A suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 23 others yesterday in a busy city square in western Afghanistan, while near Kabul, a powerful former warlord narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, officials said.

The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents yesterday.

There may be additional e-mails that could have tipped off law enforcement or military officials to the Fort Hood shooter before he went on his deadly rampage, the chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee said yesterday.

Republicans are seizing on this week's recommendations for fewer Pap smears and mammograms to fuel concern about government-rationed medical care - and to try to chip away support by women for President Obama's proposed health care overhaul.

Marines treated at Camp Lejeune for post-traumatic stress had to undergo therapy for months in temporary trailers where they could hear bomb blasts, machine-gun fire and war cries through the thin walls, according to servicemen and their former psychiatrist.

A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus.

An independent panel says the United States can extend the life of aging nuclear weapons for decades with existing programs, a finding that activists contend means there's no need for the nation to design replacements for the nuclear arsenal.

Four North Carolina patients at a single hospital tested positive for a type of swine flu that is resistant to Tamiflu, health officials said yesterday.

In a sharp improvement, more than half of U.S. states added jobs in October, though economists said many of the gains likely occurred in temporary employment.