While other national leaders play golf or ride horses to relax, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says he composes songs.

One of his compositions -- on the environment -- was played just before he spoke to business leaders on Saturday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Simon Klemenjak does some street dance moves and throws his hands up in the air to cheer on the crowd before he starts singing to the techno beat in front of the altar in the Church of All Saints in Stockholm.

Instead of praying silently and singing gentle hymns, the congregation inside raves to techno sounds in ultraviolet lighting at Friday's "techno Mass" — more like a disco at a youth center than a service conducted by the Lutheran church.

More than 2,000 people marched in Hong Kong's gay pride parade Saturday, as campaigners called for the enactment of laws to ban discrimination against homosexuals.

The crowd, mainly from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community (LGBT), as well as their supporters and sex workers, paraded through the city centre in a carnival-like atmosphere during the hour-long procession.

Police in the Swiss town of Grenchen were investigating Friday after four pigs' heads were found buried at the site of a planned mosque.

Officers in the Solothurn canton were tipped off by media who received an anonymous letter stating that 120 liters of pigs' blood had been poured over the grounds in protest at the country's "rampant Islamisation."

A special lottery launched by a Spanish charity for the blind to mark the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011 cleaned up with all of its 13.5 billion tickets sold, organizers said Friday.

Long queues formed at lottery stands run by ONCE, a charity for the blind whose name means "eleven" in Spanish, in the hope that the numerical quirk of the date would prove auspicious for winning the 11-million-euro top prize.

Paris police said Thursday they had seized 270 tons of miniature Eiffel towers and arrested four people in an operation against illicit street vendors.

Police this year have stepped up efforts to rid the streets of Paris, the world's most visited city, of thousands of illegal vendors hawking souvenirs.

"A town to live in!" boasts the faded sign in the Spanish town of La Muela, overlooking a new road.

The irony is bitter.

Egypt will close the Great Pyramid of Giza on Friday to avoid any rituals by a group rumoured to have plans to mark the date of 11/11/11 at the site, an official said.

The decision came "after much pressure" from Egyptian Internet users that strange rituals were going to be held "within the walls of the pyramid on November 11, 2011," Atef Abu Zahab, head of theDepartment of Pharaonic Archaeology, told Agence France Presse.

A number of Lebanese parliament members, actors, and beauty queens made promises which, if delivered, might be considered as wonders of the world.

In a TV commercial released on all Lebanese stations, these personalities made promises ranging from wearing an orange tie, to kissing a cow on the lips.

Thousands of Chinese couples are reportedly planning to get married on Friday, dubbed "singles' day" in China because the date is made up entirely of the number one.

November 11 has been celebrated as an unofficial day for the unattached in China since the 1990s, and is seen as a good date to tie the knot and leave the single life behind.