The Senate voted to pass an amendment to the defense bill that would require a report on military activities that could be used in Syria.

The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, S. 3254, which funds the U.S. military and its operations, passed on a 92-6 vote.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi fled the presidential palace in Cairo on Tuesday after as many as 10,000 people took to the streets in the worst crisis of his six-month presidency, Reuters reports.

At least 18 people were injured in clashes with security forces near the palace.

The protesters are upset at Morsi's attempt to ram through a new Constitution by referendum on Dec. 15 over the objections of senior judges. Morsi unilaterally declared his decisions immune from judicial review or court orders late last month, prompting the pro-democracy protests and earning a mild rebuke from the Obama administration.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) on Tuesday introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a select committee to investigate the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, and the Obama administration's response.

The resolution calls for combining “all existing investigations into a single and exhaustive review of the event and the subsequent revelations that followed,” Wolf said, similar to the panels established during Watergate and the Iran Contra scandals of the 1970s. It already has 14 co-sponsors.

The panel would be composed of the top Republican and Democrat on the five panels of jurisdiction — Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, Armed Services and Oversight and Government Reform — plus five more Republicans appointed by the Speaker and two Democrats appointed by the minority leader.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reed (D-Nev.) said he’d bring up the disability treaty for another vote in the next Congress.

“I plan to bring this treaty up for a vote again in the next Congress,” Reid said in a statement Tuesday, after the Senate rejected the treaty. “Our wounded veterans and millions more around the world deserve better.”

NATO's decision to supply Turkey with a slew of ballistic missile interceptors to defend its shared border with Syria will not result in a no-fly zone within the country, according to a top defense lawmaker. 

Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum immediately jumped on Tuesday's defeat of the U.N. disabilities treaty to promote his advocacy group in favor of conservative Republicans.

The former senator from Pennsylvania failed in his primary bid against Mitt Romney last year, but has since tried to reemerge as a conservative kingmaker. He launched his “Patriot Voices” nonprofit in June to get Republicans into office and push them to the right, and joined World Net Daily as a columnist this week.

“We did it,” Santorum tweeted Tuesday. “#CRPD was defeated today. @Patriot_voices will cont to have an impact on important issues. Pls join us.”

The number of terrorist attacks has steadily increased worldwide over the past decade but the number of fatalities is down 25 percent since peaking in 2007, according to a new report ranking countries according to terrorism impact.

The index from the Institute for Economics and Peace, released Tuesday, found that North America is the region of the world least likely to suffer from terrorism, with a fatality rate 19 times lower than Western Europe's. The regions most at risk in 2011 were the Middle East — particularly Iraq — along with India, Pakistan and Russia.

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Obama on Tuesday rejected the suggestion that he would look "weak" were he not to appoint Rice to the post.

Republicans argued the treaty could lead to legal challenges for people homeschooling children.