Saudi Arabia's grand mufti, the top religious authority in the birthplace of Islam, has condemned Nigeria's Boko Haram as a group "set up to smear the image of Islam" and condemned its kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls.  "This is a group that has been set up to smear the image of Islam and must be offered advice, shown their wrong path and be made to reject it," he told the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat in an interview published on Friday.

An upcoming game for Nintendo's handheld devices will let players enter a virtual world in which they make friends, flirt and can even get married and have kids.  But those romantic relationships can't be with characters of the same gender -- a fact a growing online movement hopes to change.

On Thursday, China’s state-owned Xinhua News Agency unveiled an ongoing feature entitled “New Silk Road, New Dreams.” The series promises to “dig up the historical and cultural meaning of the Silk Road, and spread awareness of China’s friendly policies towards neighboring countries.” The first article [Chinese] was titled  “How Can the World Be Win-Win? China Is Answering the Question.”

The opening ceremony of the Giro d'Italia cycle race has taken place in Belfast.  The Giro d'Italia is one of cycling's most famous events and TV coverage is watched every year in 165 countries.

Right now, all over the world, former Fulbright scholars like me (Norway, 2012) are raising the alarm, trying to persuade Congress to stand by one of its best creations, passed by unanimous bipartisan consent of the Senate and signed into law by President Truman in 1946.  Yet the Fulbright budget, which falls under the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), seems to be on the chopping block.

As Ukraine's political divisions play out on the geopolitical stage, the country also faces an unsettling schism among its main churchgoers.  Now Filaret says that Ukraine's growing political crisis is a signal from above that it's time to unite all of the Orthodox faithful into a single church.

Can learning about the opposing side’s suffering lead to reconciliation? Palestinian Professor Mohammed Dajani believes it can, prompting him to take a group of his students to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

I attended the 3rd Los Angeles Turkish Film Festival (LATFF) this past March at the Hollywood’s legendary Egyptian Theatre. When I first heard about the festival last summer from a friend, I honestly thought it would be almost impossible to hold a successful Turkish event in Los Angeles. First, I was so much absorbed in my work on Turkey’s popular culture exports and their role as public diplomacy tools.