Bells rang at midday Monday from St. George's Anglican Cathedral in Cape Town to honor Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, a day after his death at age 90.

The bells at the cathedral, where Tutu urged South Africans of all races to work together against apartheid, will toll for 10 minutes at noon for five days to mark Tutu's life.

Desmond Tutu, South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice and LGBT rights and retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has died, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Sunday. He was 90.

An uncompromising foe of apartheid — South Africa's brutal regime of oppression against the Black majority — Tutu worked tirelessly, though non-violently, for its downfall.

Christmas arrived around the world Saturday amid a surge in Covid-19 infections that kept many families apart, overwhelmed hospitals and curbed religious observances as the pandemic was poised to stretch into a third year.

Pope Francis prayed Saturday for an end to the coronavirus pandemic, using his Christmas Day address to urge health care for all, vaccines for the poor and for dialogue to prevail in resolving the world's conflicts.

From Bethlehem and Frankfurt to London and Boston, the surging coronavirus put a damper on Christmas Eve for a second year, forcing churches to cancel or scale back services and disrupting travel plans and family gatherings.

The World Bank said it has agreed with its partners to repurpose $37 million in funds to help Lebanon's public school teachers survive a crushing economic crisis.

The biblical town of Bethlehem is gearing up for its second straight Christmas Eve hit by the coronavirus -- with small crowds and gray, gloomy weather dampening celebrations Friday in the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

A ban on nearly all incoming air traffic by Israel -- the main entry point for foreign visitors heading to the occupied West Bank -- kept international tourists away for a second consecutive year. The ban is meant to slow the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant, which has shaken Christmas celebrations around the world.

A monument at a Hong Kong university that commemorates the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was removed by workers early Thursday over the objections of its creator from Denmark.

The 8-meter (26-foot) tall Pillar of Shame, which depicts 50 torn and twisted bodies piled on top of each other, was made by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt to symbolize the lives lost during the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday the discovery of remnants of two shipwrecks off the Mediterranean coast, replete with a sunken trove of hundreds Roman and medieval silver coins.

The finds made near the ancient city of Caesarea were dated to the Roman and Mamluk periods, around 1,700 and 600 years ago, archaeologists said. They include hundreds of Roman silver and bronze coins dating to the mid-third century, as well as more than 500 silver coins from the Middle Ages found amid the sediment.

Each year, thousands of people travel to the Turkish city of Konya to attend a weeklong series of events and ceremonies that mark the death of the 13th-century Islamic poet, scholar and Sufi mystic Jalaladdin Rumi.

Instead of mourning his death, however, the ceremonies celebrate what his followers believe is his union with God.