The city of Volgograd was renamed Stalingrad for a day Saturday as Russia marked the 70-year anniversary of a brutal battle in which the Red Army defeated Nazi forces and changed the course of World War II.

Commuter buses emblazoned with pictures of the feared Soviet dictator ran across the southern city as patriotic Russians remembered what many view as the Soviet people's greatest achievement.

France's national library said Friday it was prepared to lead an international effort to save centuries-old manuscripts feared destroyed or damaged by Islamists as they were chased out of the northern Malian city of Timbuktu.

The Bibliotheque Nationale "stands ready to come to the aid of the Ahmed Baba Institute, seriously affected by recent events, in agreement with Malian and French authorities, when the situation allows", the library said in a statement.

The film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's book "Midnight's Children" has opened in India with the cast in attendance.

The Booker Prize-winning novel chronicles the lives of two children who get switched at birth on the day of India's independence in 1947.

Dozens of renowned international and local writers gathered Friday at Myanmar's first international literary festival to celebrate the country's new-found freedom of expression.

Authors hailed the festival -- supported by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi -- as a breakthrough for creativity after years lost to stifling censorship rules under the generals who ruled the country for decades.

India's art world has converged on New Delhi for the industry's biggest annual event where upbeat talk and parties are likely to disguise a market that is still in the doldrums since crashing in 2008.

Indian art auction prices are down 70 to 75 percent from their peak, when speculation driven by new prosperity in cities such as Delhi and Mumbai pushed them to "unsustainable levels", says art analyst Anders Petterson.

It was the place where Jewish women did their ritual bathing. It was a tuberculosis clinic. It survived the German onslaught and became a gathering point for Holocaust survivors.

Now "the white building," the headquarters of the Jewish community and one of the few surviving remnants of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, could be torn down to make way for a multistory tower that would fit seamlessly into a modern city skyline.

Myanmar may be best known for its decades of junta rule, but behind the bamboo curtain maverick entrepreneurs have toiled for years to put the nation on the map for the quality of its wine.

Vines cascade down terraces overlooking the vast mirror of Inle Lake in northeastern Myanmar, an unlikely setting for a budding wine industry tempting the tastebuds of tourists now flocking to the country as it opens up.

The U.N. cultural organization UNESCO on Wednesday said it would send a mission to the historic city of Timbuktu in war-torn Mali as soon as possible to assess the damage done to ancient cultural sites.

"UNESCO will send a mission, as soon as security permits, to undertake a complete evaluation of the damage and determine the most urgent needs, in order to finalize a plan of action... that will guide reconstruction and rehabilitation," the body's director general Irina Bokova said in a statement.

The Spanish leader of a sect in Mexico who saw himself as the reincarnation of Christ is being investigated over claims children were forced into sex, an official said Wednesday.

Mexican authorities broke up the cult, Defenders of Christ, during a raid Saturday on a house near the U.S. border in Nuevo Laredo city, where 14 foreigners, including Spaniard Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba, and 10 Mexicans were found last week.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi insisted in Berlin on Wednesday he had nothing against Judaism and that comments on Israel attributed to him before he was elected had been "taken out of context".

Speaking through an interpreter at a joint press conference after talks in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said, as a Muslim, his faith compelled him to respect religions.