RELIGION

Mitt Romney faced a new embarrassment Monday evening when a video surfaced that shows him dismissing nearly half of Americans as "victims" who take no responsibility for their livelihoods and who think they are entitled to government handouts.

Jeffrey K. Riffer, a lawyer for the Church of Scientology, wrote an eight-page letter to Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter hoping to stop an expose of the church from ever being published.

In light of the attention being given the controversial film "Innocence of Muslims," Iran's Ayatollah Hassan Sanei has renewed the country's threat against author Salman Rushdie. Sanei claimed that because Rushdie was not killed after the publication of "The Satanic Verses," anti-Muslim creators have been emboldened to attack the religion.

Former U.S. presidential candidate Rick Santorum railed against the alleged media elite, saying the "smart people" will never be on the conservatives' side during a speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Saturday.

Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" is widely believed to be heavily inspired by the Church of Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. The studio and the actors have increasingly distanced themselves from the Scientology thread in the weeks leading up to the film's limited theatrical release: Journalists who dare to ask the very question the filmmakers provoke run the risk of being dismissed as sensationalists.

The violence and widespread protests that have plagued Cairo and sections of the Middle East spread into Sydney, Australia Saturday as police clashed with hundreds of angry demonstrators.

The Yemen wing of al Qaeda has asked Muslims to kill more U.S. diplomats in Islamic countries, terming the anti-Islam film made in the U.S. as a another chapter in the "crusader wars" against Islam, stated a Reuters report citing a posting on an al Qaeda website.

Tony Ortega, who has been the editor-in-chief of the Village Voice since 2007, announced via blog post on Friday that he is stepping down next week. The alt-weekly has seen a number of staff layoffs in the last few years.

A group of Syrian Americans gathered for an emergency vigil on Thursday for U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, who lost his life in a violent attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the subject of the controversial anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims,” which has sparked riots and violence across the Middle East, including the murder of the U.S. envoy to Libya.

The actors appearing in the movie that sparked riots throughout the Middle East say they were not aware of its anti-Muslim dialogue. IBTimes spoke with a veteran sound engineer for a professional assessment of which instances of dialogue were over-dubbed in a 13-minute clip of the movie that was posted on YouTube.

Police have been sent to the California home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the purported producer of "Innocence of Muslims," an anti-Muslim film that has caused outrage across the Middle East. According to authorities, the purported producer of the Muhammad film called local police in an effort to protect him and his family from potential harm.

As details behind the making of "Innocence of Muslims," the amateur anti-Muslim movie that sparked violent protests in Egypt and Libya, began to slowly emerge on Wednesday, Cindy Lee Garcia, a California actress who was featured in the film, says she was duped and was unaware it was about the Prophet Muhammad.

Following the death of U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, the first killing of a U.S. ambassador in more than 30 years, the U.S. administration has opened an investigation into the incident even as the initial evidence points to the involvement of well-armed thugs rather than an out-of-control mob.

According to actress Cindy Lee Garcia, no one in the film's production was aware they were making a piece of anti-Islamic propaganda.

The depiction of the prophet Mohammed in the Western media has long been a sore point among Muslims, who view the artistic expressions as blasphemous and highly offensive. "Innocence of Muslims," the anti-Mohammed film that gained YouTube notoriety and spurred the Benghazi, Libya, attack that killed Ambassador, is hardly the first Western media reference to the prophet to incite religious backlash.

Is there really a Sam Bacile, and does his movie, "Innocence of Muslims," even exist? So far only scant details have emerged about a filmmaker whose low-budget movie sparked deadly in Egypt and Libya that left four Americans dead.

Sam Bacile's poorly-made YouTube trailer for the movie "Innocence of Muslims" has gone viral in the Middle East, resulting in protests that killed four Americans in Libya on Tuesday. While it is not directly responsible for those deaths, it is a provocative, tasteless effort.

Saudi Arabia regularly executes convicted criminals by beheading. Its use of the death penalty has been criticized due to a lack of transparency and due process in its criminal justice system

Pew reports the largest demographic of Republicans are white evangelical protestants, while the biggest chunk of Democrats are -- surprise! -- religiously unaffiliated.

Nadarkhani, 32, had been imprisoned for three years and was awaiting execution, but the apostasy charge was downgraded to evangelizing to Muslims (an offense that carries a three-year term).