The Benghazi Airport was closed overnight and remained closed for much of the day because of heavy anti-aircraft fire around the city by various Islamist factions targeting the US drones that have been looming overhead since the attack on the US consulate earlier this week. - Libya’s Deputy Interior Minister said the US had authorization to use the drones over Benghazi, and initial speculation was that the airport was closed just to all the drones to operate without anything else in the air. The government’s statement was ambiguous, saying that it was done for “security reasons,” but Deputy Interior Minister Sharif later said the decision to close the airport was directly related to the anti-aircraft fire and the fear that they might hit civilian aircraft.

McClatchy: Protests Sweep 23 Countries on Third Day of Anti-US Violence

Facebook can keep on monitoring internet users’ activities even if they have logged off its website.

Using Facebook Connect, and some other social plug-ins, Facebook can launch a cookie on any website that has a "like" or "share" button, which provides Facebook access to an amazing amount of user information, the Business Insider website reported on Thursday. The plug-ins are used to verify users, but the program also has the ability to gather personal information, such as the IP address of the internet user’s computer, browsing data, outside login information, phone numbers, and so on. Using a cookie called the "datr" cookie, among other things, Facebook can get information on what the internet user has read on a webpage, even if the user did not click the "like" button. According to the Wall Street Journal, "for this to work, a person only needs to have logged into Facebook or Twitter once in the past month. The sites will continue to collect browsing data, even if the person closes their browser or turns off their computers."

However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel, and internet users can still evade the ubiquitous eyes of Big Brother. Abine, Ghostery, and some other companies have developed tools that allow users to block Facebook social plug-ins, cookies, and other trackers and that help users control how and when their information is tracked and distributed.

On Thursday, the Republican presidential candidate released a new ad on manufacturing jobs contending that “for the first time, China is beating us” and that President Obama has “failed to stop China’s cheating.” Campaigning in Virginia, Romney added: "The president has had the chance year after year to label, to label China a currency manipulator, but he hasn't done so and I will label China the currency manipulator they are on the first day.”

The official New China news agency responded Friday with an editorial calling Romney’s remarks “as false as they are foolish” and saying that it is “ironic that a considerable portion of this China-battering politician's wealth was actually obtained by doing business with Chinese companies before he entered politics.” The editorial warned that if Romney’s “mud-slinging tactics were to become U.S. government policies, a trade war would be very likely to break out between the world's top two economies, which would be catastrophic enough to both sides and the already groaning global economy.”

[Why didn't NORAD do this on 9/11?] Two F-16 fighter aircraft intercepted a civilian aircraft that flew into a temporarily restricted area about 12:30 p.m. Thursday near Denver, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said. The Cessna 182 was directed to land and did so without incident at Centennial Airport. The aircraft was to be met by law enforcement, NORAD said. President Barack Obama was in the Denver area on Thursday, and flight areas are generally restricted in areas when he visits. NORAD controlled fighters launch about 200 times a year for such incidents, usually to intercept civilian aircraft that have unknowingly strayed into restricted airspace, NORAD officials have said.

America is finally reaping what it has sown when it helped NATO overthrow Gaddafi’s Libya, broadcaster and journalist Neil Clark told RT. The US government is losing its grip on Libya, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, he said. Clark spoke with RT about the violent protests outside the US embassies in Egypt, Yemen, and Libya.

RT: What's your assessment of who's behind the worst of this violence – does it seem heavily-orchestrated to you? Neil Clark: It does, actually. Remember the old saying, ‘You reap what you sow?’ The US is really reaping what it’s sowed. Let’s think back to February 2011. The US took part with NATO in the attack on Gaddafi’s Libya, bringing death and destruction. And they’ve created this violent situation. So while of course we condemn the attacks on the US consulate and the murder of Chris Stevens, we’ve got to put this in wider context. And this wouldn’t have happened had NATO not intervened last year.

RT: Is there a sense that the government's losing its grip on an angry public in Egypt, which has been at boiling point ever since the uprising? NC: The government is losing its grip in Libya, in Egypt, and across the region. And the US is the party that’s been stoking all this up. The US has been aggressively supporting uprisings across the region for its own interest and now it’s blowback time. Non-interference is the best way to go, really.

RT: It's being reported that President Obama might deploy drones to seek out the mob who killed their ambassador to Libya. If it's true, what do you make of such a move? NC: What are they going to do – regime change again? We had this last year. Gaddafi was a dictator, but it was a stable country. The US and NATO decided to intervene. If we look across the globe, everywhere that NATO has intervened has been a disaster. We look at Iraq – one million people killed there. Yugoslavia. Kosovo – the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Roma. Somalia – chaos there. Afghanistan – 11 years of war. And yet, we still get the same old people calling for intervention across the globe. When will they learn that it just leads to more death and destruction?

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It was a:

1. full-fledged military attack,
2. long in the planning (no spontaneous demonstration, although the demonstration helped disguise the attack, and perhaps fooled the Americans into underestimating the situation),
3. by a paramilitary group associated with the government just installed by NATO/American violence (not to mention closely associated with the fighters against the Syrian government being sponsored by the American government), although they have done a better-than-usual job at hiding the connections,
4. and with the assistance of at least some of the Libyan government security service, who helped deliver the Ambassador into the hands of the attackers, where he appears to have received some very rough justice, but justice nonetheless (I wonder if it included the special treatment given to Gadaffi),
5. and the response is yet more American violence, pretending to send drones and troops to Libya which are already there and haven't stopped operating,
6. all for the purpose of drone-slaughtering some al-Qaeda leader so Obama can appear to be strong and manly and re-electable,
7. which is highly ironic given that the original cause of the attack was the drone-slaughtering in Afghanistan of an al-Qaeda leader from Libya.

Washington's hopes of dealing with the situation caused by a controversial film that's sparked outrage in Muslim world are paralyzed by the looming presidential election, Pepe Escobar, Asia Times correspondent, told RT.

­Escobar says that for now, the Obama administration – who is partly responsible for the demonstrations in the Arab World – will resort to using drones to find the extremists responsible for the deaths of four Foreign Service employees, including the American ambassador to Libya.

RT: US Secretary of State has condemned the controversial film that has sparked the protests, saying Washington's got nothing to do with it. What impact do you think her words will have on the angered Muslim world?

Pepe Escobar: Well the problem is that Hillary did not tell the world that Washington had everything to do with it from the beginning. Don’t forget that the native rebels were approved by the West, while the Obama administration was leading from behind, according to our new George Orwell terminology. So this is basically blowback. We have been warning about this for over a year now. Blowback will happen in Libya as it happened in Egypt, in Yemen… anywhere in the Muslim world, and it will extend to other parts of the Muslim world. What happened based on this absolutely disgusting, cruel, raw production – the 2011 anti-Muslim and anti-prophet Mohammad production – it may be a catalyst, but the most important thing, it's something that I wrote about in one of my latest stories – I know that al-Zawahiri wants to commemorate the al-Qaeda-style-9/11. He issued a video admitting the killing by a drone three months ago in Waziristan of Abu Yaya al-Libi who was al-Qaeda’s number two for the past few months. So it is by no accident that what happened in Libya coincides with the al-Zawahiri video and the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11.