The congressman leading the Republican investigation into last year’s terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on Friday ordered retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering to submit to questioning behind closed doors next week over an internal State Department review Pickering helped lead into the attacks. » read more

The fractured Syrian opposition movement is considering ditching its prime minister at a meeting next week, action that would complicate the State Department’s push for peace talks and once again leave the international community without a clear idea of who would take charge should Bashar Assad fall. » read more

Barely a quarter-century ago, Mexico’s all-powerful presidents could run any of the nation’s 31 governors out of office at will. Then the pendulum began to swing. In the last decade, the power of governors grew to such levels that they became known by the moniker “little viceroys.” » read more

In Mexico, where 53 journalists have been slain in six years, some outlying regions have become “zones of silence,” where news of beheadings and other atrocities barely filter out. Fear has grown so pervasive that gangsters can mute the news media in some states without killing a single journalist, and a handful of newspapers have openly surrendered, telling readers they no longer will cover crime. » read more

The two retired senior U.S. officials who oversaw an internal State Department review of last year’s attacks on U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on Thursday rejected as “an inappropriate precondition” a Republican request that they submit to a closed-door interview before testifying in public. » read more

The Syrian city of Qusayr lies just 10 miles over the border from Aarsal in northern Lebanon. But the Syrians now crowding into Aarsal said the trip to get here from Qusayr required walking for days. » read more

Two U.S. soldiers and four American civilian security contractors died Thursday when a suicide bomber in a Toyota Corolla rammed into a military convoy in Afghanistan’s capital, security officials said. » read more

Complacent. Ineffective. Bungling. Inept. » read more