Provincial Capital

A suicide car bomb killed at least 13 people Sunday in the western province of Anbar as militants continued a campaign of periodic attacks ahead of the formation of Iraq's next government. The explosion at the Iraqi government compound in the provincial capital, Ramadi, occurred a week after the killing of26 people in a series of bombings around Baghdad. Such violence feeds a general resignation among some Iraqis that, despite improvements in security over the last three years, the Iraqi government remains unable to completely stop the bloodletting.

A suicide bomb attack Wednesday in Anbar province's capital killed 25 people and wounded 100, including the governor. The attack raised fears that the devastating bloodletting that swept western Iraq several years ago may be returning. Gov. Qassim Fahdawi had rushed to the scene of an earlier car bombing in Ramadi and was preparing to leave the site when the suicide bomber struck. The blast killed the governor's security advisor and wounded Fahdawi and at least one other member of the provincial council.

The governor of Nineveh province, a man who drives around with hand grenades in the cup holders of his SUV, is proud that he survived his term. He can't point to much else as a legacy. This provincial capital is a shambles, a sea of gray concrete buildings, with police and army checkpoints everywhere, thunderous explosions almost every day. Services are nonexistent. The Sunni Arabs and the Kurds who share the province are caught up in a fierce competition for control of its land.

Twelfth-grade teacher Sam Borath recently asked her students in Svay, a town in northwestern Cambodia, to write down the names of five leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million people during its reign in the late 1970s. Simply identifying top figures, however, can be an awkward exercise. Many communities would rather not stir up memories of the war-torn past, particularly in this region. Svay is part of a thin belt along the northwestern border that remained under the control of ultra-communist Khmer Rouge leaders and their militias for two decades after 1979, when the regime was ousted from power in Phnom Penh.

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification. The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan's Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held - and others squatted beside - the corpse's severed legs.

The frigid morning was still blanketed in darkness, but Nie Xiaojuan was awake and holding tightly her place in line. She had just spent her fifth straight night sleeping on the floor of Beijing Union College Hospital's registration hall, which was minutes away from its 6:30 a.m. opening. Appointments for the best doctors are normally snapped up before sunrise. Lines begin forming in front of the hospital's six registration counters at least a day in advance. Nie's father, who was too weak to join the queue, needed to see several specialists.

It might be the most ambitious construction project in China since the Great Wall. The Chinese government is planning to reroute the nation's water supply, bringing water from the flood plains of the south and the snowcapped mountains of the west to the parched capital of Beijing. First envisioned by Mao Tse-tung in the 1950s and now coming to fruition, the South-North Water Diversion ? as it is inelegantly known in English ? has a price tag of more than $62 billion, twice as expensive as the famous Three Gorges Dam. It is expected to take decades to complete.

Song Guorong's genealogy gets hazy just a few generations before his own. But follow it back further--by 2,000 years--and he'll tell you exactly who lies at the root of his family tree. "I know my ancestors were Romans," the lanky 39-year-old says in a matter-of-fact voice as he navigates the rutted lanes of this dusty hamlet deep in China's interior. It's a remarkable claim to make, in a place as far east of Rome as New York is west.

Like many peasants from the outskirts of Yanan, China, Ren Shouhua was born in a cave and lived there until he got a job in the city and moved into a concrete-block house. His progression made sense as he strove to improve his life. But there's a twist: The 46-year-old Ren plans to move back to a cave when he retires. "It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It's quiet and safe," said Ren, a ruddy-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair who moved to the Shaanxi provincial capital, Xian, in his 20s. "When I get old, I'd like to go back to my roots.

A 25-story, medieval bell tower collapsed without warning Friday into the main piazza of the northern Italian city of Pavia, killing at least three people and injuring about a dozen others. Local firemen and police aided by civilian volunteers, Italian army specialists and sniffer dogs trained for earthquakes searched for victims through 30-foot high mounds of rubble that crushed a newspaper kiosk, damaged nearby shops, flattened part of a house and squashed cars parked in the town square.