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• It is unclear who, if anyone, saw the cable outside the CIA at that point and how high up in the agency the information went. The Obama administration maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was a result of the mobs that staged less-deadly protests across the Muslim world around the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.
• Those statements have become highly charged political fodder as the presidential election approaches. A Republican-led House committee questioned State Department officials for hours about what GOP lawmakers said was lax security at the consulate, given the growth of extremist Islamic militants in North Africa.
• And in their debate on Tuesday, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney argued over when Obama first said it was a terror attack. In his Rose Garden address the morning after the killings, Obama said, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."
• But Republicans say he was speaking generally and didn't specifically call the Benghazi attack a terror attack until weeks later, with the president and other key members of his administration referring at first to the anti-Muslim movie circulating on the Internet as a precipitating event.
• ___

• NEW YORK (AP) -- President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are returning to the sometimes-nasty rhetoric of a close presidential campaign after a brief truce, renewing their focus on two battleground states and preparing for next week's final, perhaps pivotal, debate.
• Romney and Obama set aside their differences -- mostly -- to poke fun of themselves and each other Thursday night at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. On Friday, it's back to campaigning in Florida and Virginia, two of just a handful of states that will decide the election, now less than three weeks away.
• Obama was planning a speech at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., rallying college students in the northern part of the state. Romney was to fly to Daytona Beach, Fla., for a rally with running mate Paul Ryan.
• While they're both focused on the South, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls released Thursday showed Obama retaining his lead over Romney in

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