Global markets were jolted in recent days following the threat by a state-owned company in Dubai to default on its debt, as investors reawakened to the risks posed by mammoth debts in developing economies.

The men arrive a little before 9 a.m. just as they have for decades now; trundling down the slope of Westmoreland Hills Park in Bethesda. They unpack gym bags, picking the previous Sunday's mud from their cleats. One pulls out a football. Another grabs a pile of small orange cones and begins to mark...

KABUL -- Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to...

Getting to the president is not supposed to be this easy.

Throngs of bargain hunters kicked off the holiday shopping season Friday, buying Paula Deen cookware, Zhu Zhu toy hamsters and flat-panel TVs. But even as they filled parking lots, waited in lines overnight and loaded shopping bags, they talked of restraint, drawing names for gifts, paying cash and...

BOSTON -- In the decorous and somewhat obscure campaign for the Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy, the four Democratic candidates agree on a great deal, including why so few people are paying attention.

-- The Washington Sketch column in the Nov. 25 A-section, citing a membership list on the Web site of the American Financial Services Association, incorrectly described Morgan Stanley as an association member. The association says the list is out of date.

As more and more people receive the H1N1 shot, an earlier vaccine is casting a mysterious shadow over the attempt to immunize 200 million people in the next few months.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will visit the White House on Monday as President Obama begins a week during which he will announce his war strategy in Afghanistan and appeal to allies such as Australia for more help.

The resounding censure of Iran on Friday by the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, signals the start of a potentially more confrontational phase in the Obama administration's dealings with the Islamic republic, including the prospect of strengthened U.S.-led...

FLORIDA Police were searching Friday for a Florida man suspected in the Thanksgiving shooting deaths of his twin sisters, aunt and a 6-year-old cousin.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- More than 55,500 students are enrolled here at Arizona State University, many thronging its paths on bicycles, scooters and longboards. By most reckoning, this sun-drenched campus is the nation's largest.

A medical helicopter that crashed this month in the dark hills north of Reno, Nev., killing three, lacked safety features recommended for years by federal experts, including night vision equipment and a system to warn the crew when the aircraft was too close to obstacles or the ground.

KANJWANI, PAKISTAN -- From the busy and bucolic scene in this Punjab province village, it is hard to tell that Pakistan is in the throes of a national sugar crisis. Fields of tall green cane line the roads, and flatbed trucks piled with ripe stalks head for a modern mill that steadily crushes tons...

IRELAND Scores of victims of sexual abuse in Roman Catholic parishes in Dublin contacted counseling services after the publication Thursday of a report that found that diocesan leaders had systematically covered up decades of widespread abuse, counselors said. A Dublin Rape Crisis Center official...

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA -- Version 2.0 of the Royal Palace of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was supposed to conjure this tiny country's glorious past. Instead, it has turned into a modern-day white elephant that is compounding a national economic nightmare.

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- Ever isolated by the United States and its European allies, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is increasingly forging ties in Latin America, and not just with fervently anti-American leaders such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

The seemingly endless stacks of filing cabinets inside a West Virginia warehouse could hold the answer to an unsolved mystery: Who owns nearly $17 billion in lost government bonds?

AUTOMOTIVE General Motors' top European official said that a plan for Opel to be unveiled next month will include a schedule to launch new models and a financial break-even target.

Since the full-scale of Dubai's huge debt mountain hit home late last year, many investors who have sunk billions of dollars into the emirate's extravagant projects have been seeking reassurance from Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Back two years ago when the mortgage meltdown was heating up, I wrote an article with Doris Burke called " Junk Mortgages Under the Microscope " dissecting a particularly wretched issue of mortgage-backed securities peddled by Goldman Sachs. We wanted to show how these complex securities really...

American Capital, a key financial player in the Washington region for decades, said it has reached agreements with lenders on 95 percent of its loans in an attempt to avert bankruptcy, the company said in a regulatory filing Friday.

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve are giving U.S. financial institutions an additional six months to comply with regulations designed to ban Internet gambling.

Reggie Mullins has braved the Black Friday crowds with her daughter, Chloe, almost every year since the college junior was 8. This year, they once again awoke in darkness and left Dad asleep at home in Alexandria for a rare mother-daughter shopping spree at Potomac Mills where they could talk...

After a Northwest Airlines plane flew past Minneapolis last month, air traffic controllers asked the pilots repeatedly for explanations about why they didn't heed radio calls, according to transcripts released on Friday.