Baghdad

Hadi Abu Ahmed lingers in his grape juice shop in the heart of Baghdad like a man waiting for something dramatic to happen. He smiles, as though there is a secret or a joke that amuses him. He places a few mugs on a tray and tells of how a young Saddam Hussein loved the juice his family has made for more than a century. One time, when Hussein was jailed for scheming against Iraq's leaders, he paid policemen to bring bottles to his prison cell. The family's beverage — only real grapes, he insists, no flavored powders — has won the favors of dictators and royalty, actors and singers, Islamic radicals and U.S. soldiers.

BAGHDAD — Hopes for quick progress on Iran's disputed nuclear program faded rapidly Wednesday, as diplomats from six world powers and Iran collided bitterly in daylong talks intended to resolve their long-standing differences over an effort many nations fear is aimed at building a nuclear bomb. In their second high-level meeting in as many months, representatives of the two sides offered packages of proposals designed to open a path to what is expected to be a long and difficult negotiation.

Cops stormed in and shut the place down. Up the stairs and out into the warm spring night the tipsy customers stumbled, along with a gaggle of ladies of the night, various shady characters, the singer and his band. A rustle of umbrage. What's the meaning of this? The police almost apologized. Orders from the Interior Ministry, they said, one of the higher-ups. But one of the customers was also in the Interior Ministry. He pulled out his cellphone and called someone, an even higher higher-up.

A series of explosions and shootings struck Iraq on Tuesday, leaving scores dead and injured a week before a major Arab summit in Baghdad aimed at showcasing the nation's stability after the U.S. military withdrawal. Starting shortly after dawn, at least 20 bombs exploded at 13 sites, from Baghdad to the northern city of Kirkuk to the southern cities of Hillah and Karbala. The nationwide death toll was at least 46, with more than 200 injured, the Associated Press reported. At least two car bombs exploded near the heavily fortified Green Zone, where next week's Arab League summit is scheduled to take place.

The families have lived in these cramped blocks in the heart of old Baghdad for decades. Their ties wind along the boulevard called Kifa Street like the dozens of thin generator wires that run from building to building. When Hazem abu Ahmed was a boy, his father died and his mother supported him by washing onions for restaurants. The small apartment on Kifa Street would fill with the stinging odor of onions and he would cry. He met his oldest friend, Hadi, when they were children.

Re "Bush opens door to troop withdrawal," May 25 So now President Bush is paying lip service to the Baker-Hamilton plan he previously renounced. Now he is using Bush-speak to say he favors bringing the troops home, as recommended, but only if Baghdad is secured. It's time for the military to call Bush's bluff. Simply pull all U.S. troops and allies from all over Iraq and place them in Baghdad. The insurgents will split to the open areas and Baghdad will be secured. The president either keeps his promise of starting troop reductions or shows himself to still be the dictator in chief.

As Iraqi officials prepared to announce a date for delayed national elections, car bombs detonated Tuesday at government buildings and in crowded Baghdad streets, killing at least 127 people and wounding nearly 500. The attacks on state institutions appeared aimed at further eroding the Iraqi people's faith in the political process, which many already viewed with deep skepticism. The morning explosions shook the east and west sides of the city over a span of about 30 minutes, gutting portions of a major courthouse on the west side of the Tigris River and other buildings.

A series of powerful explosions reverberated across the heart of Baghdad today, killing at least 75 people and wounding more than 300 on the deadliest day in the capital since U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from Iraq's cities June 30. The main targets were the Finance and Foreign ministries, which were shaken by massive explosions minutes apart, demonstrating that the insurgency still has the capacity to strike at will against major institutions....

America met Baghdad at the outset of the 1991 Gulf War with CNN correspondent Peter Arnett's live coverage from atop the Al Rasheed Hotel. A dozen years later, the beginning of another American war in Iraq came to us largely from reporters broadcasting live from another hotel, the Palestine. Those hotels -- complete with correspondents in the eerie light of antiaircraft fire -- have become landmarks in our collective memory. But the hotel that captured, or at least housed, the collective soul of a generation of correspondents in Iraq's wars was a stubbier, scruffier cousin, the Al Hamra.

A suicide bomber plowed an explosives-laden vehicle into an Interior Ministry building in central Baghdad on Tuesday, killing 21 people and wounding more than 80 in an attack that raised fear that extremists are escalating a campaign of bombings aimed at destabilizing the government. The attack came a day after bombings at three major Baghdad hotels in which 37 people died. Though the capital has seen coordinated multiple bombings several times, it has become rare for suicide attackers to strike two days in a row. The latest attack targeted a building housing a forensic laboratory and fit a pattern of recent bombings at government institutions and high-profile landmarks as tension rises before pivotal national elections scheduled for March.

At least 30 Iraqi police officers and civilians were killed and dozens injured Thursday morning in a series of rush-hour car bombings, explosions and attacks by gunmen that rocked Baghdad. The hour-plus string of violence, largely aimed at government security officers, began when gunmen took over a security checkpoint near the Sarafiya Bridge in Baghdad's center, killing six police officers and injuring three. Eight additional attacks occurred across the city, including a car bombing in the Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Karada, which killed nine civilians and injured 26. The explosion damaged cars and shops, and shook buildings blocks away.

A string of explosions targeting Shiite Muslims that killed at least 71 people bore the hallmark of Sunni Arab insurgents who have a history of trying to capitalize on tensions among Iraqi politicians to reignite the communal violence that nearly tore the country apart. The bombings Thursday in the south of Iraq and in mainly Shiite neighborhoods of the capital, Baghdad, were the second major wave of attacks since the last U.S. troops departed from Iraq less than three weeks ago. Sectarian tension has escalated sharply as a political dispute threatens to unravel U.S.-backed power-sharing arrangements among the country's Shiites, Sunni Arabs and ethnic Kurds.

When Vice President Joe Biden slipped into Baghdad this month to commemorate the end of eight bloody years of war in Iraq, there was one face conspicuously absent from the host of solemn ceremonies and farewell meetings he attended: that of Ahmad Chalabi. The Iraqi politician, who lived in exile before Saddam Hussein's ouster, is shunned by Washington these days. But there has never been a foreigner more crucially involved in a decision by the United States to go to war than Ahmad Chalabi.

  Sirens wailed, smoke billowed and blood pooled on the pavement. The scenes of devastation were all too familiar after more than a dozen explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital Thursday, killing at least 60 people and injuring nearly 200, just days after the last U.S. troops left the country. The attacks, some of the worst in Iraq this year, came in the midst of a political standoff between the country's main Shiite Muslim and Sunni Arab factions. The dispute threatens to unravel a U.S.-backed power-sharing government, and is spreading anxiety over the prospect of a return to the sectarian bloodletting that devastated the country in recent years.

Christopher B. Fishbeck was a simple man with big dreams, he liked to tell friends. Fishbeck dreamed of orbiting the Earth and running in the Olympics, he wrote on his MySpace page. He hoped to change the world and leave his mark. That indefatigable nature and unquenchable optimism endeared him to his family and friends. Born in Anaheim, Fishbeck grew up in Buena Park and from boyhood made it known that he was determined to reach for the stars, either theoretically through his love of physics and astronomy or literally as a pilot or astronaut.

The balding head of Hamid Hussein had been sliced open with a sword. Bright scarlet blood flowed down his sunburned face, trickling down and staining the white robes worn by his 5-year-old son, Hussein. It was a momentous day for father and son. They were observing Ashura, the annual religious holiday when Shiite Muslims display penance and mourning with self-inflicted wounds to commemorate the 7th century martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad. There was one more reason to note the day: U.S. forces were nearly gone from all of Iraq just three weeks before the Dec. 31 deadline for their withdrawal.

A bomb hidden in a packed Baghdad market for motorcycles killed as many as 22 people Friday, the latest in a string of attacks that seem aimed at undermining the government before next week's deadline for U.S. forces to exit Iraqi cities. In the last week, more than 150 people were killed in two attacks alone in Baghdad and northern Iraq. Another bombing killed seven people Thursday at a bus station in a western district of Baghdad.

Three polling stations in Baghdad were struck by explosions that killed at least 14 people Thursday, an apparent attempt to sow fear before elections Sunday that Iraqis hope will stabilize their country after years of bloodshed. The attacks were launched as security forces and hospital patients cast the first ballots in the parliamentary elections that will choose the next four-year government. The bombings came a day after similar assaults in the northeastern city of Baqubah that killed more than 30 people.

Some men see lawn chairs in the sky and ask, "Why?" Some, though, imagine attaching the chairs to hundreds of balloons, strapping themselves in the seat, donning oxygen masks and flying straight over Baghdad. Kent Couch, who runs a gas station in Bend, Ore., is such a man. Couch boarded a flight to the Middle East on Thursday, setting out on an adventure that involves becoming the first lawn chair balloonist to traverse the now-more-or-less peaceful skies over Iraq -- and raise money for Iraqi children.