Foreign governments reacted with a mixture of denials and dismissiveness Monday to the massive leaking of U.S. diplomatic cables, questioning the decision to make the material public but at the same time insisting, for the most part, that the revelations were either untrue or unlikely to impact world events...

Unidentified assailants riding motorcycles launched bomb attacks early on Monday against two Iranian nuclear physicists here, killing one of them and prompting accusations by Iran that the United States and Israel were behind the episode.

At a news conference here, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that “undoubtedly the hand of the Zionist regime and Western governments is involved” in the killing but did not identify those governments by name. The killing led Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, to warn the West and its allies not to “play with fire.” Both Mr. Salehi and Mr. Ahmadinejad vowed that Tehran would not be deterred from expanding its nuclear project...

In the south-eastern city of Khost, the everyday business of the Taliban administration carries on across the street from the fortified, government-run city court and police station. The head of the Haqqani network's civilian administration and his assistant hold their council in the grand mosque, which is also known as the Haqqani mosque because it was built with Taliban and Arab money. When I met them, the two men – a frail-looking 60-year-old and his younger sidekick – gave the impression of being haggard peasants seeking work in the city rather than members of one of Britain and America's most feared organisations...

The Pentagon warned the U.S. Senate and House Armed Services Committees that the website WikiLeaks.org “intends to release several hundred thousand” classified U.S. State Department cables as soon as Nov. 26. The documents “touch on an enormous range of very sensitive foreign policy issues,” Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King wrote yesterday in an e-mail to the defense panels.

In summer 2008, the U.S. military had a major problem. More than 2,400 service members had reported being sexually assaulted the previous year, and the number was rising. Congress wanted immediate action. The Army responded by reaching out to a tiny firm in Delaware. It was an unlikely choice for such a sensitive task. The year before, United Solutions and Services, known as US2, had just three employees and several small contracts for janitorial services and other work. It was based in a four-bedroom colonial, where the founder worked out of his living room...

The room is rapt as Garry Trudeau, grinning, prepares to share the first secret of his success. The scores of assembled guests, numerous luminaries in their own right, crane with curiosity, eager to discover how a plucky Yale graduate once smuggled sex and politics and rock-and-roll past the gates of the nation's stodgiest newspaper muckety-mucks...

President Lee Myung-bak accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Kim Tae-young on Thursday amid intense criticism over the South’s response to an artillery attack by North Korea two days earlier and the sinking of a warship in March. “There was a need to revamp the military landscape,” a senior government official said Thursday night. “It was time.”...

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay - once one of the most powerful and feared Republicans in Congress - was convicted Wednesday on charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002. Jurors deliberated for 19 hours before returning guilty verdicts against DeLay on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge...

SEOUL, South Korea — North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire on Tuesday after dozens of shells fired from the North struck a South Korean island near the countries’ disputed western sea border, South Korean military officials said.

The South Korean military immediately went to “crisis status,” said a Defense Ministry official. There were widespread media reports that Seoul had scrambled F-16 fighter jets but the official declined to confirm whether the planes were in the air...