An anti-Muslim group cannot post ads on buses in Washington state showing photos of wanted terrorists and wrongly claiming the FBI offers a $25 million reward for one of their captures, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a claim by the American Freedom Defense Initiative that King County violated its First Amendment right to free speech by refusing to post the advertisements on buses. The group — whose leader, Pamela Geller, organized the Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas that exploded in violence in May — has similar bus ads in other…

Probably the most important group fighting the Syrian regime now is Ahrar al-Sham (Free Men of the Levant), a Salafi group fighting mainly in the north but also in central and southern Syria. Contrary to Western reports suggesting that the al-Qa‘ida-linked Nusra Front led the battle to capture the northwestern Syrian provincial capital of Idlib last March, Ahrar had more fighters in the battle—a fact demonstrated by its predominance in the subsequent military oversight council established for Idlib. Ahrar is a key force on the battlefield, but Western media allots little space to describe it beyond saying it is “hard-line”…

In 1922 I left my native country, Austria, to travel through Africa and Asia as a Special Correspondent to some of the leading Continental newspapers, and spent from that year onward nearly the whole of my time in the Islamic East. My interest in the nations with which I came into contact was in the beginning that of an outsider only. I saw before me a social order and an outlook on life fundamentally different from the European; and from the very first there grew in me a sympathy for the more tranquil- I should rather say: more mechanized mode…

Once, as I was speaking to an appreciative audience, a fly turned his undivided attention to me. Round and round he flew, landing on my nose, forehead, even lips. I sputtered and tried to ignore him. I couldn't. I tried to swat him. You know it's futile. The audience grew both embarrassed and amused as my speech was brought to a standstill by the power of the fly.  This tiny creature controlled the auditorium with his power to disrupt. He harmed my presentation, maybe my public image. But I wasn't physically hurt, nor was my audience. The fly's power was disproportionate…

KYO — It was no coincidence that when Chinese President Xi Jinping wanted to signal a willingness toTO warm up his nation’s chilly relations with Japan, he chose a group of business leaders as his audience. China’s leader made a surprise visit to a lavish dinner on May 23 for no fewer than 3,000 Japanese business leaders at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. “China has always been committed to the development of China-Japan relations as its policy principle, and it will continue to do so in the future,” he told the group, led by ruling Liberal Democratic Party senior…