Hopeful eyes look on as thousands of candles and the lighted crosses of a dozen tiny chapels dot the chilly nightscape at Krastova Gora, a holy site high up in Bulgaria's Rhodope mountains.

"I've had a stroke. That's why I came here. For help!" said Yanko Dimitrov, 65, one of the many who have come to the sacred site.

Dozens of sub-Saharan Africans expelled from Morocco as immigration policy tightens somehow find their way back into the country, sheltering in makeshift camps on their quest to reach "the other side."

In these camps, located in the Sidi Maafa woods near Morocco's Mediterranean coast, the illegal migrants -- men, women and children -- find themselves tantalisingly close to the narrowest stretch of water separating Africa from mainland Europe.

Paris's famed Louvre museum this week opens a new wing of Islamic art in a bid to improve knowledge of a religion often viewed with suspicion in the West.

Costing nearly 100 million euros ($131 million), it is funded by the French government and supported by handsome endowments from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, Oman and Azerbaijan.

Georgia on Sunday reopened a world-renowned medieval cathedral in the ex-Soviet state's second city Kutaisi which has been restored despite concerns raised by global cultural agency UNESCO.

The consecration ceremony was attended by Georgian Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II and President Mikheil Saakashvili as well as representatives of opposition parties which are challenging the ruling United National Movement in crucial elections on October 1.

The Maldives government rejected Sunday a ban on dancing in public between men and women called by its own Islamic Affairs ministry and pledged that the honeymoon hotspot would remain a beacon of tolerance.

Presidential spokesman Abbas Riza said a circular issued by the ministry prohibiting dancing between men and women was not enforceable as it had no basis in Maldivian law.

Myanmar grew used to international criticism under a notoriously brutal junta, but reformist leaders tackling the fallout from deadly communal unrest are facing a new reality -- having to listen.

Festering animosity between Buddhists and Muslims in western Rakhine state erupted in June leaving, according to official figures, nearly 90 dead.

More than 30,000 tearful mourners attended the elaborate, flower-strewn funeral in South Korea Saturday of their "messiah" and controversial Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon.

Moon died of complications from pneumonia on September 3 aged 92.

The Maldives on Thursday moved to limit dancing in public between men and women, an official and a report said, amid signs of the growing influence of the nation's hardline religious party.

The Islamic affairs ministry sent a circular "to all government institutions banning the holding of any mixed-gender dance events", the private Minivan newspaper said, quoting guidelines issued on Thursday.

President Vladimir Putin has urged the creation of a new sense of patriotism to serve as the basis of Russia's future to replace the vacuum left by the fall of the ideologically driven USSR.

Putin -- who has made restoring Russia's great-power status a chief aim of his rule -- said the country had forgotten to construct a sense of national pride and lashed out at opponents who "pour shit" over its name.

Sculptor El Anatsui, who was born in Ghana and lives and creates in Nigeria, has mined Africa's history and culture to carve, mold and weave forms that captivate viewers around the world.

"When I set out to do work, I want something that would arrest people at least, draw them closer, so they can decide for themselves whether it's really beautiful," he told art-lovers last week in Denver, Colorado.