Sidelights.

A Texas high school's performance of an anti-violence play was cancelled after fighting broke out among some of the 500 students in attendance. * According to its Web site, the California branch of the radical Latino group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) is concerned that "Jews make up only about 2 percent of the state's population yet they dominate the state's academic institutions. Also, the two U.S. Senators of California are ladies of Jewish descent." ... The Los Angeles school district halted distribution of the book The Meaning of the Holy Quran because its foreword calls Jews illiterates who reject knowledge. The Omar Ibn Al Khattab Foundation had donated nearly 300 copies of the book. "We're going to talk to the foundation members and determine exactly why the commentary's there and whether there is research to support it," said Jim Konantz, a district official. * Referring to David Letterman's and Jay Leno's American flag lapel pins, San Francisco Chronicle TV critic John Carman carped, "The pins have to come off sometime, if only because in another year or two, they will reclaim their original meaning: I am a conservative Republican, and more American than you." * 2,000 residents of Zamboanga in the Philippines attended a rally to support America's efforts to fight terrorism in their country. "Americans should stay. Forever," said one 72-year-old attendee. "They are like angels that have come from heaven, to save Filipinos." ... Jose Mari Bue, business editor of the Zamboanga Daily Times, had harsh words for those Filipinos who protest the U.S. presence in the Philippines: "We challenge those who say that we don't need the American soldiers to go to Basilan and fight the Abu Sayyaf themselves. If they cannot or if they have no guts to take our challenge, then just shut up ..."

In a speech marking "Jerusalem Day," former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani said that as soon as the Islamic world has nuclear weapons "the strategy of the West will hit a dead end, since a single atomic bomb ...