The Frankfurt Book Fair says the Iranian government has canceled plans for a national stand at this year's event to protest a planned appearance by British author Salman Rushdie.
Rushdie is to appear at a news conference Tuesday ahead of the annual fair's opening. The author spent years in hiding with heavy security after his novel "The Satanic Verses" drew a death edict from Iran's religious authorities.

The 2015 Nobel season wraps up Monday with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, which could go to research into the job market or consumer behaviour, though no obvious frontrunner stands out.
The prize is to be announced on Monday at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT) by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, and will mark the close of a season that has seen the literature prize go to Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich and the peace prize awarded to Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet, four civil society groups that helped rescue the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring.

A high-ranking Polish priest who was fired after coming out as gay before the Vatican's key synod on the family said on Sunday that there was no "gay lobby" in the Church.
Krzysztof Charamsa told a private Italian television channel that he has "never met a gay lobby in the Vatican", referring to rumors of a network of homosexual priests.

Egypt started work Saturday to remove a crust of dried glue on the beard of legendary boy pharaoh Tutankhamun's golden mask after a botched repair job on the priceless relic.
The beard fell off in an August 2014 accident at the Cairo Museum, leading to the botched repair by employees.

Saudi Arabia has summoned the Czech ambassador over a new translation of British writer Salman Rushdie's controversial book "Satanic Verses", official media said Friday.
The kingdom wanted to express its "condemnation and disapproval of translating the book," which it considers offensive to Islam, and hopes Prague will stop publication of the work, the Saudi Press Agency quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as saying.

A rare Pablo Picasso painting from the collection of US tycoon Bill Koch that will be sold on November 5 was shown in London for the first time on Friday.
The painting by the Spanish artist depicts a morose-looking nude cabaret singer with red lips and brown curly hair, contrasting with her unhealthy pale skin.

Pope Francis has warned bishops at a global Church meeting on the family not to be taken in by conspiracy theories, as conservatives and liberals reportedly engage in Machiavellian attempts to manipulate the synod.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi on Thursday confirmed reports that the pontiff had warned Catholic bishops and cardinals behind closed doors on Tuesday not to get caught up in "the hermeneutic of conspiracy."

A 48-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant horse and fetus is the oldest of its kind known to science and contains unusually well-preserved evidence of tissue from the womb, researchers said Wednesday.
The fossil was discovered in Germany in 2000, but the scientific analysis was only now completed and published in the open-access journal PLOS One.

Iran said Wednesday it will boycott next week's Frankfurt Book Fair after organizers invited the controversial author Salman Rushdie, whom Iranian scholars said should be killed, as a guest speaker.
The foreign ministry said the fair had, "under the pretext of freedom of expression, invited a person who is hated in the Islamic world and create the opportunity for Salman Rushdie... to make a speech."

From the migrant crisis to the anti-nuclear camp, speculation is rife about who will win the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, with Angela Merkel and John Kerry among the names mentioned.
The only one of the six Nobel prizes to be awarded in Oslo -- the others are announced in Stockholm -- the Peace Prize is the one that garners the most attention and speculation.
