Mohamed Magariaf, the president of Libya's congress and its de facto head of state, said Sunday that he has “no doubt” the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi were planned in advance. Magariaf also said 50 people have been arrested in connection with the attack. American officials, including United States envoy to the United Nations Susan Rice, have said that the attack appears to have been “spontaneous.” In an interview with CBS, Magariaf said that the consulate attack was planned “by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival.”

Other attacks on Afghan bases have resulted in more casualties, but officials are calling Friday’s Taliban assault on Camp Bastion the single most destructive strike in the decade of war. Two Marines were killed,  eight attack jets severely damaged or destroyed and $200 million in damages were caused when militants wearing American Army uniforms penetrated the base. “We’re saying it’s a very sophisticated attack,” said a military official here. “We’ve lost aircraft in battle, but nothing like this.” Ten thousand Marines have left the area and investigators are looking into how the Taliban conducted such a sophisticated raid.

Iran could be six to seven months away from being able to build nuclear weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. Netanyahu has been making similar pronouncements in recent months, urging the United States to be willing to take military action should the Islamic Republic achieve the capability to construct a nuclear bomb. “You have to place that red line before them now, before it’s too late,” Netanyahu said Sunday. President Obama and Netanyahu have publicly locked horns on the issue, and the Israeli leader’s decision to make his case directly to the American people is an unusual one.

Muslims in Pakistan marched hundreds strong to the American Consulate in Karachi on Sunday before being turned back by police. Pakistani police officer Mohammad Ranjha said law enforcement used tear gas and pressurized water cannons to break the ranks of the protesters after they surmounted a barricade outside the consulate. A spokesman for the Shiite Muslim group that organized the demonstration said a protester was killed, but law-enforcement officers said they were not aware of any fatalities. The demonstration continues a week of outrage against the United States around the Muslim world.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel isn't pleased with the Chicago teachers' union decision to extend its strike. He announced he will be seeking a court order to end the strike, calling it illegal and "wrong for our children." Officials proposed a contract settlement, but teachers want the opportunity to discuss the offer before voting on it. "Our members are not happy,” union president Karen Lewis said. “They want to know if there is anything more they can get.” Negotiations were not only about salaries, but about violence, security, and lack of basic supplies for classrooms. At the soonest, school is expected to restart Wednesday for the 350,000 students currently out of class.

Just eight days before the most important speech of Mitt Romney's campaign, his top strategist, Stuart Stevens, junked it and created a new one for the Republican National Convention. Politico reports on escalating instability within the Romney campaign that is pushing Obama into an early lead, especially after the disastrous RNC. "The hasty process resulted in a colossal oversight: Romney did not include a salute to troops serving in war zones, and did not mention Al Qaeda or Afghanistan, putting him on the defensive on national security just as the Middle East was about to erupt," Politico reports. Stevens seems to have taken on too much and the results could be disastrous for the campaign.

A slowing global economy could be contributing to some of the biggest American companies posting their first quarterly earnings decline since 2009. Soaring corporate profits had been the one bright spot in the midst of a grim recovery. Decreased global demand is driving a downturn at companies like FedEx, Intel, and the British luxury brand Burberry. In response to the slow growth, the Federal Reserve announced Thursday that it was beginning another round of stimulus efforts. “A lot of the profit gain you had in the last few years was a bounce from the recession and a result of very aggressive cost-cutting,” said Ethan Harris, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s chief United States economist. “Those factors are going to be very hard to replicate.”

The electoral map is looking good for President Obama as November draws nearer. In new polls of likely voters in battleground states, the incumbent shapes up to be the candidate with the clearest path to winning the presidency come Election Day. The polls conducted one week after the close of the Democratic National Convention show Obama with as much as a 5-point advantage in the key states of Florida and Virginia. In a poll of likely voters in Ohio, Obama led 50 percent to 43 percent. Romney pollster Neil Newhouse, however, said that it is an “extremely tight race,” but “Mitt is extremely well-positioned to win.”

After a two-week absence that had observers outside China whispering about political instability in the country, Vice President Xi Jinping came out from under wraps Saturday, according to state media sources. Xi made his appearance at the China Agriculatural University in Beijing, where he shook hands with children and made a speech. The 59-year-old man had been closely watched as the communist country prepares for a rare transfer of power that is likely to come in the approaching months, and it caused worry this month when Xi canceled meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Getting on the royal hit list probably wasn't a good idea for French tabloid Closer, which published topless photos of Kate Middleton last week. The Palace announced that their lawyers are filing a criminal complaint for damages and an injunction to stop future publication of the pictures against the magazine this Monday. A palace spokeswoman called it a "breach of their privacy," while Closer defended itself, saying, "The photos we selected are by no means degrading." An Irish newspaper and Italian magazine are also printing the photos, which were taken while the Duke and Dutchess were on vacation in France.

YouPorn.com has deep pockets and is willing to reach into them to get more intimate pictures of Kate Middleton and Prince William, according to the gossip site TMZ. Corey Price, the owner of pornographic website YouPorn.com, reportedly sent a letter to the editor of the magazine that first got its hands on photos of the topless Middleton to purchase unpublished “intimate footage” of the royals. “We feel very confident that we can show this footage legally, and would like to make you aware that we have an ‘open checkbook,’” Price reportedly wrote in his letter.

A roadside explosive killed eight Turkish police officers and wounded nine more when it went off in southern Turkey, officials in the country said Sunday. It is believed that the mine, which detonated as a bus carrying the police officers passed, was set by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, according to officials. One hundred twenty-three Kurdish militants have been killed in a little more than a week as the Turkish military has engaged with the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union. Seven hundred people have been killed in related violence since June.

A diplomat who was not content staying behind the walls of an American compound while abroad, J. Christopher Stevens, the ambassador to Libya killed last week, loved the people and culture of the Arab world. The 52-year-old ambassador harked back in many ways to an era before America’s emissaries abroad were kept cloistered behind high walls and razor wire, ferried from one scheduled stop to another in a motorcade. In a New York Times profile Sunday, friends and colleagues remember Stevens as a “different kind of American diplomat.”

Ansar al-Sharia, the militant group that’s been said to have led the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is but one of several armed groups that had exerted themselves in post-Gaddafi Libya. The group, which says that Islam does not allow for democratic forms of government, may number about 200 gunmen and they, like other groups that arose after the Libyan revolution, have been slow to disarm despite calls to do so from the government. In an exclusive interview with NPR on Sunday, Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif alleged that the attackers infiltrated Libya from neighboring countries.

Some district attorneys are allowing debt collectors to send out collection notices under their letterheads as they crack down on people who failed to keep up with their bills. The district attorneys say the surprising partnerships allow them to worry about bigger offenses, but debt collectors have come under attack recently for threatening jail time in their letters to people with overdue debts. In addition, the letters on D.A. letterhead often come with a fee for a “financial accountability” class, sometimes hiking up costs by several hundred dollars. While prosecutors stand by the practice, some consumer lawyers say it is a case of “guilty until proven innocent.”

A California Coptic preacher known for his fiery attacks on Islam influenced the three men who have been most closely tied to the amateurish trailer that inflamed the Muslim world this week. Zakaria Botros Henein of Huntington Beach had close ties to Steve Klein, Joseph Nassralla, and Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, according to the Los Angeles Times. The 77-year-old man’s son told reporters that he could not reveal his father’s present location because “his life is in danger.” The son said that he did not think his father was involved in the production of Innocence of Muslims, though Botros did defend the trailer in a Friday television broadcast.

Four more American soldiers were killed Sunday in a spate of weekend attacks that have left six NATO peacekeepers dead in “insider” attacks by Afghans who turned on them. Two more troops were found wounded and an Afghan police officer was found dead at the post the Americans were manning when attacked. The five other Afghans assigned to the post had slipped away. Fifty-one members of the international coalition in Afghanistan have died in similar attacks over the past year, and the recruiting of new Afghan security personnel was suspended pending new screening measures.

In Tahrir Square in Egypt, one of the birthplaces of the Arab Spring, hundreds were arrested by riot police amid demonstrations to have the American ambassador tossed from the country. Meanwhile, police have beefed up security around the American Embassy in Paris after protests Saturday during which 150 people were detained. Both plainclothes officers and uniformed police will help increase security around the embassy, police officer Pierre Coric told The Associated Press. Relatively small-scale protests in Paris and Australia reflected continuing unrest in the Muslim world Saturday, and 1,000 people protested at the U.S. embassy in London on Sunday as American embassy officials withdrew from the capitals of Tunisia and Sudan.

An Iranian foundation has increased the reward money for the assassination of novelist Salman Rushdie to $3.3 million, according to newspapers within Iran. The bounty was formerly $2.8 million. The reward was created after the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini proclaimed a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989, condemning his novel The Satanic Verses as blasphemous. Rushdie spent years in hiding, out of fear for his life. The increase in the reward was reportedly due to new insults to the Prophet Muhammad, the Iranian papers said, which is seemingly a reference to the 14-minute trailer that has inflamed the Muslim world this past week.

Adel Dould, an 18-year-old from Illinois, was arrested by the FBI for allegedly planning to detonate a car bomb outside a Chicago bar. The man may face life imprisonment if found guilty of the charges made against him in the FBI’s criminal complaint. According to the law-enforcement agency’s statement, agents have monitored Dould for the past year, ever since he made Internet posts related to jihadist activities. FBI agents provided him with the supposed explosives he allegedly planned to use in the attack, and they would not have caused damage, the bureau said.

The 12th season of American Idol just got a little bit country and a little bit weird. Singer-songwriter Keith Urban and the multipersonalitied Nicki Minaj will join the judging panel on American Idol alongside Mariah Carey and Randy Jackson, Fox announced Sunday. “Nicki’s an unbelievably captivating international phenomenon who has made an indelible mark on rap and pop,” said Fox reality programming boss Mike Darnell in announcing the new panelists. “And Keith is another great addition to Idol—he’s one of the biggest stars in country music.” The judging panel has been in flux in recent years, though the first eight seasons of the show were overseen by Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson.

Silver Linings Playbook walked off the field at the Toronto International Film Festival with the People’s Choice Award on Sunday. The film, which stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence and was directed by David O. Russell, got two thumbs up from critics after it premiered at the festival last Saturday. The comedy, from the director of Oscar nominee The Fighter, follows Cooper’s and Lawrence’s characters, both struggling with emotional issues, as they try to hold themselves and their lives together. TIFF’s artistic director accidentally broke the news of the award early by sending a tweet—later deleted—of congratulations to the cast and crew.

The Afghan insurgents who attacked Camp Bastion in Afghanistan on Friday were wearing U.S. Army uniforms. They were also carrying automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and suicide vests. The attack killed two U.S. Marines, destroyed six jets, and caused considerable damage. Fourteen of the fifteen attackers were killed, and the Taliban said the attack was a response to an anti-Islam film. Officials would not say how the attackers obtained the U.S. uniforms, but such uniforms are reportedly sold in markets in Afghanistan. The last time insurgents used American uniforms was in August 2010, when insurgents attacked two bases in the Khost province.