In the remote wilderness of the Belinga mountains in northeast Gabon, men with shovels in hand dig from morning to night, filling wheelbarrows with soil laced with what they are looking for: gold.

The clearing in the equatorial forest is covered with dozens of holes, some four metres (13 feet) deep.

With her kohl-rimmed eyes cast down, Nadia lilts through a folk couplet before a secret assembly of women poets on a forbidden subject that often gets people killed in Afghanistan -- love.

"Like a candle I burn all night, separated from my lover," the 20-year-old intones in Pashto.

The director of Poland's national library Tuesday dismissed a BBC report alleging that pope John Paul II had a close relationship with a married woman lasting 30 years as a "Valentine's Day joke."

"It's a rather bad joke," said Tomasz Makowski of the BBC documentary aired Monday that was based on more than 350 letters written by Karol Wojtyla both as a cardinal and pope.

Eight-time world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao apologized on Tuesday for describing homosexuals as "worse than animals" after his remarks sparked a firestorm of criticism in his native Philippines.

Nearing the end of a glorious decades-long boxing career, the 37-year-old is reinventing himself as a conservative Bible-bearing politician before the country's May elections, when he is running for a senate seat.

Pope Francis asked Mexico's indigenous population on Monday for forgiveness over the exclusion they have suffered as he led a mass in native languages in impoverished Chiapas state.

The pope also used the open-air service in San Cristobal de las Casas to warn that the world faces "one of the greatest environmental crises" in its history.

Poland's national library on Monday said there was "no basis" for suggestions that pope John Paul II had improper relations with a married woman, after a BBC documentary, based on letters from its archives, detailed their "intense" 30-year friendship.

While the report does not claim the late pontiff broke his vow of celibacy with Polish-born philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, it does say that the tone of some of his letters to her point to intense feelings between them.

Pope Francis is under fire in Ukraine after his historic meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, with the head of the country's Greek Catholic Church saying believers felt "betrayed."

"Today, a lot of believers spoke to me and said they feel betrayed by Vatican," Major Archbishop Svyatoslav Shevchuk said in an interview published late Saturday.

The chief minister of India's popular tourist state of Goa moved to smooth ruffled feathers Saturday after a proposal to reclassify the national bird, the peacock, as vermin sparked an outcry.

Laxmikant Parsekar appeared to rule out including peacocks in a list of "nuisance animals" being drawn up by the state to make them easier to cull, according to the Press Trust of India.

Elbowing each other in the stampede to buy Valentine's Day chocolate for the men in their lives, Japanese women brought stores to a standstill Saturday.

In Japan, the menfolk do sweet nothing on February 14 while the women do battle in heaving aisles, loading up on confectionery treats for the object of their desire.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister defended his country's treatment of women on Friday, saying it had made progress on female education but would take time to let them drive cars.

"When it comes to issues like women's driving, this is not a religious issue, it's a societal issue," Adel al-Jubeir told an audience at the Munich Security Conference.