No Hard Feelings

Iran no longer intends to kill British author Salman Rushdie, a U.N. human rights official said Sunday. In 1989, the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a “fatwa,” or religious death sentence, saying Rushdie blasphemed Islam in his novel, “The Satanic Verses.” A $2.5 million bounty was put on the Indian-born author’s head, who has been under the protection of the British government since. The U.N. official was told that although Iran cannot revoke the death sentence, it has no intention of actively carrying it out.