SALMAN RUSHDIE ON VENTILATOR, LIKELY TO LOSE AN EYE

Salman Rushdie was on a ventilator with damaged liver and may lose an eye after the Mumbai-born controversial author was stabbed in the neck and abdomen by a man at an event in New York state, sending shockwaves across the literary world, which condemned the incident as an attack on freedom of expression.

"The news is not good," the 75-year-old writer's agent, Andrew Wylie, said after a profusely bleeding Rushdie was airlifted from a field adjacent to the venue in Western New York on Friday to a hospital in northwestern Pennsylvania and underwent surgery for several hours.