• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department says it never concluded that an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya was simply a protest gone awry, a statement that places the Obama administration's own foreign policy arm in sync with Republicans.
• That extraordinary message, appearing to question the administration's initial description of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, came in a department briefing Tuesday -- a day before a hearing on diplomatic security in Libya was to be held by the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
• The committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has accused the State Department of turning aside pleas from its diplomats in Libya to increase security in the months and weeks before Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi. One scheduled witness Wednesday, Eric Nordstrom, is the former chief security officer for U.S. diplomats in Libya who told the committee his pleas for more security were ignored.
• Briefing reporters Tuesday ahead of the hearing, department officials were asked about the administration's initial -- and since retracted -- explanation linking the violence to protests over an American-made anti-Muslim video circulating on the Internet. One official responded, "That was not our conclusion." He called it a question for "others" to answer, without specifying.
• The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, and provided no evidence that might suggest a case of spontaneous violence or angry protests that went too far.
• ___

• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Why would a man flying from Japan to Boston need to

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