Japan fell silent on Sunday to honor the 19,000 people killed a year ago in a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in a generation.

Tearful families gathered in towns and villages across the country's shattered northeast to remember those they lost as the towering waves smashed ashore.

With four grown-up children, ample savings and her own house, Lee Hua thought she could live out her golden years in modest comfort. Now, the 77-year-old collects recyclable garbage to make ends meet.

In a slow and frail voice, Lee explained how she was forced out of her home and now lives in a shabby rented house outside Taipei, has no money left in the bank and has all but lost contact with her three daughters and one son.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Benedict XVI jointly prayed for the unity of Christianity in a rare gesture on Saturday despite simmering resentment over the Catholic Church's move to recruit Anglicans.

Anglican leader Rowan Williams and the pope celebrated vespers together in the monastery of San Gregorio al Celio near the Colosseum in Rome and a stone Celtic cross brought from Canterbury was put up in the ancient church.

Hundreds of Muslim women gathered near Tunis Saturday to call for the return of the caliphate, the defunct Islamic system of governance which they said was the only means of guaranteeing their rights.

The members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir party came from Islamic countries including Arab states, Indonesia and Turkey, as well as from Europe to debate the benefits of the system that disappeared nearly 90 years ago.

South Korean troops may be conducting live fire exercises near the North Korean frontier, and Pyongyang may be ramping up its anti-southern rhetoric, but there may be more harmony on the musical front.

Next week, for the first time, musicians from North Korea will perform in Paris with a French orchestra led by a South Korean conductor, Myung-Whun Chung, in a minor diplomatic victory for the international maestro.

A women's conference organised by the dominant Islamist bloc in the Egyptian parliament has called for a council for families to replace the existing National Council for Women, a state-owned daily reported on Friday.

The conference, held Thursday on International Women's Day, also condemned the 1978 U.N. convention against gender discrimination saying it was "incompatible with the values of Islamic sharia" law, the Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

The Colosseum in Rome held a special tour to mark Women's Day on Thursday, exploring the famous monument's feminine angle -- from female gladiators to noblewomen in love with the arena fighters.

"From senators' wives to humbler women, many were crazy about gladiators. They were like footballers today," said Lucilla Rossi, a tour guide.

Japan said Friday it was applying to UNESCO to have its cuisine listed as a global cultural treasure as part of a bid to restore global confidence in its food after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Tokyo is to ask the U.N.'s educational, scientific and cultural arm to register "Washoku: Traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese" as part of the intangible heritage of humanity, the foreign and agriculture ministries said.

Australian officials on Thursday condemned as "disgusting and sickening" the defacing of an Aboriginal burial site with Nazi swastikas and white supremacist slogans.

The Nazi symbol, "KKK" and "white power" were scrawled across the wall and several headstones were vandalised at the Fingal Head cemetery, a burial ground for Aboriginal people between 1864 and 1964 in the north of New South Wales state.

The European Union will fund the last phase of restoring the national library in Sarajevo which became a symbol of the destruction of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, officials said Wednesday.

The final part of the library's reconstruction, valued at 4.9 million euros ($6.4 million), should be finished by April 2014, Sarajevo mayor Alija Behmen said after signing the accord with EU special representative in Bosnia Peter Sorensen.