Libya, Innocence Of Muslims | featured news

The White House is now describing the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazias a “terrorist attack,” a shift in emphasis after days of describing the lethal assault as a spontaneous eruption of anger over an anti-Islamic film made in California.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was the loser in a political fight over U.S. reaction to attacks last week on American diplomatic compounds in Libya and Egypt, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday.

The U.S. is sending more spies, Marines and drones to Libya, trying to speed the search for those who killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, but the investigation is complicated by a chaotic security picture in the post-revolutionary country, and limited American and Libyan intelligence resources....

If you can't keep track of all the Muslim protests erupting across the globe, you're not alone. The uproar over a 14-minute anti-Islam YouTube video has sparked furious protests from Somalia to Egypt to Sudan to Tunisia to Libya to Bangladesh to Indonesia to Pakistan. With new reports of protests surfacing every minute, we've compiled the latest reported incidents into this handy interactive Google Map. Click the locations and embedded links for more details about each incident.

Wanis el-Sharef, eastern Libya's deputy interior minister, said Thursday the attacks were suspected to have been timed to mark the 9/11 anniversary and that the militants used protesting civilians as cover. He said an unspecified number of militants suspected of taking part in the attack have been arrested and that others were being closely monitored by police to see whether they are linked to a group.

So the Associated Press did a careful investigation of the ‘Sam Bacile’ who supposedly directed the hate film, ‘The Innocence of Muslims.’ And AP found that probably he does not exist, but is a persona used by a convicted Coptic Egyptian fraudster, Nakoula Bassely Nakoula.

“Innocence of Muslims” -- the crude and provocative anti-Islam video blamed for a wave of deadly violence against U.S. diplomatic outposts -- was promoted by a small band of anti-Muslim Christian activists, according to reports, but the true identity of its director remained unclear.

The film at the centre of the protests in Libya and Egypt is called Innocence of Muslims and was apparently shot in the US. The full version is said to run for two hours, but so far all most people have seen is a collection of extracts found on Facebook and Youtube - with one trailer running to 14 minutes.