The attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that killed four Americans was the handiwork of those directly tied to the al Qaeda terrorist network, intelligence sources tell Fox News. The revelation comes as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center testified to Congress Wednesday that the Libyan assault was a terrorist attack, but still lacks evidence of “significant advanced planning or coordination.” Fox also reports that Sufyan Ben Qumu, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to the Libyan government on the grounds that he remained in jail, is suspected of having led the attack.

You have to wonder if Romney is starting to feel like the victim. The GOP candidate’s now infamous “47 percent” remarks are already the subject of a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. The new data suggest 43 percent of registered voters now view Mitt Romney less favorably after footage leaked of the candidate calling Americans who don’t pay taxes people who do not “care for their lives.” Almost 60 percent of those polled said his comments were unfair. But it may not be all bad news, cautions pollster Julia Clark, who says the remark “is not the kind of thing that decides how people vote on Election Day.” Meanwhile, another poll released Wednesday by Fox News finds President Obama has a seven-point edge over Romney in the key battleground states of Ohio and Virginia and a five-point lead in Florida.

Provocation much? After a French paper published offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad Wednesday, France has ordered its embassies, cultural centers, schools and other official sites to close on Friday in 20 countries. Charlie Hebdo, a satirical weekly, printed the Muslim prophet in pornographic poses, a move which was decried by the French government as pouring “oil on the fire.” In preemptive response to possible backlash, France immediately closed its embassy and school in Tunisia, where deadly protests raged in front of the American embassy last week. “Muhammad isn’t sacred to me,” Charlie Hebdo’s editor told the Associated Press. “I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don’t live under Quranic law.”

It’s a big day for Burma. Pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi received the Congressional Gold Medal Wednesday, in a ceremony she described as “one of the most moving days of my life.” The honor came as the Treasury Department also announced it will also be lifting sanctions against Burma’s president, Thein Sein, who started enacting progressive reforms in 2011. Activist Suu Kyi was actually awarded the medal in 2008, when she was under house arrest for resisting Burma’s military regime and promoting democracy. Released in 2010, Suu Kyi remarked upon collecting her honor that democracy,  despite its imperfections, can still be “a beacon of hope for all of us.”

Violence might not be the answer, but sometimes it sure sends a message. Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Ali Beheshti says he was beaten by a woman on the street in the northern province of Semnan after he gave her a warning for being “badly covered.” According to the cleric, the woman replied to his demand by saying, “you, cover your eyes.” When he demanded she cover up again, the cleric says the woman pushed him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly. Since the revolution in the late ’70s, Iranian women have been required by Shiite laws to cover their hair with scarves and bodies with loose coats. Beheshti spent three days in the hospital but said he had to act on the religious principle of “commanding right and forbidding wrong” and would do it again. No word yet on the woman’s identity, or whether she has been arrested.

Somehow playing off Occupy jargon doesn’t seem like the easiest way for Romney to create positive spin. Damage control has gone into overdrive within the GOP candidate’s campaign as he struggles to distance himself from secretly taped remarks that are already harming his presidential bid. “My campaign is about the 100 percent of America,” he said at a Univision forum, repeating the phrase “100 percent” three more times throughout his speech. In response to the video of him saying “his job isn’t to worry about” the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay income tax, Romney emphasized he was referring to potential supporters—not his desire to improve the whole country.

Well this was inevitable. Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress in the Innocence of Muslims, is suing producer Nakoula Basseley Nakoula for changing the film into “vile and reprehensible” Islamophobic propaganda, claiming her voice was dubbed to change lines into insults against the Prophet Muhammed. The actress says the cast thought the anti-Muslim film that sparked riots in the Middle East was actually a “historical Arabian Desert adventure film.” Protests against the movie have resulted in multiple deaths and may be responsible for the assassination of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff. Garcia says she’s been receiving death threats and has lost her job as a result of the film. She’s also suing Google and YouTube in an attempt to pull the movie clips from their servers.

Welcome to the NewsBeast. Baba Shetty will become the new CEO of the Newsweek Daily Beast Company in October. Shetty joins the company from the firm Hill Holliday, where he served as chief strategy and chief media officer. It’s not Shetty’s first experience with Newsweek and The Daily Beast: he collaborated on the Mad Men issue in March. Shetty will be replacing Stephen Colvin, who has been CEO since 2009. Under Colvin’s leadership, the company has had a year-on-year traffic increase of 69 percent, an ad-volume jump of 40 percent since 2011, and a 233 percent rise in Newsweek tablet subscriptions.

Whatever happened to Danny, that creepy-but-special little boy in Stephen King’s The Shining? We’re about to find out. The author has announced a release date for the famed book’s sequel, Doctor Sleep, in which a grownup Danny Torrance is haunted by the same demons (the twins!) from Overlook Hotel. The book begins with Danny working at a nursing home in a New Hampshire town and using his psychic “shining” powers to comfort those at death’s door. He also fights a tribe of quasi-immortals called The True Knot, but only with the help of a 12-year-old girl who possesses “the brightest shining ever seen,” according to King’s website, which calls the sequel “an epic battle between good and evil.” Doctor Sleep will be released on Sept. 24, 2013—exactly 36 years after King released the original.

Something tells us, she’ll belly dance her way right back to six-pack abs. Colombian pop singer Shakira announced Wednesday she’ll be taking a break from the spotlight due to her first pregnancy. “At this time we have decided to give priority to this unique moment in our lives and postpone all the promotional activities planned over the next few days,” the 35-year-old pop star wrote in a statement. Her boyfriend, Gerard Pique, is 25-year-old Spanish soccer player for FC Barcelona. This is a pretty fast turnaround for Shakira, who separated from her boyfriend of 11 years, Antonio de la Rua, in 2010 and began dating Pique a few months later. Shakira was recently announced as a new judge for NBC’s The Voice after Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera left the show.

Maybe Bella and Edward really are eternally in love. E! News reports that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are secretly spending time with each other. The couple broke up in July after pictures of Stewart frolicking with the director of Snow White and the Huntsman leaked. An awkward Pattinson interview on The Daily Show and a few months later the couple may have punched a one-way ticket back to happiness. Or, you know, they might just be doing work-related stuff for the Twilight film franchise finale, which releases in November.

Barack Obama has already been feted at fundraisers by A-listers like George Clooney, Chris Bosh, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Anna Wintour. Tuesday night, it was Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s turn. The king and queen of hip-hop hosted an event to raise money for the president at the 40/40 club in New York City, for $40,000 a head. Obama praised his hosts at the fundraiser, saying Beyoncé “could not be a better role model for my girls” and remarking upon the surprising similarities between himself and Jay-Z: “We both have daughters, and our wives are more popular than we are.” He also made a rare, albeit veiled, reference to being the first black president of the United States, saying, “We’ve made history in the past, and we’re going to make history again in the next seven weeks.”

First female president or software millionaire? That’s what South Koreans will have to choose between in the coming presidential election. Mogul and philanthropist Ahn Cheol-soo finally announced his candidacy, sending shockwaves through a nation that had expected to hand over the position to conservative Park Geun-hye. Running on a platform of change and economic hope, Ahn is favorable among those in their 20s to 40s. As an independent, he’ll have to make an agreement with the opposition candidate so they don’t split the vote. Ahn and Park are tied in the polls.

The universal sign for “I’m OK”: shaking hands with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. China’s elusive Xi Jinping, who is slated to be made president next month, was photographed engaging in a firm handshake with Panetta. Xi’s mysterious disappearance had fueled rumors—bad back, heart attack, assassination attempt—that something was amiss in Chinese politics, as he missed several high-profile meetings.

There’s not much funny or inspirational about this one. Blue Jays shortstop Yunel Escobar has been suspended by the MLB for three games for writing a homophobic slur on his eye-black sticker worn to reduce sun glare. Escobar, who usually writes messages to the effect of “Let’s go,” said he doesn’t have anything against homosexuals and that the controversial word has no meaning. Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen, who has something to say about everything, defended Escobar. “In my house, we call (each other) that word every 20 seconds. I've got three kids,” he said. “It's like 'What’s up, bro?’”

Another new poll brings more good news for Barack Obama. According to the latest NBC News /Wall Street Journal poll numbers, the president holds a five-point lead over Mitt Romney among likely voters. What may be a bigger milestone for the Obama camp, however, is that his approval rating reached the 50 percent threshold for the first time since March. And the numbers may well only get better: the poll was taken prior to Romney’s controversial comments about the 47 percent of Americans “who are dependent on government.” It's not all good news for Obama though: his foreign policy approval rating is 49 percent—a 5-point drop since August.

You know you were thinking about Breaking Bad, too. Colombia’s president said that it has captured notorious drug kingpin Daniel “El Loco” Barrera. Reportedly moving drugs for more than 20 years, El Loco has been hailed as the last of the great crime bosses. The operation to nab him in Venezuela was directed from Washington and involved U.S., British, Colombian, and Venezuelan officials. In 2010 police found $29 million and €17 million in cash in a raid on two of El Loco’s homes.

With less than 50 days until the elections, Republicans aren’t too psyched about Mitt Romney’s chances. The nerves come after the candidate failed to weather a storm over his “47 percent” comments. Many Republicans tell Politico that to win, Mitt has to focus on swing states (cough cough, stop raising cash in Utah) and talk about the economy. One bundler tells Politico that the campaign is “imploding.” Meanwhile on a radio show in Nevada, running mate Paul Ryan said that Romney was “obviously inarticulate” in his point. President Obama told Letterman his opponent was “writing off a big chunk of the country.

David Viens, a chef on trial for the murder of his wife, admitted in a recording presented to the court on Tuesday that he cooked her for four days until the only thing left was her skull. The shocking admission came in a recording from his hospital bed in 2011—he had jumped off an 80-foot cliff shortly after hearing he was a suspect in the disappearance of his wife—and was played in his trial in Los Angeles. He had kept his wife in a 55-gallon tank of boiling water. Her skull, he says, is at his mother’s house.

There are 350,000 sad kids in Chicago. The teachers union voted Tuesday to end a weeklong strike, securing what should be a double-digit salary increase over three years. Like a boxing match, the quarrel showcased two stubborn sides on the national stage. Union President Karen Lewis said that the teachers had struck down merit pay and a new evaluation system. Her opponent, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, did not give in to the request for a 30 percent base salary bump, and he lengthened the school day.

Looks like Chicago will get to “eat mor chikim.” Chicago Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno said on Wednesday that Chick-fil-A promised him it would stop donating to anti-gay marriage groups. Moreno said he would not block a new Chick-fil-A franchise in the city, and further, he claimed the fast-food joint will include a line in an internal document about respecting all sexual orientations. Moreno had originally wanted something to be added to the official Chick-fil-A employee handbook.

Today brought three major pieces of housing data. Housing starts were at 750,000 for the year, up 2.3 percent from July 2012 and 29 percent from August 2011. Sales of existing homes were up 7.8 percent from July and 9.3 percent from August of last year, hitting an annualized rate of 4.82 million, according to the National Association of Realtors. Finally, the median home price is at $187,500, a 9.5 percent year-over-year bump. This is the first time since early 2006 that there have been six straight months of price increases, and the August price jump was the biggest since January 2006.

Bad news for rice lovers. Consumer Reports is set to release a study revealing that about 60 rice products tested positive for inorganic arsenic. The tests were done on everything from bulk rice to baby food. Inorganic arsenic has been linked to bladder, lung, and skin cancer. The FDA will also announce a plan to rid rice of the dangerous toxin. It’s recommended that people avoid rice from Texas, Louisiana, and Missouri, but rice from Asia is fine.

They didn’t waste any time. Priorities USA Action has released a new television ad targeting Mitt Romney’s now-infamous comments about the 47 percent of Americans whom he called “victims.” The video, leaked this week from a private fundraiser in May, has caused some backlash for Romney even within his own party. The ad then claims that Romney will make things “tougher” for middle-class families who already “struggle.” The ad concludes, “If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses.” The ad will air in the swingiest of swing states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

As the world eyes the anti-Islam film unrest in the Arab world, Syrian rebels have made a significant gain by the Turkish border. The rebels claimed a border post, tearing down the Syrian flag in a wild celebration. Before Turkish authorities closed the area, some people were able to crawl under the barbed wire and cross between the nations. While this isn’t the first Turkish post to be captured, the Tal Abyad frontier is an important spot that will aid movement of supplies into Syria.

We get that it’s satire, but now is really not the time. Weekly satirical Charlie Hebdo has published an issue mocking the Prophet Muhammad, prompting France to shutter its embassies and schools in 20 countries. The magazine’s cover depicts an Orthodox Jew pushing a wheelchair-bound man in a turban. Not bad? Well, inside, there are illustrations of the prophet naked. The French government says it will stop any protests planned for this weekend, as riots across the Arab world have slowed down. Meanwhile, a Hezbollah-organized protest in Lebanon saw chants calling the U.S. an "enemy of God."

Though it may have a lot of iPhones to ship this year, the world's second-biggest delivery company doesn't seem enthusiastic about its 2012 outlook. FedEx cut its forecast for company earnings on Tuesday, saying that the economic recovery has slowed and that they expect to ship far fewer products. The company has also been hurt by waning consumer fortunes, as people tend to look for cheaper delivery services when times are tough. Its earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending in May fell from $6.90-$7.40 a share to $6.20-$6.60 a share, and its expectations for 2012 U.S. economic growth declined from 2.2 percent to 1.9 percent. Stocks mostly held steady on the news, though FedEx's dropped 3.1 percent.

Porsche Cayenne, Dream Hotel, New York City. Sounds like the perfect night—unless you’re Lindsay Lohan. The actress hit a young man while parking her car outside the hotel. She then went into the hotel, only to emerge at 2:30 a.m. and get arrested. She was taken in for leaving the scene of an accident, and then released with a ticket. Amanda Bynes take note: at least Lohan got to keep her car.

Prosecutors on Wednesday released new evidence in the case against George Zimmerman: it appears that Trayvon Martin may never have touched Zimmerman’s gun. Zimmerman told police that he fired only after Martin reached for the gun. But while DNA tests on Zimmerman’s gun and holster found evidence of multiple handlers, none of them matched Martin, leaving no evidence that Martin ever touched it. But not all the new evidence will harm Zimmerman. Also included was a witness diagram suggesting that Trayvon was on top of Zimmerman at some point during the incident.

Not everyone is criticizing Mitt Romney this week. Ann Romney has come to her husband’s defense over his comments that 47 percent of Americans are “victims” and “dependent on the government.” She claims that the remarks were “taken out of context.” She said, “He’s talking about what we’re facing in America right now…If we don’t take corrective measures soon, more and more people will be dependent on government, and that’s not what he wants. He wants to have more economic opportunity for people. He wants better jobs for people.” When asked if her husband was expressing disdain for people on entitlement programs, Romney replied, “Absolutely not. That’s totally not so.”

The attack on an American consulate that left three dead on Sept. 11 was dubbed an act of terrorism by a top official at a Senate hearing Wednesday. “They were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy,” said Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olsen. While officials suspect an al Queda connection, Olsen stressed that “what we don‘t have at this point is specific intelligence that there was a significant advance planning or coordination for this attack.” Senior Libyan officials have said they believe the attack was premeditated, but the United States says it will continue to investigate the day‘s events before drawing that conclusion.

Good thing Occupy Wall Street didn’t come back. According to Forbes, the richest 400 Americans’ net worth increased 13 percent in 2012 to $1.7 trillion. The average net worth of the group was also up to a record $4.2 billion, and collectively they make up the equivalent of one-eighth of the U.S. economy. So who makes the cut? Bill Gates tops the list for the 19th year in a row, with a net worth of $66 billion, followed by Warren Buffett ($46 billion), Larry Ellison ($41 billion), and the Koch brothers tied for fourth at $31 billion. Bucking the trend of increases is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth fell by half to just $9.4 billion and slid to No. 36 on the list from No. 14 in 2011.

Space shuttle Endeavour took off from Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday—though while bolted to the top of a jumbo jet. Endeavour, NASA’s youngest space shuttle, flew to Houston, where it will stay overnight before heading to Los Angeles. Once in California, it will eventually become an exhibit at the California Space Center. Endeavour debuted in 1992 and it flew 128 million miles, before it was retired last year along with the rest of the shuttle fleet.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi held talks with President Bashar al-Assad and other Syrian officials in Damascus Wednesday, with Salehi saying a solution to the country’s ongoing conflict lay “only in Syria and within the Syrian family.” Assad asserted that the regime’s battle “targets resistance as a whole not only in Syria” in what appeared to be a reference to the Iran–Lebanese militant group Hizbullah. Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it had identified 117 Iranian aircrafts bringing weapons to the Syrian government. As Syrian rebels gained control of a key border post in Turkey Wednesday, activists claimed Assad’s regime is destroying homes in Damascus and neighboring suburbs, pointing to footage of flattened buildings.

Some good news for Attorney General Eric Holder: the Justice Department’s inspector general announced on Wednesday that there was no evidence Holder knew anything about the botched gun-walking sting known as Operation Fast and Furious before Congress began questioning him about it in 2011. The probe found that Gary Grindler, the acting deputy attorney general, received a briefing about the program in March 2010, but wasn’t made aware of any problems. Jason Weinstein, a senior Justice Department official who is blamed by investigators for not stopping the operation, resigned Tuesday night.