The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday urged the State Department to “expeditiously” complete its investigation into who attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and “immediately” designate them as terrorists. Read more...

The U.S. trade deficit widened slightly slightly in August, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, increasing to $44.2 billion, up from $42.5 billion in July.

Shrinking exports drove the change. August exports totaled $181.3 billion, a $1.9 billion decrease, and imports were $225.5 billion.

For the first eight months of 2012, the trade deficit stood at a seasonally adjusted $374 billion, an increase from $369 billion in the first eight months of 2011.

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The shooting comes one day after a House hearing where State Department officials were grilled over security in Libya. 

Your morning global affairs speed-read

The conventional wisdom before last month's attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was that Vice President Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would steamroll Mitt Romney running mate Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) fairly easily on foreign affairs during Thursday's debate. All that has changed since four Americans were killed in Libya on the anniversary of Sept. 11, however.

Jokes about Lake Superior being overseas aside, Ryan has since joined Romney in slamming the Obama administration's leadership around the world. He laid out his views on foreign policy comprehensively in a 2009 interview with the National Review in which he reminded readers that he's intimately familiar with the U.S. trade agenda through his membership of the House Ways and Means Committee.

GOP attacks on Libya: The Romney campaign quickly jumped on the House oversight panel's grilling of the State Department over its decision not to grant the U.S. embassy in Libya's request for more security in the months prior to the attack. 

You can read the Hill's complete coverage from Wednesday's hearing, the opening salvo from oversight panel chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), here:

The United States hit China with tariffs as high as 250 percent on Wednesday for selling solar cells below fair value, while also imposing a separate 16 percent tariff to counteract Chinese subsidies to its solar firms.

The final ruling on the tariffs, which are slightly higher than preliminary ones set by the administration in May, follows a Commerce Department investigation on Chinese trade practices. Though Commerce can begin collecting those duties, the U.S. International Trade Commission must approve the tariffs by Nov. 23 for them to stand.

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign accused the Obama administration of misleading the American people through "incomplete and indirect" responses to questions on the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi as the first day of congressional testimony on the violence wrapped up.

“With each passing day, we learn more about the ways in which the Obama Administration misled the American people about the tragic events that transpired in the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012," said Romney policy director Lanhee Chen in a statement. "Nearly a month later, the Obama Administration continues to offer incomplete and indirect responses to simple and straightforward questions."

Chen goes on to demand a "full accounting of the facts not just from that day, but from the days and months leading up to the attack."

Republicans want information about the Sept. 11 attack after Ambassador Susan Rice's inaccurate claims days after the violence.

Yemeni officials have detained an American citizen suspected of collaborating with members of al Qaeda's terror cell in the country, according to recent reports.