BEIRUT, July 19 -- Israeli warplanes continued their punishing airstrikes across Lebanon on Wednesday, including for the first time striking Beirut's main Christian enclave and later bombing a bunker believed to be sheltering Hezbollah leaders. Ground troops meanwhile launched their most...

A 47-year-old man was critically wounded while he slept early yesterday as gunmen fired as many as 30 rounds into seven homes in Loudoun County in what investigators suspect was escalating gang warfare.

KIRYAT MOTZKIN, Israel, July 19 -- Everywhere in the cluttered, third-floor apartment he has shared with his father in this suburb of Haifa, there are reminders of Eldad Regev.

TYRE, Lebanon, July 19 -- Soon after dawn Wednesday, Ibrahim Khalil Heidar readied his green Mercedes. His wife, son and daughter-in-law climbed in, carrying no more than would fit in the trunk. Their neighbors, among them eight women and four children, piled into two other cars, a white and a blue...

A federal judge struck down a Maryland law yesterday that would have effectively forced the nation's largest employer, Wal-Mart Stores, to spend more money on health care for its employees here.

Marriott International Inc., the nation's largest hotel chain, said yesterday that it will ban smoking in its 400,000 hotel rooms in the United States and Canada, casting the decision as less about public health and more about taking care of the bottom line.

Faced with almost daily reports of sectarian carnage in Iraq, congressional Republicans are shifting their message on the war from speaking optimistically of progress to acknowledging the difficulty of the mission and pointing up mistakes in planning and execution.