More than two months after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, and barely over a week after threatening to block her potential nomination for secretary of state, Sen. John McCain and U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice will meet Tuesday to discuss those September events. In the weeks following the attack, McCain led the GOP’s criticism of Rice’s television appearances recounting the events, pledging to oppose her possible nomination as Hillary Clinton’s replacement. McCain has to some extent backtracked on his criticism. He told The Daily Beast that it was Rice who requested the meeting: “I will meet with you and hear your version of events why you went out and told the American people false information.”

After a long and arduous negotiation process, euro-zone finance ministers and the International Monetary Fund finally struck a deal on Monday to help Greece manage its debt. The creditors agreed to lessen Greece’s debt burden by 40 billion euros, a move that should help Athens bring in more aid to help with its faltering banking system. It’s not clear whether the relief will come in the form of lowered interest rates or a debt-buyback program. Greek officials hailed the agreement, saying the country was rewarded for imposing harsh austerity measures.

It’s the holiday season, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hoping that the federal government is in a giving mood. Making a plea Monday for tens of billions of dollars in federal aid, Cuomo argued that the New York area needs the money because Hurricane Sandy was “more impactful” than the Gulf Coast’s deadly Hurricane Katrina. Cuomo acknowledged the higher death toll from Katrina, but said Sandy had a greater economic impact because it “affected many, many more people and places.” Comparing the two storms “puts this entire conversation, I believe, in focus,” he said, estimating that the storm could cost the state nearly $42 billion.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi says he will scale back the decree he issued last week, which would have raised his edicts above judicial review. Morsi reportedly reached an agreement with judicial authorities following street protests, demonstrations against the new rule, and the resignations of at least three senior advisers. Under the new agreement, the courts will have the power to review Morsi's edicts. One expert said, “In his head, the president thought that this would push us forward, but then it was met with all this inflammation.” The agreement also guarantees that the courts will not be able to dissolve the country’s constitutional council until it finishes drafting the new constitution.

With the world watching the Gaza Strip and Egypt, the Syrian rebels have been busy. After seizing a military airport and a base near Damascus, the rebels have now taken control of a strategic northern hydroelectric dam. The advances come as government airstrikes reportedly left nearly a dozen school children dead. The fighting has also flirted with borders, forcing Turkey’s antiaircraft arsenal to fire at Syrian warplanes that enter the nation’s airspace.

Tired and ready for a change, Mary Schapiro, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is expected to step down from her position on Monday, two White House officials said. The 57-year-old top regulator was nominated by President Obama in 2008 and immediately had to deal with the financial crisis and the Bernie Madoff scandal. Schapiro worked to bring back an agency that had been condemned for allowing banks like Lehman Brothers to bring the country close to a second Great Depression. Critics say she did not do enough, however, to take Wall Street to task.

The Bashar al-Assad regime got some financial help over the summer from its friends in Moscow. Flight records obtained by ProPublica show that a Syrian Air Force jet ferried 240 tons of bank notes from Moscow to Damascus between July 9 and Sept. 15. Neither government would comment on the flights or confirm that the logs were accurate, but Syria’s economy has crumbled in the wake of its 20-month long civil war. Because of sanctions, the Assad regime lost contact with an Austrian bank that it used to print Syrian currency. As the cost of the war skyrockets, Assad’s government has had to find creative ways of financing its military.

To all panicked Facebook users who posted about copyright ownership on your timelines Monday: you fell for a hoax. The company issued a “fact-check” notice on the site debunking a rumor that it was changing its copyright laws after a “New Facebook Guidelines” meme went viral. The “Guidelines” post claims Facebook users own copyrights to their photos, videos, messages, and all other content posted to their pages and urges other users to copy and paste it into their timelines. But the message was more or less a privacy scare tactic. The “laws” it outlined were moot, as Facebook pointed out in its “fact-check,” since anyone who uses Facebook “owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms.”

He’s done. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced his decision to quit politics on Monday, saying that the recent conflict in Gaza delayed a decision he’s been mulling for some time. At a Tel Aviv press conference, Barak said he will remain in his post until a new government is formed following the upcoming January elections. Barak, who said he felt he had “exhausted” his time in politics and wanted to spend more time with his family, reiterated his concerns that Iran remains the single greatest threat to Israel in the region.

That high-pitched noise you hear is the squeals of all who grew up in the ’90s. Ben Savage and Danielle Fishel, the actors who played Cory and Topanga (a.k.a. TGIF’s Romeo and Juliet), have officially signed on to reprise their roles on the Disney Channel’s planned reboot of the cherished ‘90s sitcom Boy Meets World. Titled Girl Meets World, the new series will follow Cory and Topanga’s 13-year-old daughter, Riley. The part is yet to be cast, and the series only has a pilot order … for now.

A blaze broke out in a Bangladeshi garment factory Monday, injuring eight. The fire comes only days after an inferno blazed through a separate multistory garment factory, killing 123 people and sparking outrage across the country. Many of the country’s 4,500 garment factories have few protections against fires. Workers marched in protest Monday, demanding action after the more than 120 deaths outside Dhaka, the capital. Two hundred factories were closed as the workers protested, and some of the demonstrations are reported to have turned violent as angry employees threw rocks and blocked roadways.

Oh, so that’s what it’s about! Rise of the Guardians, the new DreamWorks Animation flick apparently conceived as a “no-brainer blockbuster” has failed miserably at the box office with only a shade over $30 million over five days. The film joins the lovable (?) characters Jack Frost, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman as some sort of A-Team-esque crimefighting squad. It stood no chance against Edward Cullen and James Bond.

Warming up, eh guys? Seventeen thousand delegates are expected to gather in the Qatari capital of Doha for the United Nations’ 18th climate change conference beginning Monday. The host country itself has recently come under criticism for its production of greenhouse gases, and the obligations faced by developed countries to reduce emissions will be a top priority at the conference. Some of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change have called for a greater commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, which would require leading greenhouse-gas producers to cut emissions.

American parents with disabilities still face substantial bias, according to a new report from the National Council on Disability. From a California mother with cerebral palsy to a blind Missouri couple, the difficult work of being a parent is made even harder for disabled parents by a system that is still biased against them, according to the report. Child-welfare laws in many states allow courts to determine that a disabled parent is unfit to care for a child. Such barriers are violations of the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, advocates say.

The bodies of 19 have been discovered in Chihuahua, Mexico’s northern border state, officials reported Sunday. Authorities found 11 of the bodies in mass graves where they appeared to have been buried over two years ago. The other eight bodies were tossed near a road close to Rosales where they appear to have been tortured before being shot in the head. The area where the mass graves were discovered, Ejido Jesus Carranza, is located near the border with the United States. The area of sand dunes is sought-after spot for picnickers from nearby towns, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The 112 workers who perished in a garment factory fire were working overtime making clothes for major American retailers, including Walmart and Sears. Workers' activists— who discovered the clothing labels amid charred remains— say the major retailers are to blame for the dangerous conditions. When the Tazreen Fashion factory went up in flames, a lack of exterior fire escapes delivered a death sentence to the higher floors of the nine-story building. Walmart issued a statement both expressing their sympathy and affirming their committment to fire safety. "We have been working across the apparel industry to improve fire safety education and training in Bangladesh," the statement reads.

A small force of fewer than 1,000 American military personnel may remain in Afghanistan after 2014 under a developing plan. That would include a counterterrorism force dedicated to keeping an eye on al Qaeda’s presence in the country, according to senior military officials. It’s one of several options on the table for what foreign presence in the country will look like after 2014, and another plan calls for as many as 10,000 U.S. troops and several thousand more NATO soldiers. Afghan troops are expected to assume the responsibilities of more than 60,000 American soldiers over the coming year.

The casualty reports from Syria are getting more horrific by the day. On Sunday, 10 children were killed while playing outside in the village of Deir al-Asafir, eight miles from Damascus. The kids had gone outdoors during a lull in the fighting when fighter jets attacked with cluster bombs. “None of those killed were older than 15 years old. There are two women among 15 people wounded, mostly hit as they were inside the courtyards of their houses,” Abu Kassem, a local activist told Reuters. “There were no fighters inside Deir al-Asafir when the bombing occurred. They operate on the outskirts. This was indiscriminate bombing.”

Now if only the 99 percent would show up. White House aides are scrambling to animate Obama voters as the president prepares to square off with congressional Republicans over tax increases for the wealthiest Americans. Supporters are being asked to record YouTube videos of themselves arguing for tax hikes on the most well-off of the well-to-do, and emails explaining the president’s position were sent to activists in the past week. It’s all an attempt to kick the Obama campaign machine into gear—a strategy that mostly did not carry through in the president’s first term.

The maker of the crude Innocence of Muslims YouTube trailer stands by his work. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula says he went to “great lengths” to depict the truth about the Prophet Muhammad—very much as he sees it—and said he wants to let “the American people and the people of the world know this message that I believe in.” The 55-year-old Egyptian Coptic Christian said he had grown angrier since the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood in Texas. Nakoula recently pleaded guilty to violating his release for a bank-fraud sentence.

There’s no one to punch in the digital checkout line. Apart from less violence than on Black Friday, researchers at ComScore said Americans can expect to see sales of $1.5 billion on Cyber Monday—another holiday-season shopping day first cooked up in 2005. That would make it the largest online shopping day of the year, with a 20 percent increase over last year. Online retailers have begun to play into the digital-shopping surge. Amazon.com launched sales at midnight Monday, as did Sears and Kmart.

The people have spoken, and now the market has. Egyptian stocks continued to tumble Monday morning after President Mohamed Morsi’s recent attempt to give himself what opponents called near-dictatorial powers. The country’s main index was down 3.9 percent just after opening. Morsi said that he will meet with top Egyptian judges Monday to try to bring a resolution to the political crisis, which began when he tried to remove judicial checks on his office. Clashes between protesters and police have left more than 500 people injured in recent days.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly took a swipe at President Obama for keeping silent on gun violence despite the increasing violence in Obama’s hometown of Chicago. Kelly said, “Maybe the city most affected (by guns) is Chicago. The president’s hometown, but barely a peep out of him.” Both Obama and Mitt Romney were criticized for their relative silence about gun violence on the campaign trail. During one debate, Obama said, “What I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally ... Because, frankly, in my hometown of Chicago, there’s an awful lot of violence, and they’re not using AK-47s. They’re using cheap handguns.”

Don’t call it a comeback—it wasn’t one. Lindsay Lohan is reportedly “devastated” by the poor reception for her new film Liz & Dick. A source said, “Lindsay is devastated by the response to the film. She has got used to all the negative press around her personal life but this is the first time she has experienced it about her work. No matter how bad things were going for her personally, everyone would agree that she was a great actress.” Reviewers had mocked Lohan’s “frozen face” and accused her of “sleepwalking through scenes.” The source added, “This is particularly heartbreaking as her acting was the only thing in her life that she knew was real.”

The Oracle of Omaha would like the government to pick his pocket a little more, thank you very much. Pushing back against tax hawk Grover Norquist, Warren Buffett wrote in a New York Times op-ed column that in recent years, the wealthiest Americans, himself included, have been “leaving the middle class in the dust.” The idea that those same thick-walleted investors would start hoarding cash and bullion under the floorboards if taxes were nudged up a little is ludicrous, Buffet writes: “The ultrarich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities.” Buffett suggests a minimum tax of 30 percent on incomes between $1 million and $10 million and 35 percent on incomes above $10 million.

I think it’s gonna be a long, long time—before Elton John is invited back to China. The pop star shocked his Beijing audience Sunday when he dedicated his show to  “the spirit and talent” of Chinese dissident (and “Gangnam Style” parodist) Ai Weiwei. John met with Ai—who was detained for three months last year—before his Sunday show. “I super like him,” said Ai of the outspoken pianist on his Twitter feed, which is banned in China. Chinese online media that covered the concert declined to mention John’s dedication.

The future looks bright for liberal dark money. Democrats who were once squeamish about the world of post–Citizens United campaign finance now seem OK with the idea of getting outside groups involved in state politics and primary races. The newly hardened pragmatists convened at a three-day sub rosa gathering shortly after Nov. 6 to plan for the next round of elections in 2014, according to Politico. Representatives from Priorities USA, American Bridge 21st Century, and House Majority PAC were in attendance, among other groups. Democratic megadonors have said that they’d be willing to open up their checkbooks again too—but some say they’d still prefer Citizens United to be struck down completely.