Top news: Outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is expected to announce Thursday that female service members will soon be allowed to serve in combat roles previously open only to men. The announcement follows the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on openly gay service members in 2011, and removes the final impediment to a fully inclusive military.

According to defense officials, the decision was made upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and will be fully implemented by 2016. For years activists and lawmakers have been pushing for the military to open combat roles to women, and last year the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon for its discriminatory policy. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), outgoing head of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, called the decision "an historic step for equality and for recognizing the role women have, and will continue to play, in the defense of our nation."

Already, women represented 2 percent of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, where counterinsurgency strategy made the front lines diffucult to discern. In 11 years of war, 84 women have been killed.

Benghazi: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified for six hours Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs committee on the State Department's handling of the deadly 9/11 terrorist attack in Libya's second city. She again acknowledged responsibility for the security lapses at the consulate, but delivered a spirited defense of the Obama administration's response to the crisis, dismissing Republican allegations of a White House cover-up and at times growing emotional during her testimony. At one point, when asked by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis) about shifting explanations for the attack, she pounded the table and demanded, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"