http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2006/Charts2006.pdf

"This election is the one we've been waiting for - it's going to determine our destiny," said Ali al-Nuaimy, 49, a physical fitness trainer, who voted in Baghdad.

In Ramadi, a violent Sunni Arab city, turnout was dramatic compared to October's referendum, when only about 2,000 people cast votes and most of those were Iraqi Army soldiers and poll workers from out of town.

"I'm so happy," said Mahmood Mohammad Hussein, 25, a student at the local agricultural college, who said he was voting for the first time in his life.

Today's election will be the last formal milestone in the American-backed political process that was devised to foster a democratic government.

After the polls closed this evening, electoral commission officials said that turnout could have been as high as 11 million out of 15.5 million eligible voters, more than in October's referendum, when many Sunnis boycotted the election.

NY Times: Heavy Sunni Turnout Is Reported December 15, 2005

Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead.

Broad Optism in Iraq

So, much as capitalists have always done, Li went looking for an easier place to profit. He ventured south of the border, putting up a factory here in a new industrial park in northern Vietnam, where wages are roughly one-third cheaper than at home

According to eyewitnesses, Rabia died with four militants after missiles fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft exploded at the terrorist hideout in a village in north Waziristan in the early hours of Thursday morning. Other reports claimed that a helicopter had fired rockets into the house, causing bomb-making materials to explode.

Al-Qaeda chief killed in Pakistan

• Since the liberation of Iraq in 2003, the monthly average of deaths resulting from jihadist/insurgent attacks is a 93% decline from the monthly average of killings during the 24 years of Saddam Hussein's rule
• The U.S. military has been directly responsible for only 3.8% of fatalities reported, as many deaths over almost two years as Saddam averaged in 10 days.
• 81% of 'civilian' deaths are adult males "This study reports 24,865 civilian deaths in the first two years of the Iraq War. A curious statistical anomaly is highlighted on page one: over 81% of the civilian casualties are men. Even stranger, over 90% of civilian casualties are adults in a country with a disproportionate percentage of the population under 18 (44.5%). This contradicts a basic tenet of the civilian casualty argument, namely that we are describing collateral damage during a time of war. Collateral damage does not differentiate between male and female, between child and adult. A defective smart bomb falling in a marketplace, stray bullets ripping through bedroom walls, city warfare in Fallujah – all these activities should produce casualties that reflect the ratio of men to women or adults to children that prevail in Iraq as a whole." Iraqi Body Count

References to published membership/adherent statistics and congregation statistics for over 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, etc. The religions of the world are enumerated here.