British author Salman Rushdie is to address an Indian literature festival by video link after he was forced to pull out in person because of protests by Islamic hardliners, organizers said on Monday.

Rushdie's appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival was cancelled on Friday, with the Indian-origin writer citing alleged threats to his life from underworld gunmen who had been hired to kill him.

The medieval walled city of Lahore is under threat from a construction 'free-for-all' ruining centuries of heritage, as an ambitious Pakistani restoration project to protect it stalls.

Rapid and illegal growth is crowding out the "old city" -- the section of the eastern hub fortified by a wall during the Mughal era -- while its unique carved wood balconies jutting on to bricklined streets fall into disrepair.

A trial over how music royalties of the late country singer "Gentleman" Jim Reeves should be split is set to begin this week.

Reeves was a country music sensation when he died nearly 50 years ago in a plane crash at the age of 39.

Two guns thought to have been used by bank-robbing fugitives Bonnie and Clyde have snatched $210,000 at an auction.

The Joplin Globe (http://bit.ly/A9BRHg) reported an online bidder from the East Coast on Saturday bought the weapons believed to have been seized from the outlaw couple's Joplin hideout in 1933.

Saudi Arabia needs three more years to change its school textbooks which have been criticized by the U.S. for religious intolerance, the ultra-conservative kingdom's education minister said Sunday.

"Changing the curriculum is difficult and needs three years" before it can be achieved, Prince Faisal bin Abdullah told participants and reporters at the annual Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh.

Indian police examined television footage on Saturday pending any formal investigation after Salman Rushdie's banned novel "The Satanic Verses" was read out at a literary festival.

Rushdie was forced to withdraw from appearing at the Jaipur Literature Festival due to security fears when some Muslim groups threatened to demonstrate at the event over the allegedly blasphemous book.

Revered Chinese modern painter Fu Baoshi's life was an epic journey -- literally and figuratively -- but only now, with retrospectives in the United States, has his powerfully emotional body of work traveled as far as the West.

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday opens "Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904-1965)," an exhibition that seeks to put this giant of Chinese culture on the international map.

British novelist Salman Rushdie withdrew Friday from India's largest literary festival, saying he feared assassination after his participation was opposed by hardline Muslim groups.

"I have now been informed by intelligence sources... that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to eliminate me," the Indian-born writer said in statement read by the producer of the Jaipur Literary Festival, Sanjoy Roy.

A mysterious nocturnal visitor who used to visit the grave of American poet Edgar Allen Poe on his birthday and lay a rose in his memory failed to appear for the third consecutive year, U.S. media said.

After waiting up all night, the curator of the Poe museum in Baltimore officially declared on Thursday that the night-time tradition was over.

Murders, fires, traffic accidents, mafia encounters: this was the world of eccentric New York photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig now brought back to life in a new exhibit.

"As a photographer, Weegee is perhaps the truest, most perceptive, most cynical, and yet blatantly sentimental chronicler of urban life in 20th century New York," the International Center of Photography said, presenting the exhibit "Murder is my Business."