Weegee(Arthur Fellig)/ICP/Getty; Tom Miller

David Cannadine is a distinguished historian of the British aristocracy, but can he end our binary view of human history once and for all, or will he be ostracized by his peers?

Historians need conflict as poets need spring. Just a smattering of examples: Frederick J. Teggart, writing as the First World War came to an end, called civilization “the result of the stimulus evoked by the friction of one group upon another.” The same year, the declinist Oswald Spengler disagreed with Teggart that one group can stimulate another, but he was not against the fact that civilizations clash. “Between the souls of two cultures the screen is impenetrable,” he wrote in the best-selling Decline of the West.

Brazilian Geological Service

Off the coast of Brazil, in one of the earth’s least explored waters, geologists have made an intriguing find.

Geologists are not generally all that excitable. After all, developments in their field generally take place over millions of years. But when scientists began scouring the Atlantic off southeast Brazil in 2011, they suspected that they were on to something— and something very big, at that.Two years—and half a dozen deep-sea expeditions later—the geological world is abuzz. Brazilian marine geologists are poring over the rubble dredged up from the undersea excavations in the so-called Rio Grande Elevation, and the research done by a Japanese exploration vessel, which deployed a mini, three-man submarine to comb the same waters before sailing on to Rio.

Anjum Naveed

The U.S. needs a stable Pakistan, and the new leadership to emerge from this election will face huge challenges. Shirin Tahir-Kheli on the biggest issues facing the country right now.

May 11, 2013 will likely be a watershed moment in Pakistani politics. For the first time in its 66-year history, an election will transfer political power from one civilian government to the next. The often bleak landscape of economic woes, political paralysis, terror attacks, sectarian strife, and Taliban threats about democracy being “un-Islamic” did not prevent political parties from fielding candidates, and voters will likely not be intimidated to stay home en masse as election fever grips the country of 180 million.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Obama administration officials were adamant that Benghazi was fallout from the protest of an anti-Muslim YouTube video. U.S. diplomats on the ground knew it was a terrorist attack.

For 11 days after the 9/11 anniversary assault on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, top Obama administration officials told the public that the assault stemmed from a protest of an anti-Muslim YouTube video. That was the public line from the White House in the closing weeks of a presidential election season, but it was not the view of several State Department officials at the time or the U.S. personnel on the ground in Libya. At a hearing Wednesday of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee on Benghazi, Trey Gowdy (R–South Carolina) read into the record an email from Beth Jones, the acting assistant secretary of State for Near East Affairs.

Win McNamee/Getty

As investigation reaches eighth month.

The blame game was in full force at the Benghazi hearings in Washington on Wednesday, as the investigation into the September 11 attack that killed four Americans reached its eighth month. House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa set the stage for the fiery debate by slamming the Obama administration, part of an attack from the right that Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings later claimed was “unfounded.” But it was ex–deputy chief of mission in Libya Gregory Hicks’s highly emotional account that brought the real drama. Choking up during the intensely political hearing, Hicks said the phone call he received telling him Ambassador Christopher Stevens was dead was the “saddest call” of his life.

Read it at The Wall Street Journal

Yves Logghe/AP

Authorities in Belgium, France, and Switzerland say they’ve got the robbers who stole $50 million worth of ice from Brussels Airport. But details are sketchy, reports Christopher Dickey.

Belgian authorities announced Wednesday that in cooperation with the Swiss and French they’d rounded up 31 suspects in the stunning $50 million diamond heist at Brussels Airport last February. But the account they gave of the gem theft had very little clarity or color.According to Jean-Marc Meilleur, a spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor’s office talking to reporters in Brussels, “In Switzerland, we have found diamonds that we can already say are coming from the heist, and in Belgium large amounts of money have been found.

Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

The rebels weren’t behind those fireballs. As the international community refuses to officially intervene, Mike Giglio on how regional players are stepping up their own involvement in Syria.

As Israeli jets bombed Damascus on Sunday, Ahmad al-Khatib stood awestruck in his apartment. Two miles away, from heavily fortified Mount Qasioun, fireballs lit the predawn sky as the blasts shattered Khatib’s windows and rattled his chest. He knew right away that these weren’t rebel attacks. “We haven’t been able to do anything like that since the revolution started,” the opposition activist and aid worker says.The airstrikes hit key military installations and were the second by Israel in as many days.

Manu Brabo/AP

While Obama wrings his hands over a ‘red line,’ the U.N. sits on the sidelines. How long until Syria as we know it falls off the map? Janine di Giovanni sounds the alarm—again.

Happy Easter, Orthodox Christians of Syria.If you were able to celebrate the holiday on Sunday, that is. Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life. But not for you.I wonder how many Syrian people actually enjoyed their holiday. Or how many have recently enjoyed the beauty of their country: the rolling olive groves, the ancient ruins, the multicultural bazaars now bombed to oblivion.They should enjoy what they can. At this rate, the country that once was Syria will probably not exist next year.

Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty

The volatile country, still reeling after the Benghazi attack and several recent bombings, has become a magnet for al Qaeda terrorists determined to sow instability in the region.

A rare interview with a top Libyan intelligence official reveals that, as an unintended consequence of the French intervention to quash a radical Muslim insurgency in nearby Mali, which forced al Qaeda in the Mahgreb to move north earlier this year, Libya has now become the main base of the terror group in the region, heightening the instability of what is already a volatile country. “Libya has become AQIM’s headquarters,” says the intelligence source, adding that in just the last few weeks three new al Qaeda camps have opened in southern Libya.

SANA/AP

In a series of meetings over the past year, Israel laid out to the U.S. beforehand what would trigger a strike in Syria. Eli Lake reports.

Israel did not seek permission from the United States before launching two missile strikes this weekend hitting targets inside Syria—but the strikes were part of a policy that Washington had already signaled its acquiescence to, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.In a series of high-level meetings between U.S. and Israeli officials over the last year, the Israelis explained in detail the conditions that would lead them to attack targets inside Syria.