Jack Healy New York Times

In the most direct assault since the American Embassy opened here nine years ago, heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests put the embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters in their cross hairs, showing the Taliban's ability to enter even the most heavily fortified districts in the country.

Kabul under attack: Insurgents launched a complex assault against the United States Embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters on Tuesday, pelting the heavily guarded compounds with rockets in an assault that raised new questions about the security of Afghanistan's capital and the Westerners working there.

The women charged with thwarting Iraq's female suicide bombers spend their days in cramped metal sheds at police checkpoints and lobbies of government offices, running their hands over the black-robed bodies of other women.The Iraqi authorities say the searches have helped to curb female suicide attacks, once a scourge of this still-dangerous city....

Security forces and government supporters employed an escalating panoply of violent force - from tear gas and batons to shotguns and grenades - in pitched street battles with anti-government protesters in Libya, Bahrain  and Yemen  on Friday.The clashes followed a week of deepening unrest as protesters, emboldened by the toppling of forme...

For an hour every Saturday, with a short break for the evening call to prayer, a modestly dressed woman appears on television here and takes phone calls from Iraqis whose relatives have vanished. It is a show that is uniquely Iraqi, a weekly attempt to locate a few of the thousands who have disappeared, either as victims of sectarian kidnappings an...

Tariq Aziz, a former top aide to Saddam Hussein, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on Tuesday for crimes against members of rival Shiite political parties.The ruling was the latest in a series of criminal cases against Mr. Aziz, 74, whose frequent media appearances and travels abroad made him the bespectacled face of Mr. Hussein's regime. Fo...

An offshore oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday morning, injuring one worker, the United States Coast Guard said. The platform, which was owned by the Houston-based Mariner Energy, was floating in relatively shallow waters 340 feet deep to the west of where a drilling rig leased by BP blew up and sank this spring, killing 11 peo...

In the most direct assault since the American Embassy opened here nine years ago, heavily armed insurgents wearing suicide vests put the embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters in their cross hairs, showing the Taliban's ability to enter even the most heavily fortified districts in the country.

Kabul under attack: Insurgents launched a complex assault against the United States Embassy and the nearby NATO headquarters on Tuesday, pelting the heavily guarded compounds with rockets in an assault that raised new questions about the security of Afghanistan's capital and the Westerners working there.

The women charged with thwarting Iraq's female suicide bombers spend their days in cramped metal sheds at police checkpoints and lobbies of government offices, running their hands over the black-robed bodies of other women.The Iraqi authorities say the searches have helped to curb female suicide attacks, once a scourge of this still-dangerous city....

Security forces and government supporters employed an escalating panoply of violent force - from tear gas and batons to shotguns and grenades - in pitched street battles with anti-government protesters in Libya, Bahrain  and Yemen  on Friday.The clashes followed a week of deepening unrest as protesters, emboldened by the toppling of forme...

For an hour every Saturday, with a short break for the evening call to prayer, a modestly dressed woman appears on television here and takes phone calls from Iraqis whose relatives have vanished. It is a show that is uniquely Iraqi, a weekly attempt to locate a few of the thousands who have disappeared, either as victims of sectarian kidnappings an...

Tariq Aziz, a former top aide to Saddam Hussein, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on Tuesday for crimes against members of rival Shiite political parties.The ruling was the latest in a series of criminal cases against Mr. Aziz, 74, whose frequent media appearances and travels abroad made him the bespectacled face of Mr. Hussein's regime. Fo...

An offshore oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday morning, injuring one worker, the United States Coast Guard said. The platform, which was owned by the Houston-based Mariner Energy, was floating in relatively shallow waters 340 feet deep to the west of where a drilling rig leased by BP blew up and sank this spring, killing 11 peo...