Past the glass case containing sketches for his novel "Oliver Twist," beyond the handwritten letter to his publisher about Little Nell, and away from the first published installments of "Hard Times" sits Charles Dickens' pet bird.

The carefully preserved and stuffed raven named Grip — later the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem — is perhaps the quirkiest part of the Philadelphia public library's valuable Dickens collection, now on display to celebrate his bicentennial.

Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo has been hailed as a bold champion of democracy, but a new compilation of his writings shows him also to be deeply introspective and doubtful of the West's model.

Liu has been in forced silence despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Chinese authorities sentenced him the previous year for subversion for spearheading Charter 08, a major petition for political reform.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro is publishing two volumes of his autobiographical memoir entitled "Time Guerrilla," the Cuban news media reported Saturday.

The memoirs trace his life from infancy until 1958, when he succeeded in leading a revolution that turned Cuba into a communist country aligned with the Soviet Union.

Iraq has postponed a problem-plagued project for the holy city of Najaf to be the Arab world's Islamic Capital of Culture, the spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said on Friday.

The announcement came after a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Bashir al-Najafi, one of Iraq's top clerics, said the highest Shiite authority wanted the project postponed because of "financial and administrative corruption."

With flower offerings and drums belting out African rhythms, thousands of people across Brazil paid respects Thursday to Iemanja, the goddess of the sea in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble.

The Iemanja festival is immensely popular across this vast, racially diverse country of 190 million, but especially in the northeast state of Bahia, the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture.

A copy of the Magna Carta, the English royal manuscript setting out the rights of man, is to be displayed at the U.S. National Archives in Washington from February 17, after a year of restoration work.

The Magna Carta enshrined the rule of law in England at a time of disagreements between King John and the English barons. It was first issued in 1215 and confirmed as English law in 1297.

As the only girl in her noisy classroom of 22 boys, Padma Kanwar Bhatti is one defiant symbol of the toll exacted by India's deadly preference for male children.

Padma, 15, lives with her parents and two elder brothers in Devda, a village of 2,500 residents in the Rajasthan state district of Jaisalmer, which has one of the worst female sex ratios in the country.

The contemporary U.S. artist Mike Kelley, known for his installations and videos, has died aged 57 in California, Los Angeles authorities said on Thursday.

Kelley was found dead in his residence in South Pasadena on Tuesday evening, said LA County coroner's office spokesman Ed Winter.

Vandals have attacked and stolen several statues from the gardens of the Villa Medici in Rome including two works dating back to ancient Rome, the director of the French-owned palace told Agence France Presse on Wednesday.

"I am absolutely shocked by this act of vandalism," Eric de Chassey told AFP, saying that the vandals had come twice last week and again overnight Monday when they were disturbed by a guard.

The American surrealist painter and writer Dorothea Tanning, who was married to the late German painter Max Ernst, died on Tuesday in New York, a spokeswoman said. She was 101.

"It is my sad duty to announce that Dorothea Tanning has passed away. She died peacefully in her home," Pamela Johnson, director of the Dorothea Tanning Foundation, said in a statement on Wednesday.