The Obama administration has been criticized for its shifting story about the nature of the attack at Benghazi.

He said Obama had failed to answer questions about what happened in Benghazi to the frustration of the public.

Lawmakers from the group of 56 European and Central Asian nations have been observing U.S. elections since 2002, without incident.

The Intelligence Committee will be the first Democrat-controlled congressional panel to hold a hearing on the attack.

Hillary Clinton, in an interview published Thursday, left the door open to staying on as Secretary of State longer than expected.
 
It is “unlikely” that she will stay on at the State Department past January, Clinton told the The Wall Street Journal.
 
Clinton does not plan to stay on as Secretary of State if Obama wins a second term, but in the interview, she indicated for the first time that current events might play a role in pushing back her departure date.

The Syrian Army on Thursday formally agreed to a three-day truce, a first step that the United Nations hopes can lay the groundwork for an end to the 19-month conflict.

“Syrian army command says it will cease military operations from Friday morning until Monday,” the Al Jazeera news channel reported Thursday morning on its website.

The Associated Press reported that the announcement was read on state TV, but that the army qualified it by saying it would respond to “gunfire or roadside bombs and keep rebels from bolstering their positions or getting supplies.”

Taliban infiltration of U.S. and Afghan forces will only increase as the Pentagon and White House prepare to pull all American forces from the country in 2014, according to the group's leader.

A panel of United Nations war crimes investigators on Thursday formally asked President Bashar Assad for access to Syria, Reuters reports from Geneva.

The four-member U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which is led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro and includes former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, was set up a year ago but has not been allowed to access the country since then. Its latest report accused the Syrian military and its allied militias of war crimes, including the murder of civilians.

"We decided to send a letter to President al-Assad calling for a meeting ... it would be very important that he could receive us," Pinheiro told reporters, according to Reuters. "We intend to go there without conditions to meet President Assad to discuss access of our commission to Syria."

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Your morning global affairs speed-read

President Obama's ever-expanding terrorist kill list is receiving new scrutiny thanks to a three-part series from The Washington Post. Thursday's paper examines the role of counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan.

Key takeaway: “Brennan and others on the inside found that Obama … was willing to move far more aggressively than Bush against perceived extremists.”

With almost 3,000 people killed by drone strikes over the past decade and no sign of abatement, the secretive policy is starting to cause headaches for an administration that had prided itself in taking a less confrontational stance with the rest of the world. Asked about a strike in Yemen last year that killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen with no known ties to terrorism, senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs in an interview with the liberal WeAreChange.org laid the blame on al-Awlaki's father, an al Qaeda member who was also killed in a drone strike.

“I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children,” Gibbs said. One U.S. official quoted by the Post called the killing “an outrageous mistake … They were going after the guy sitting next to him.”

Endorsed: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Obama for president on Thursday — again. He told CBS News that Mitt Romney had provided a “moving target” with regard to his policies on Iraq and Afghanistan.