President Obama’s return to Indonesia, the nation where he spent four years of his childhood, has brought further confusion regarding the response of his administration to the ideology of Islam.

Only days after the first anniversary of alleged Jihadist Nidal Hasan’s murderous rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, President Obama lauded Islam when asked his opinion of Jihad.

The massacre at the Church of Our Lady of Deliverance in Baghdad is the latest example of the horrific suffering Christians have endured in a nation shattered by war. As reported for The New American on October 29, Iraqi Christians have suffered persecution since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003; any "victory" which U.S. leaders trumpet in that nation has not been enjoyed by the hundreds of thousands of Christians who have now fled their homeland. For many, the persecution carried out by Islamic militants has made emigration a necessity.

Over seven years have passed since President Bush declared victory in Iraq, and two months have now gone by since Obama declared that same conflict to be over, but for Christians in the Middle East, such talk of victory is hollow. For centuries, Christians living under Muslim domination have endured cycles of persecution and tolerance, but now an virtually unprecedented exodus of Christians from the region is underway.

The future of Egypt in the aftermath of last year’s “Arab Spring” is being written by the dominant Islamist organization in that nation, the Muslim Brotherhood. Since the fall of the Mubarak government in February 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood has been steadily establishing itself as the center of power in the new Egypt. In the process, the organization is now preparing to break a crucial promise that its leadership made last year: The Muslim Brotherhood is now seeking to install one of its own as president of Egypt.

As concern grows within Egypt and abroad that the Muslim Brotherhood (emblem at left) is seeking for itself the same concentration of power which it once denounced when it was wielded by former President Hosni Mubarak, the handful of dissident voices within the new constitutional committee are resigning in protest.

With Islamist extremists facing opposition as they consolidate their power within Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is looking abroad in the hope of gaining some unlikely allies. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party may have reneged on its promise to stay out of Egypt’s presidential election, and has driven Coptic Christians off the commission charged with drafting their nation’s new constitution, but promises of business opportunities may win the support of foreign businesses that see an opportunity to make a profit.

In the wake of dire warnings from the White House concerning the dangers of the H1N1 virus (the “Swine Flu”), concerns regarding the vaccine are leading thousands of Chinese healthcare workers to consider refusing the vaccine when it is available.

The Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that “Sri Lanka on Wednesday freed nearly 600 Hindu and Catholic priests who were held in internment camps with ethnic Tamils displaced by fighting between troops and separatist rebels, officials said. The clergy were allowed to leave the camps in the northern district of Vavuniya, where 300,000 inmates are detained under tight security to be screened for remaining Tamil Tiger rebels.”

Building on a February 2008 proposal by the governments of China and Russia, the communist regime in the People’s Republic of China is now pushing for a ban on weapons in space.