Attack

Q: DEAR TIM: Cleaning a tile floor is my next big project. The grout lines are filthy, and I haven't discovered an easy way to restore the tile. Is there a magic product that will clean floor tile? Once the grout is clean, what's the easiest way to keep it that way? Should I invest in a cleaning machine? -- Michelle S., Corvallis, Ore. A: DEAR MICHELLE: We had a boatload of tile floors in our last home, and cleaning them was a nightmare. To make it worse, we had brilliant white tile with light gray grout in our kitchen and...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Officials say 10 apparently coordinated car bombs and a shooting across Iraq have killed at least 24 and wounded dozens. Police say most of Sunday's car bombs hit Shiite-majority areas, killing 20. The blasts hit half a dozen cities and towns in the south and center of the country: Basra, Kut, Nasiriyah, Hillah, Najaf, Mahmoudiya and Madain. The shooting happened near the restive northern city of Mosul. Police officials say gunmen attacked police guarding a remote stretch of...

Linda Davidson The Washington Post Mark and Jackie Barden hug their 11-year-old daughter, Natalie, before she goes to school in Newtown, Conn., in May. T hey had promised to try everything, so Mark Barden went down into the basement to begin another project in memory of Daniel. The families of Sandy Hook Elementary were collaborating on a Mother's Day card, which would be produced by a marketing firm and mailed to hundreds of politicians across the country. "A difference-maker," the...

TRIPOLI, Libya — Gunmen staged overnight attacks on at least six security buildings and outposts throughout Libya's eastern city of Benghazi, killing six soldiers, military officials said Saturday. The assaults, which included snipers, rocket-propelled grenades, knife-wielding assailants and explosives thrown onto rooftops, come after a number of smaller targeted attacks and assassinations of security officials in the city over the past several months. Ali el-Sheikhy, a spokesman for the army's chief of staff, said no group has...

A 29-year-old man who says he is a former undercover CIA employee said Sunday that he was the principal source of recent disclosures about ­top-secret National Security Agency programs , exposing himself to possible prosecution in an acknowledgment that had little if any precedent in the long history of U.S. intelligence leaks. Edward Snowden, a tech specialist who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, unmasked himself as a source after a string of stories in The Washington...

Vertigo is an unsettling yet common condition, similar to seasickness but without the sea. With its illusory sense of spinning, vertigo can be frightening and lead to nausea, vomiting, headaches and other symptoms. But a solution is often more simple than you might think. Vertigo has been linked to anxiety, a drop in blood pressure, migraines, multiple sclerosis and Meniere's disease, a disorder of the ear that can also cause tinnitus (ringing in the ears) and...

Terrorism is speech — speech that gathers its audience by killing innocents as theatrically as possible. The 19th-century anarchist Paul Brousse called it "propaganda by deed. " Accordingly, the Boston Marathon attack , the first successful terror bombing in the United States since 9/11, was designed for maximum effect. At the finish line there would be not only news cameras but also hundreds of personal videos to amplify the message. But what message? There was no claim of responsibility, no explanatory propaganda.

KABUL — For the second time in five days, insurgents staged a combined suicide bombing and gun assault against an international aid agency in Afghanistan late Wednesday, this time targeting a guest house used by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern city of Jalalabad. Officials said one attacker detonated a bomb at the front gate of the building at dusk, then two more stormed inside and began exchanging fire with security guards. There were reports...

The Taliban fighters who blew up a half-dozen U.S. Marine fighter jets on a sprawling NATO base last fall were able to walk easily onto the encampment because patrols of the perimeter had been scaled back and watchtowers left unmanned, according to senior military officials. After the attack, which resulted in the deaths of two Marines and the largest loss of allied materiel in the 11-year-long Afghan war, the top U.S. commander on the base did not order a formal investigation into the security...

The social news site Reddit is being hit with what the company called a "malicious" denial of service attack, first disclosed via its official Twitter account Friday. The company first disclosed that it was being targeted with an attack on Friday around 6:30 a.m. Eastern. As of mid-morning on Friday, most users were able to access the site, though some site functions have been disabled . The company has not said if it has any indication of who is behind the attack. Reddit did not immediately respond to...

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry says the U.S. "strongly condemns" a rocket attack on a Baghdad camp housing Iranian exiles. In a statement Saturday, Kerry described the attack as an "unprovoked terrorist attack" that was "brutal, senseless and utterly unacceptable. " He says the U.S. at the highest levels has been urging Iraq's government to provide immediate medical help and bring the terrorists to justice. Kerry also says the U.S. remains committed to help Iraq move the...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan's leaders faced a fresh crisis Saturday after two separate attacks in which militant groups destroyed a national monument honoring the country's founder and bombed a bus carrying female college students as well as the hospital they were taken to, and then took over part of the hospital in a battle that raged for hours. The attacks in the restive Baluchistan province rattled residents across Pakistan and seemed likely to escalate decades of turmoil in the...

TRIPOLI, Libya — Rooftop snipers and knife-wielding assailants killed six soldiers in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi early Saturday, officials said, in the largest attack on the country's new security forces to date. The brazen overnight assault by hundreds of plain-clothed gunmen on security installations forced soldiers to withdraw from some of their bases. In one case, soldiers fled out the back door of the First Infantry Brigade's headquarters in Benghazi...

Two juveniles were shot and wounded and a man was stabbed Friday night during two separate attacks inNorthwest Washington, D.C. police said. Police found the two youths, both male, conscious and breathing at 1st and Bates streets NW about 10:30 p.m., said Officer Hugh Carew, a spokesman. Ages and conditions were not immediately available. About 30 minutes earlier, a man was stabbed and wounded at 14th Street and Parkwood Place. The victim was taken to a hospital and police searched for a...

HARTFORD, Conn. — Conn. official: Chimp attack victim cannot pursue lawsuit seeking $150 million from state. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. says the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin on two occasions in Aleppo in March and April. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice detailed the attacks in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon obtained Friday by The Associated Press. It said sarin was used in a March 19 attack on the Aleppo suburb of Khan al-Assal and in an April 13 attack on the Aleppo neighborhood of Shaykh Maqsud. It also said unspecified chemicals, possibly...

A suicide bomber infiltrated a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing at least eight Americans in what is believed to be the deadliest single attack on U.S. intelligence personnel in the eight-year-long war and one of the deadliest in the agency's history, U.S. officials said. The attack represented an audacious blow to intelligence operatives at the vanguard of U.S. counterterrorism operations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan , killing officials whose job involves plotting strikes against the Taliban, al-Qaeda...

The U.S. ambassador and three other Americans killed last week in Libya died "in the course of a terrorist attack," a senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers Wednesday. Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, repeated earlier statements by the Obama administration that initial conclusions do not point to a planned assault. Instead, he said, "the facts that we have now indicate that this was an opportunistic attack," in which heavily armed militants took advantage of an ongoing...

CAIRO — Egypt's Sufi Muslims say their places of worship are under threat by rising radicalism, as shrines sacred to them are coming under attack by Islamist hard-liners who deem them heretical. Sufis follow a mystical philosophy of Islam that has traditionally been popular in Egypt, with some 15 million people in the country of 90 million belonging to dozens of Sufi orders. Sufis say the figure is likely even higher since many who practice it are not registered with orders. ...