A "perfect" white diamond which is expected to fetch a record price of up to $35 million when it is auctioned in Hong Kong next month made its first appearance in the city Thursday.

The egg-shaped 118.28-carat "Magnificent Oval Diamond" -- the largest of its kind -- stunned onlookers at a preview and could set a new record for the amount fetched by a white diamond at auction.

Some 143 letters, photos, plasters, drawings and personal items that once belonged to Pierre-Auguste Renoir will be sold at auction on Thursday, despite protests from the Impressionist master's great-grandson.

Heritage Auctions, which has organized the sale, expects the lot, billed as the largest collection of Renoir memorabilia, to bring in some $3 million.

One of New Delhi's most famous monuments, a mausoleum that inspired the Taj Mahal, will be officially unveiled Wednesday after a five-year refit that has seen it restored to its original form.

Humayan's Tomb, completed in 1570 by the Islamic Mughal dynasty that ruled most of northern India for more than three centuries, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the biggest draws for visitors to the Indian capital.

A Nigerian woman tearfully prayed and recited Koranic verses as she won a beauty pageant exclusively for Muslim women in the Indonesian capital Wednesday, a riposte to the Miss World contest that has sparked hardline anger.

The 20 finalists, who were all required to wear headscarves, put on a glittering show for the final of Muslimah World, strolling up and down a catwalk in elaborately embroidered dresses and stilettos.

Beluga whales at an aquarium near Tokyo are learning how to paint pictures as part of an autumn art program for visitors, an official said Wednesday.

The sea creatures at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium in Yokohama will be showing off their skills with specially adapted paintbrushes that they can hold in their mouths, a spokeswoman for the aquarium said.

A major exhibition of Australian art opens in London on Saturday, charting 200 years of extraordinary change through the country's relationship with its dramatic landscape.

Twelve rooms at the Royal Academy have been taken over for the show, which includes bark paintings, early colonial watercolors, heroic pioneer scenes and modern works.

Romania's Catholic bishops on Tuesday urged the mayor of Bucharest to respect court rulings and tear down an office tower looming over a historical cathedral in the city center.

"The moment has come for the mayor of Bucharest to choose between the financial interest of the real estate promoter and the public interest, which requires that court rulings are to be enforced and the cathedral to be protected," Romania's 16 bishops and archbishops said in an open letter.

Moviemaker Francis Ford Coppola and opera singer Placido Domingo are among five winners of a lucrative award that has been dubbed the "Nobel Prize of the arts."

British sculptor Antony Gormley, Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto and British architect David Chipperfield were also announced Tuesday as winners of the Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale Awards, which come with a 15 million yen ($150,000) purse.

Britain was dragged into a debate Tuesday on Muslim women wearing full-face veils in public, with its biggest selling newspaper adding to calls from politicians to join European countries that have banned its use.

The topic had stayed below the British political radar until the past week when a judge ruled that a Muslim woman will be allowed to go on wearing a veil but must take it off while giving evidence at her trial.

Pope Francis on Monday called for "another way" of treating divorcees who remarry -- a thorny issue since Catholics who wed a second time are currently not allowed to receive Holy Communion at mass.

Catholic faithful should "feel at home" in parishes and those who have remarried should be treated with "justice", the pope was quoted as saying by Romasette, the local newspaper for the diocese of Rome.