Bombings

Times Square returned to business as usual as police investigating the explosion at a military recruiting center looked at dozens of security videotapes, hoping to identify the bicycle-riding bomber. Among the videos was one showing a hooded cyclist pedaling toward an area where a bicycle was found ditched in the trash, and another with someone walking away from the same spot, police said. Investigators suspect the bike -- a 10-speed in good condition -- may have been used by the bomber in the attack just before dawn Thursday on a landmark military recruiting station.

Three mortar rounds targeting the U.S. Embassy in Sana hit a girls high school next door, killing a Yemeni security guard and wounding more than a dozen students, officials said. The State Department said U.S. officials in Yemen had concluded that the attack was "directed against our embassy." Officials refused to comment further, saying the incident was under investigation. The embassy issued a statement saying that none of its employees was wounded. A statement from the Interior Ministry said the shells, fired by unidentified attackers, wounded five soldiers and 13 schoolgirls.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed when a bomb hit their vehicle in south Baghdad late Sunday, bringing the number of U.S. service members killed in the Iraq war to 4,000. The grim milestone came at a time when attacks against the U.S. military are ebbing and officials have claimed significant progress against Iraq's deadly insurgency and sectarian violence. It was reached about 10 p.m. on a day when more than 60 Iraqis were killed and dozens injured in attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital.

A convicted hotel bomber from California who modeled himself on a fictional vampire has died after becoming ill in prison, officials said Tuesday. Triston Jay Amero, 26, was serving a 30-year sentence for the 2006 bombing of two low-rent hotels in this capital city. Two Bolivians died in one of the attacks. Juan Carlos Limpias, a senior official in the national prison service, said Amero complained of stomach pains Monday night and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Bombs in two provincial capitals killed more than 50 Iraqi civilians Tuesday, underscoring the continuing threat posed by Sunni Muslim insurgents as they try to regain power in former strongholds. Coinciding with military efforts to curb the strength of Shiite Muslim militias in Baghdad and southern Iraq, the new attacks also portend the hurdles the Iraqi government may face as U.S. troop levels decrease through the summer.

Two bombs exploded in Yangon, the largest city of military-ruled Myanmar, witnesses said, but no casualties were immediately reported. The witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of official reprisal, said the first blast occurred on a downtown street and the second about an hour later on a different street near the luxurious Traders Hotel. No further details were immediately available. The roads were blocked off by security forces and riot police. Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been in a political stalemate since 1990, when Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a general election but was not allowed to take power.

A prosecutor sought the arrest of former Argentine President Carlos Menem, accusing him of covering up the involvement of a Syrian-Argentine businessman in a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. The former president denied the allegations. Prosecutor Alberto Nisman also requested the arrests of Menem's brother, Munir, and four other men. As a senator, Menem is immune from prosecution, but Nisman asked that the privilege be revoked. The prosecutor said in his petition to Judge Ariel Lijo that Menem and his aides tried to cover up the possible involvement of Alberto Jacinto Kanoore Edul in the bombing.

A car bombing that killed at least six people and wounded dozens of others Monday near the Danish Embassy raised fears that Al Qaeda-linked militants might be moving to fill a void left by other Islamist fighters seeking truces with Pakistan's new government. The powerful blast occurred just outside the embassy gates in a leafy, upscale neighborhood of Islamabad, the capital.

A bomb planted near a bridge in north Baghdad killed five people on passing minibuses during rush hour Wednesday, Iraqi police said. A woman and a 7-year-old boy were among the dead, and at least 10 people were wounded in the mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Hurriya, an officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. Across town, two mortar rounds hit a busy street in the central district of Karada, killing a civilian and wounding five, police said.

Several bombings and attacks by gunmen Wednesday killed 20 Iraqis and a U.S. soldier, officials said. A suicide car bomber killed eight civilians and wounded 41 in an attack on a military convoy carrying a senior Iraqi commander in the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi military said. In the former Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold of Fallouja, west of Baghdad, a bomb exploded outside a bank, killing four policemen and a civilian and wounding 15, Iraqi police said.