walls like dominos near the Finance Ministry in a wave of coordinated attacks that targeted high-profile symbols of Iraqi authority, killing at least 127 people and wounding more than 500.

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Summary: China is worried tensions in the Korean peninsula could spiral out of control if not dealt with properly, President Hu Jintao told U.S. President Barack Obama in their first discussion of the situation since North Korea shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong nearly two weeks earlier. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 6, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos on ABC News “This Week” that the U.S. has not had any good intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in “years.”

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Summary: More than seven years after the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division entered Baghdad in March 2003 as the first conventional U.S. forces in Iraq, its soldiers are coming home from a year-long deployment that saw the end of combat operations. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 4, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the national edition of the Washington Times featured a shameful full-page ad by the anti-Obama website ProtectOurLiberty.org, claiming that President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. The ad copy claimed that under a 60-year-old British law, President Obama is a citizen of Britain and “is currently also a British protected person and/or a British citizen to this day.”

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Summary: Weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, compiled from U.S. Department of Defense news releases and iCasualties.org. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on December 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that adapting to rising seas and higher temperatures was expected to be a big topic at the U.N. climate-change talks in Copenhagen, along with the projected cost — hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it going to countries that cannot afford to do it themselves.

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