More than 2.5 million Muslims will on Friday begin the annual hajj pilgrimage in the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, against a backdrop of tensions in the Gulf.

Crowds of worshippers have already begun to gather in Mecca in the days ahead of the hajj, the focal point of the Islamic calendar.

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, a pioneer and reigning giant of modern literature whose imaginative power in "Beloved," ''Sula" and other works transformed American letters by dramatizing the pursuit of freedom within the boundaries of race, has died at age 88.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced that Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York after a brief illness.

Tourists to the Eternal City will no longer be able to catch their breath on the Spanish Steps, after Rome banned people from sitting on the famous monument.

One was fueled by racist hatred of immigrants and warned of a "Hispanic invasion." The other's motives are less clear but he apparently resented women and compiled a "hit list" of girls in high school.

Women farmers face the brunt of the threat posed by climate change, yet they may hold the key to helping limit its fallout, according to a landmark UN report to be released this week.

German cancer researcher Fiona Kolbinger won the mixed annual 4,000km (2,485 miles) cycling Transcontinental Race on Monday, becoming the first woman to do so.

A six-year-old boy thrown from a tenth-floor viewing platform at London's Tate Modern gallery is a French national who was visiting the British capital with his family, police said Monday. 

Four actors taking part in a satirical play about two gay police officers were arrested and accused of ridiculing and usurping the functions of Venezuela's authorities, sources said on Monday.

A Dutch band said Sunday it had cancelled its gig at a top Lebanon festival in solidarity with Mashrou’ Leila pulled from the event after threats over alleged offence to Christians.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday laid the foundation stone for the first new church in Turkey since it became a modern republic in 1923.