Author Salman Rushdie said Friday he won't be attending the Jaipur literary festival in India after authorities warned him that "paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to eliminate me," Rushdie said in an announcement. The author of The Satanic Verses has been viewed as an enemy by fundamentalist Muslims ever since the 1988 publication of that book, which prompted a fatwa against him. A row broke out about Rushdie's planned appearance and protest marches were scheduled during the festival.
