Reports of a flash of light that streaked across the sky over the U.S. East Coast appeared to be a "single meteor event," the U.S. space agency said. Residents from New York City to Washington and beyond lit up social media with surprise.

"Judging from the brightness, we're dealing with something as bright as the full moon," Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office said Friday. "We basically have (had) a boulder enter the atmosphere over the northeast."

Pigs have long gotten a bad rap. The four-legged ungulates are considered so messy and stinky that they're synonymous with slovenliness: Eat too much and you're pigging out. Forget to clean up and your house is a pig pen. And when is a pig happiest?

That stigma is perhaps no greater than in New York City, where high-rises and apartments are hardly hospitable to pigs. The city's health code forbids keeping them as pets, forcing pig owners to operate in secret — or boldly take the risk an unhappy neighbor might squeal.

On the sidewalks and the subways it's clear: Japan is becoming a sea of surgical masks. It's about pollen, about germs and even a little about China, its polluting rival across the sea.

Simple masks. High-tech masks. Scented masks. Masks in pink and purple. Yano Research Institute says it's a 26 billion yen ($274 million) market. The industry leader, Kowa Co., says it plans to quintuple production this year.

Ka-ching! The cash register may be on its final sale.

Stores across the U.S. are ditching the old-fashioned, clunky machines and having salespeople — and even shoppers themselves — ring up sales on smartphones and tablet computers.

An orphaned Alaska polar bear is getting a new temporary home in Buffalo, N.Y.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say the 3- to 4-month old cub is expected to be transported to the Buffalo Zoo sometime this spring to join the zoo's own cub, Luna.

The black-and-white photographs show a line of prisoners — some with heads bowed, others with eyes staring forlornly at the camera — as a guard leads them to a boat for their final trip off The Rock.

The striking images were taken on March 21, 1963, the day the infamous prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay was closed after holding the likes of gangsters Al Capone and Mickey Cohen.

The next book by primatologist Jane Goodall has been postponed because some passages were lifted from online sources and not properly credited.

Hachette Book Group announced Friday that no new release date has been set for Goodall's "Seeds of Hope," originally scheduled for April 2.

Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, the world's richest man, secured the Latin American broadcast rights to the 2014 and 2016 Olympics on Friday.

The IOC said America Movil, the Mexican telecommunications company controlled by Slim, was awarded the rights to next year's Winter Games in Sochi and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro on media platforms across Latin America. The deal does not include Brazil.

Tom Cruise has become the first Hollywood star to set up a page on the popular Russian social network Vkontakte.

The "Mission Impossible" actor's page appeared Friday, announced by a message on Twitter saying "See you there!" in Russian.

Queen Elizabeth II needed no convincing to appear in a James Bond-themed skit during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics — in fact, she volunteered, according to the show's director.

Director Danny Boyle said he had initially thought a lookalike — possibly actress Helen Mirren — would play the role of Elizabeth alongside Bond actor Daniel Craig.