An Australian inquiry into church and institutional child abuse began public hearings Monday, with warnings that widespread and "shocking" allegations would be heard against places of worship, orphanages, community groups and schools.

Justice Peter McClellan opened the hearings in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, announced by the government last November, saying that thousands of people had so far come forward.

Perched away from the world on the rocky southern tip of Africa, the town of Hermanus rose to global whale-watching renown almost by chance.

Two decades ago, as South Africa emerged from apartheid-induced isolation, pop zoologist Mark Carwardine visited Hermanus while researching a book on the world's best spots to watch whales.

Slovenia's prime minister, Alenka Bratusek, on Saturday laid the foundation stone for what will be the country's first mosque -- 44 years after the initial request to build it was made.

The laying of the stone, in the presence of a government minister from Qatar which is helping to fund the project, was a "symbolic victory against all forms of religious intolerance", said Bratusek, adding that Europe would not be as culturally rich without Islam.

Mexicans received their first chance Friday to see three pre-Hispanic stone carvings that were returned by the Lowe Art museum in Miami after they were apparently removed illegally from Mexico.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History says the three stone pieces depict a serpent, a water god and a priest or nobleman.

The Miss World beauty contest, which has attracted fierce opposition by hardline Islamic groups in host country Indonesia, is now facing another challenge -- a rival pageant exclusively for Muslims.

The Muslimah World contest to be held on Wednesday in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, is "Islam's answer to Miss World", the pageant's founder Eka Shanti said Saturday.

A 43-year-old man is to become the first openly gay candidate to stand for office in Turkey, local media said Saturday.

Can Cavusoglu announced he would run for mayor as an independent candidate in Bulancak, a town of 60,000 people on the Black Sea, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.

One of Britain's biggest colleges on Friday dropped a ban on Muslim face veils after thousands of people signed a petition against the rule.

Birmingham Metropolitan College said on Facebook it would change its policy to allow "individuals to wear specific items of personal clothing to reflect their cultural values".

A 12-year-old Indian rollerskating fanatic and a skateboarding goat were among the record-breakers who made it into the 2014 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, released on Thursday.

Schoolboy Rohan Kokane, from the western Indian city of Belgaum, won his place in the famous book as the Lowest Limbo Skater, rollerskating beneath a height of just 25 centimetres (10 inches) over a distance of 10 metres (33 feet).

The killing of Bulgarian dissident Georgy Markov with a poison-tipped umbrella on a London bridge in 1978 was like an episode from the pages of a Cold War spy novel.

But this was not fiction. And now, 35 years later, Bulgarian investigators are closing the book on their probe, even though Markov's cousin says he knows who the killer was -- and where he lives.

Cobwebs cover its furniture and its rooms are long deserted, but a crumbling house in northern Myanmar is at the centre of a conservation battle by locals who say it was once home to George Orwell.

The remote trading post of Katha on the banks of the Irrawaddy -- and the house lived in by Orwell in the 1920s -- were immortalized in the acclaimed British author's first novel, "Burmese Days".