Afghan university students will have to attend more compulsory Islamic studies classes, education officials said Tuesday while giving little sign that secondary schools for girls would reopen. 

Many conservative Afghan clerics in the hardline Islamist Taliban, which swept back into power a year ago, are skeptical of modern education.

A mural that was painted in a Vermont synagogue more than 100 years ago by a Lithuanian immigrant — and hidden behind a wall for years— has been termed a rare piece of art and has been painstakingly moved and restored.

The large colorful triptych painted by sign painter Ben Zion Black in 1910 shows the Ten Commandments with a lion on both sides, the sun beaming down, and columns and rich curtains at the borders. Now known as the "Lost Mural," it's a rare representation of a kind of art that graced wooden synagogues in Europe that were largely destroyed during the Holocaust, experts say.

Stargazers gathered to watch the Perseid meteor shower among ancient statues atop Mount Nemrut in southeastern Turkey.

Hundreds spent the night at the UNESCO World Heritage Site for the annual meteor show that stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift–Tuttle.

An Iranian government official denied on Monday that Tehran was involved in the assault on author Salman Rushdie, in remarks that were the country's first public comments on the attack.

The comments by Nasser Kanaani, the spokesman of Iran's Foreign Ministry, come over two days after the attack on Rushdie in New York.

Salman Rushdie is "on the road to recovery," his agent has confirmed, two days after the author of "The Satanic Verses" suffered serious injuries in a stabbing at a lecture in New York.

The announcement followed news that the lauded writer was removed from a ventilator Saturday and able to talk. Literary agent Andrew Wylie cautioned that although Rushdie's "condition is headed in the right direction," his recovery would be long. Rushdie, 75, suffered a damaged liver and severed nerves in an arm and in an eye that he was likely to lose, Wylie had previously said.

U.S. District Attorney Jason Schmidt has told a court judge that Hadi Matar took steps to purposely put himself in position to harm "The Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie, getting an advance pass to the event where the author was speaking and arriving a day early bearing a fake ID.

The man accused of stabbing Salman Rushdie at a literary event has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges, as the severely injured author appeared to show signs of improvement in hospital.

The man who stabbed the author Salman Rushdie in New York state, Hadi Matar, was born in the U.S. to Lebanese parents who emigrated from the southern border town of Yaroun, the town’s mayor, Ali Tehfe, told The Associated Press and Lebanese media outlets.

“He has never visited Lebanon,” Tehfe added.

Author Salman Rushdie is in hospital with serious injuries after being stabbed by a man at an arts festival in New York state on Friday. The following article was published on the 30th anniversary of the release of The Satanic Verses.

One of the most controversial books in recent literary history, Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses," was published three decades ago this month and almost immediately set off angry demonstrations all over the world, some of them violent.

Iranians reacted with praise and worry Saturday over the attack on novelist Salman Rushdie, the target of a decades-old fatwa by the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini calling for his death.

It remains unclear why Rushdie's attacker, identified by police as Hadi Matar of Fairview, New Jersey, stabbed the author as he prepared to speak at an event Friday in western New York. Iran's theocratic government and its state-run media have assigned no motive to the assault.