Panetta: Terrorists attacked consulate
BENGHAZI, Libya, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Terrorists were responsible for the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three others at the U.S. Consulate in Libya, the U.S. defense secretary said.
"As we determined the details of what took place there and how that attack took place, it became clear that there were terrorists who planned that attack," Leon Panetta said Thursday in Washington.
Panetta, in the administration's latest assessment of the Sept. 11 attack, said investigators hadn't determined who was involved in the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other diplomatic employees were killed, CNN reported.
"There's a lot of different kinds of terrorism in that part of the world," Panetta said.
FBI investigators were still in Tripoli, waiting to travel to Benghazi and go to the consulate, which is unsecured. The lack of security was the main reason the investigators hadn't traveled to Benghazi, a U.S. official told CNN.
In the days following the assault, U.S. administration officials gave conflicting assessments of what led up to it. Some officials said the violence erupted spontaneously as protesters demonstrated against a U.S.-made film denigrating the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
Republican lawmakers have sharply criticized the administration's response and assessments.
Asked when he concluded terrorists orchestrated the attack, Panetta said, "It took a while to really get some of the feedback from what exactly happened at that location."
Rebels unite in Aleppo as clashes expand
ALEPPO, Syria, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- Fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo had expanded to "several fronts" Friday, the director of a human rights group said.
Reports on death tolls were sketchy. Thirty-four people had been reported killed in various cities, but just one in Aleppo
Those reports came as Arab states condemned what they called widespread human rights violations by the Syrian government, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported.
Hundreds of rebel fighters pledged to fight under a unified command, said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"The clashes used to be limited to one or two blocks of a district, but now the fighting is on several fronts," he said.
A video of the fighters pledging their unity was posted on YouTube..
Battles raged throughout the city.
In the district of Bushtan al-Pasta, Syrian forces said they had killed dozens of "terrorists."
In the northern district of Sheik Maksoud, rebels clashed with pro-government Kurdish fighters.
Fighting was also reported in the Suilmaniyeh distinct.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights said 19 of the people killed Friday were in in Dier Ezzor. Seven people were killed in Daraa, five in Idlib, two in Damascus and one in Aleppo.
The fighting came a day after the bloodiest day of Syria's 18-month revolt, with at least 343 people killed Thursday, an opposition watchdog group said.
Nuclear-talk envoys in 'casual' meeting
DALIAN, China, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- A North Korean envoy at talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program said she met informally with her U.S. counterparts at a nuclear conference in China.
Choe Son Hui, the North's deputy chief official to the six-party talks, had a "casual meeting Thursday with U.S. representatives at the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue conference, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported.
Choe didn't elaborate on the meeting, saying only, "I met."
A diplomatic source at the conference said Choe met with Clifford Hart, the U.S. envoy to the stalled six-party talks.
The source said the meeting lasted for 30 minutes and was also attended by Han Song Ryol, the North's deputy ambassador to the United Nations.
Six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions were last conducted in late 2008. Efforts to restart the talk stopped in April.
Han said Friday "outstanding bilateral issues" were discussed but he did not provide any details of the meeting.
The two-day NEACD conference ended Friday.
UPI Poll: Obama trusted on housing crisis
WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- More adults trust U.S. President Obama than Republican rival Mitt Romney to handle the housing/mortgage crisis, a new United Press International poll indicated.
Thirty-nine percent of adults asked said they thought Obama would better resolve the crisis that saw millions of Americans lose their homes during the past four years, while 35 percent of respondents said Romney could handle the crisis better, results of the UPI-CVoter poll released Friday indicated.
While poll results indicated males respondents were evenly divided between the candidates at 38 percent each, women asked said they preferred Obama 39 percent to 33 percent over Romney.
Broken down by age, adults 55 years and older said they trusted Romney more than Obama on this issue, 43 percent to 39 percent. In the 18-to-34 bloc, Obama had 41 percent support to Romney's 29 percent.
Among those who identified themselves as low-income wage-earners, 32 percent of respondents said they thought Obama could handle the mortgage crisis better while 47 percent said Romney was the better choice.
Results are based on a national telephone survey of 916 adults Sept. 20-26. The margin of error is 3.5 percentage points.
