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Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Lebanon today and urged peace at a time of great turmoil in the Middle East. The trip will take the pope to the nation with the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East — nearly 40 percent of Lebanon’s 4 million people, with Maronite Catholics the largest sect. Violence broke out in Tripoli as Pope Benedict arrived. Hundreds of protesters set alight a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Hardee’s restaurant in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday, witnesses said, chanting against the pope’s visit to Lebanon and shouting anti-U.S. slogans.

....Witnesses in Cairo said protests that first flared on Tuesday — the day J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador in Libya, was killed in an attack in neighboring Libya — continued sporadically Friday, with protesters throwing rocks and gasoline bombs near the American Embassy and the police firing tear gas. The bodies of Mr. Stevens and three other Americans killed in the Libya attack were being returned to the United States on Friday. In Lebanon,one person was killed and 25 injured as protesters attacked restaurants. There was also turmoil in Yemen, Bangladesh, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq, and demonstrations in Malaysia....

SRINAGAR, India -- Thousands of angry Kashmiri Muslims protested Friday against an anti-Islam film, burning U.S. flags and calling President Barack Obama a "terrorist," while the top government cleric here reportedly demanded Americans leave the volatile Indian-controlled region immediately. In the southern Indian city of Chennai, protesters threw stones at the U.S. Consulate, shattering some windows and burning Obama in effigy. Police quickly cleared the area, arresting more than 100 protesters. U.S. Embassy officials in Delhi did not immediately comment. In Bangladesh, about 5,000 hard-line Muslims marched through the streets of the capital, Dhaka, after Friday prayers, burning U.S. and...

The Innocence of Muslims, a movie that has enraged radical Islamists who have rioted and committed murders in the Middle East this week, was partially shot on a set that Paramount's TV unit helped to build for its TV show JAG, and a man with five decades of movie and television experience is helping the FBI figure out who is behind the controversial film. Portions of the infamous, micro-budget movie were filmed in Saugus, about 30 miles north of Hollywood, on a portion of Blue Cloud Film Ranch called “Baghdad Square,” which is often used for TV and film productions...

Winston Churchill once said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.” On September 11, Christopher Stevens, a career diplomat, became one of the first Americans in Libya to feed the crocodile of Ansar Al-Sharia and learned too late that while appeasers may hope to be eaten last, they are often eaten first. Christopher Stevens was a Middle Eastern diplomat who typified the new breed going from the University of Berkeley and the Peace Corps to desks in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria. He taught English to Moroccan children in the Peace Corps and...

The man suspected of producing a crude film lampooning the Prophet Mohammed has been placed under police protection after protests erupted around the world, a force spokesman said on Thursday. Journalists gathered outside the home of a 55-year-old Coptic Christian, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, in the city's southern suburbs, after reports he had directed the movie that triggered protests in the Muslim world. There was no sign at the house of Nakoula, who is thought to have uploaded a trailer for the movie to the YouTube video-sharing site under the pseudonym 'Sam Bacile', but police said he had asked for protections....

"..............................Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader elected Egyptian head of state after the fall of the 30-year autocracy of Hosni Mubarak, called on the United States on Wednesday to prosecute the makers of the purported film, "Innocence of Muslims,"from which a 14-minute trailer posted on YouTube was said to be taken... The video clips, which depict the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a savage and a sexual deviant,set off a heated debate in the United States about the intersection of the 1st Amendment right to free expression and the dangerous consequences of hate speech and religious intolerance. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney...

.....Citing sources in Benghazi,the think tank[Quilliam] said: "(W)e have reason to believe that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came to avenge the death of Abu Yaya al-Libi,al-Qaida's second in command killed a few months ago." A day before the attack,the leader of al-Qaida,Ayman al-Zawahiri,urged Libyans to avenge the killing,...roughly 20 militants were present,prepared for military assault with rocket-propelled grenade launchers that do not typically appear at peaceful protests. Nonetheless,much of the blame for the protests was aimed at the poorly-made film Innocence of Muslims, directed and produced by Sam Bacile,who told the Associated Press he was an...

The Mexican military arrested a leader of the border gang Barrio Azteca in connection with the death of three people linked to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez. A Mexican federal police spokesman declined to release the name of the gang leader, but local media reports suggest that the leader is Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, who was arrested in a car Friday and held on a weapons possession charge. On March 13, Lesley A. Enriquez, a consulate employee, Arthur H. Redelfs, her husband and Jorge Alberto Salcido, the husband of a Mexican employee at the consulate, were killed after...