JARRATT, Va. -- John Allen Muhammad, the sniper who kept the Washington region paralyzed by fear for three weeks as he and a young accomplice gunned down people at random, was executed Tuesday night by lethal injection.

As the nation mourned the 13 people shot dead last week at Fort Hood, Tex., finger-pointing in Washington intensified Tuesday about whether officials at several agencies had failed to coordinate as they tracked the suspect's activities or to react to possible warning signs in the months before the...

The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping regulatory reform bill that would strip the Federal Reserve of nearly all of its power to oversee banks, setting up a possible clash with the Obama administration, which has argued for the central bank to play a pivotal r...

KABUL -- As violence rises in Afghanistan, the power balance between insurgent groups has shifted, with a weakened al-Qaeda relying increasingly on the emboldened Taliban for protection and the manpower to carry out deadly attacks, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

Montgomery County redefined the way it will grow in the next two decades when lawmakers endorsed a plan Tuesday that encourages development where residents can easily live a car-free lifestyle.

It's done now. A dark odyssey that began with an unfathomable impulse to shoot strangers at random concluded for John Allen Muhammad as he lay strapped to a gurney in a rural Virginia prison. Thiopental sodium rendered him unconscious. Pancuronium bromide halted his breathing. Potassium chloride ...

An American who was captured by Kenyan forces in January 2007 filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington on Tuesday, arguing that FBI agents allegedly involved in his interrogation and transfer to other countries violated his constitutional rights.

The New World Order came into being at 4:25 Tuesday afternoon.

-- The Beer column in today's Food section, which was printed in advance, was mistakenly labeled Spirits, which is written by Jason Wilson. The Beer column on local cask ales was written by Greg Kitsock.

Former president Bill Clinton urged Senate Democrats on Tuesday to resolve their differences with a health-care bill and pass an overhaul as soon as possible. Summoning the lessons of his own history with health-care reform, Clinton warned, "The worst thing to do is nothing."

President Obama on Tuesday named a 36-year-old doctor and agriculture expert to head the U.S. Agency for International Development, filling what lawmakers and aid experts had called a glaring vacancy on a key foreign-policy front.

Five years ago this week, an insurgent shot down the Army Black Hawk helicopter that Tammy Duckworth was co-piloting in Iraq. Now an assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Duckworth lost her legs in the crash and the fire that followed.

Exposure to high levels of a controversial chemical found in thousands of everyday plastic products appears to cause erectile dysfunction and other sexual problems in men, according to a new study published Wednesday.

White House interim communications director Anita Dunn will step down from her post at the end of the month and Dan Pfeiffer, her deputy, will take over, officials said Tuesday.

Each blow against America has seemed unimaginable: When 220 soldiers died in the shattered Beirut barracks. When the fertilizer bombs blew apart a federal building and its workforce in Oklahoma City. When the hijackers brought down shining twin towers and more than 3,000 lives.

BELTON, TEX. -- The lawyer hired to represent Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the alleged gunman in the rampage at Fort Hood, said that his client has not yet been questioned by military or federal authorities and that he will advise him not to speak with investigators.

U.S. Muslim service members say they stand out in both their worlds.

NEW YORK -- When the newly elected New York City Council convenes in January, for the first time in its history white council members will be in the minority, as whites are in the city.

Two Environmental Protection Agency lawyers who made a YouTube video calling current climate legislation a "huge mistake" were told by the agency to remove the clip and edit out some references to their employer, one of them said.

TOKYO -- A brief naval skirmish erupted Tuesday between North and South Korea, raising tension in Northeast Asia as President Obama prepares this week for a visit to the region.

TRINCOMALEE, SRI LANKA -- Six months after Sri Lanka's decades-old civil war ended with a final assault, about 200,000 people remain trapped in overcrowded government-run camps that were once safe havens for those fleeing the conflict.

INDIA A major separatist leader in Indian-controlled Kashmir agreed Tuesday to take part in direct talks with New Delhi to settle a six-decades-long dispute over the Himalayan region.

One day in late summer 2008, FBI and Secret Service agents flew to Chicago to inform Barack Obama's campaign team that its computer system had been hacked. "You've got a problem. Somebody's trying to get inside your systems," an FBI agent told the team, according to a source familiar with the inc...

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN-- A suicide bomber rammed his car into a donkey cart in the northwest town of Charsadda on Tuesday, killing more than 20 people and wounding 45, officials said. It was the third suicide bombing since Saturday in the volatile border region, where army troops have battled Taliban...

KABUL -- International troops and Afghan police seized 250 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer -- enough to make up to a couple of hundred roadside bombs, the Taliban's most lethal weapon in what has been the deadliest year of the war, NATO announced Tuesday.

Two of the things that people remembered Tuesday night about Charles I. Cartwright were his brilliant smile and his determination to be a Marine.

CAIRO -- Saudi Arabia on Tuesday imposed a naval blockade on the Red Sea coast of northern Yemen to combat Shiite rebels along its border, an adviser to the government said, in the latest escalation of fighting in the southern Arabian Peninsula.

The government's most prominent criminal case against Wall Street executives accused of wrongdoing in the financial crisis collapsed Tuesday as a jury found two former Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers not guilty of charges they lied to investors when their investments in subprime mortgages turned...

By now most people have heard the story of the frog that's put in a pot of cold water on a hot stove and doesn't notice as it is gradually boiled to death. The story may not be true: Most frogs apparently will jump out of the pot at some point. But it remains a useful metaphor for how dysfunctional...

LABOR Senator Christopher J. Dodd introduced "emergency" legislation requiring companies to pay employees who miss work because of the swine or seasonal flus.

A regulatory bill that Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) introduced Tuesday would create three agencies aimed at policing threats to the economy, preserving banks in good health and protecting borrowers from abuse.

Highlights of the 1,136-page draft bill for financial regulatory reform released Tuesday by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.):

The number of homeowners getting help from the government's massive foreclosure program is growing, according to data released Tuesday, but it is unclear how many of these borrowers might still lose their homes.

Hospitality giant Marriott International is launching a new brand called the Autograph Collection, aimed at tapping customers who prefer independent, high-end hotels over brands such as Marriott, Hilton and Four Seasons.

An anticipated expansion of the Washington area economy -- to be spurred largely by a federal hiring spree and military base realignment -- should help local governments restore tax revenue to pre-recession levels quicker than other municipalities across the country, according to a new report...

REAL ESTATE The median home price for homes sold in the Washington area, a vast census territory that stretches from the Chesapeake Bay to West Virginia, fell 2.5 percent during the July to September quarter compared with a year ago, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. Nationally,...

Presidential executive orders are lofty, historical documents, generally signed in White House ceremonies with pomp and circumstance. Seldom do we think of them beginning in a small town on the eastern edge of West Virginia.

Now that the U.S. military presence in Iraq looks to be winding down, the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), set up to oversee the $50 billion reconstruction effort, is also due to be phasing out. But that doesn't necessarily mean the SIGIR himself, Stuart W....

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) questioned President Obama's nominee to lead the nation's airport security agency Tuesday about a censure he received from the FBI in 1988.