Bombings

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.

ROME - A bomb exploded at the entrance of a high school in southern Italy named for the wife of a slain anti-Mafia judge, killing a 16-year-old girl and injuring at least four people as students were arriving at school for Saturday classes. Police were investigating the possibility of organized-crime involvement in the attack in the Adriatic port city of Brindisi, but authorities said it was too early to exclude other possibilities. They noted that the school is named for Francesca Morvillo, the wife of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

Bomb blasts ripped through two separate bars packed with soccer fans watching the World Cup final in the Ugandan capital Kampala late Sunday, killing dozens of people, including an American, police said Monday. The deadliest attack occurred at a rugby club as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands on a large-screen TV outdoors. The second blast took place at an Ethiopian restaurant, where at least three Americans were wounded. "At this moment we can confirm that one American has been killed," U.S. Embassy public affairs officer Joan Lockard said.

You absolutely have, have, have to get up at 6 a.m. - for a meeting at work, a flight to Paris, a casting call for your dog to be in a Fido's Faves commercial. But you worry. You don't trust yourself. You've snored through alarms before. Fear not. There are gadgeteers out there who've got your back. Some examples: Math Alarm Clock: An Android app that plays music you've chosen to wake up to. That might sound a tad sleep-through-able for a hard-core zzz-ster, except that it plays and plays and plays the music until you come up with the right answer to a math problem.

A car bomb ripped through a parking lot used by pilgrims in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday, killing three people in an attack that was almost certainly intended to ignite sectarian passions the day before Iraqis go to the polls. Two Iranians and an Iraqi were killed in the explosion about 300 yards from the Imam Ali shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. The attack near an Iranian tour bus also wounded 54 people, 19 of them Iranians, police said. The parliamentary elections Sunday find Iraqis choosing between secular and religious politicians, and hoping to close the door on a return to the sectarian war that crippled the country from 2005 to '07. In televised comments, the reclusive Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who is thought to be in Iran, urged his supporters to vote.

A pair of car bombs killed at least 28 people and left hundreds injured in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, bringing the violence that has raged across much of the country to a pro-government commercial hub whose allegiance is regarded as vital to the survival of President Bashar Assad. The twin bombings Friday, apparently aimed at military and police posts, stunned residents of the key city. State television broadcast horrific live shots in an effort to bolster Assad's claim that he is fighting violent, foreign-backed efforts to overthrow him. Each side immediately blamed the other for the attacks - the same cycle of accusations that followed bombings in Damascus, the capital, on Dec. 23 and Jan. 6. The government said the Aleppo bombings were the work of "terrorists," its customary depiction of those behind an almost yearlong national uprising that has evolved from provincial protests to widespread armed rebellion.

Two near-simultaneous bomb blasts tore through a crowded market in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Monday, killing at least 36 people and injuring more than 100. Police said many of the dead were women and children. Earlier, a suicide bomber killed 10 people outside a courthouse in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Pakistan has been hit with a wave of terrorist strikes as its army tries to clamp down on Islamic militants in the nation's tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

A car bomb exploded at a crowded livestock market south of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 13 people in a mainly Shiite Muslim area that the U.S. military has described as one of the safest in Iraq. The blast, which injured 57 people, struck the market at the height of trading, scattering animal carcasses and human remains across the dirt.

Re "Protests Anticipated as Bombings to Resume," June 18: As a solution for the Vieques problem, I humbly offer this suggestion: Why not bomb the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Since this administration is hellbent on destroying it anyway, we can kill two birds with one Republican stone. Brian Caldirola Sherman Oaks

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.

WASHINGTON — The CIA takedown of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner involved an international sting operation with a double agent tricking terrorists into handing over a prized possession: a new bomb purportedly designed to slip through airport security. U.S. officials Tuesday described an operation in which Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency, working closely with the CIA, used an informant to pose as a would-be suicide bomber. His job was to persuade Al Qaeda bomb makers in Yemen to give him the bomb.

WASHINGTON - The FBI is analyzing a sophisticated explosive device, similar to the underwear bomb used in an attempt to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit in 2009, that U.S. officials believe was built by Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen in an effort to target Western aircraft. U.S. officials said Monday that no one was captured by U.S. agencies as part of the operation. The officials emphasized that they found no sign of an active plot to use the new bomb design against U.S. aviation or U.S.-bound jetliners.

In a second-grade homework assignment, Stephen J. Dunning wrote about his future in a passage that would be as brief as it was portentous. He wanted to go to college and he wanted to become a United States Marine. His father, Robert, who flew helicopters in the Marine Corps, hadn't stopped to consider its meaning. But after his son's death at age 31 on Oct. 27 in Afghanistan's Helmand province, the elder Dunning said those words, accompanied by a crayon self-portrait on the faded page, took on new, touching significance.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to seek a speed limit for skateboarders and penalize them for failing to follow a range of traffic rules, from stopping at stop signs to yielding to pedestrians. On a 12 to 0 vote, the council instructed City Atty. Carmen Trutanich to draft an ordinance that would prohibit "unsafe" skateboard activity and limit riders to a speed of 25 mph. The proposal was initiated by Councilman Joe Buscaino, who described it as a response to the death of two skateboarders over the last year.

BEIRUT - Even with the commander of the United Nations monitoring mission in place in Syria, explosions and attacks continued Monday as forces loyal to President Bashar Assad and opposition groups appeared no closer to a cease-fire after 13 months of unrest. In the northern city of Idlib, two early-morning car bombings killed at least eight people and injured more than 100, according to state media and activists. The explosions targeted the air force security and other military security buildings in the southern part of the city dominated by government buildings.

BEIRUT - Two weeks after a supposed cease-fire was meant to bring an end to violence in Syria, an explosion Friday ripped through the capital, Damascus, killing at least nine people and injuring almost 30. A suicide bomber in the pro-opposition Midan neighborhood detonated an explosives belt near a school and the Zein Abidin mosque as worshipers were leaving Friday prayers, the Interior Ministry said. Those killed included civilians and law enforcement officers, state media said.

Chechen rebels took responsibility Wednesday for a bombing last week that derailed a passenger train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, killing 26 people and injuring 87. The claim was carried on Kavkazcenter.com, a website that often carries information from Islamic rebels seeking independence for the Russian republic of Chechnya. "We state that the given operation was prepared and carried out as part of the sabotage actions against strategically important facilities of Russia planned earlier this year and successfully carried out on the orders of Caucasus emir Doku Umarov," the statement said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki dismissed his Baghdad security commander Wednesday in response to criticism after this week's car bombings and a spate of recent high-profile attacks that crippled state institutions. Gen. Aboud Qanbar's removal was announced before Maliki's scheduled visit to parliament today to address the chamber about Tuesday's four car bombings and two other major bomb attacks since August that have killed nearly 400 people and severely damaged four government ministries.

Have you ever been frightened by a dumpling? Truly, genuinely scared? Because the juicy crab and pork buns at Wang Xing Ji - smoking-hot dumplings the size of water balloons, sneakily full of boiling juice - could probably be weaponized. You could deploy them as grenades, I'm pretty sure, lobbing the heavy spheroids over battlements. Or you could employ them as sub-lethal projectiles, splatting them into the enemy at will, although the sticky broth is undoubtedly prohibited in an obscure codicil of the Geneva Conventions.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Sudan and South Sudan teetered dangerously on the edge of war Thursday after South Sudan refused to withdraw its troops from a disputed border area despite calls to do so by the United Nations and African Union. Sudan, furious about South Sudan's seizure a day earlier of its most important oil field in the town of Heglig, bombed a bridge outside the South Sudan oil town of Bentiu, killing one civilian and wounding four, officials said. The fighting between the two nations was the worst since South Sudan seceded from the north in July after a January 2011 independence referendum.