In a Kabul neighborhood, a gaggle of boys kick a yellow ball around a dusty playground, their boisterous cries echoing off the surrounding apartment buildings.

Dressed in sweaters and jeans or the traditional Afghan male clothing of baggy pants and long shirt, none stand out as they jostle to score a goal. But unbeknown to them, one is different from the others.

To mask or not to mask is a question Italy settled early in the COVID-19 outbreak with a vigorous "yes." Now the onetime epicenter of the pandemic in Europe hopes even stricter mask rules will help it beat the latest infection surge.

Other countries are taking similar action as the more transmissible — yet, apparently, less virulent — omicron variant spreads through the continent.

Tennis star Novak Djokovic faces deportation again after the Australian government revoked his visa for a second time.

Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said Friday he used his ministerial discretion to revoke the 34-year-old Serb's visa on public interest grounds three days before the Australian Open is to begin.

A 4 billion-year-old meteorite from Mars that caused a splash here on Earth decades ago contains no evidence of ancient, primitive Martian life after all, scientists have reported.

In 1996, a NASA-led team announced that organic compounds in the rock appeared to have been left by living creatures. Other scientists were skeptical and researchers chipped away at that premise over the decades, most recently by a team led by the Carnegie Institution for Science's Andrew Steele.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard last week launched a solid-fuel satellite carrier rocket into space, the country's official IRNA news agency reported.

The report quoted Gen. Amirali Hajizadeh, chief of the Guard's aerospace unit, as saying the test was successful. He said it marked the first time Iran used a solid-fuel rocket rather than a liquid-fuel one. He said Iran will produce lighter rocket engines in further space projects.

Israeli police has fired tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of Bedouin Arabs protesting a tree-planting campaign they say is aimed at pushing them off disputed land.

It was the third consecutive day of demonstrations by Bedouin residents of southern Israel's Negev desert against a forestry project they say is aimed at seizing land near unrecognized villages.

Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, was denied parole by California's governor, who said the killer remains a threat to the public and hasn't taken responsibility for a crime that altered American history.

Kennedy, a U.S. senator from New York, was shot moments after he claimed victory in California's pivotal Democratic presidential primary. Five others were wounded during the shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

North Korea on Friday fired at least one possible ballistic missile in its third weapons launch this month, officials in South Korea and Japan said, in an apparent reprisal for fresh sanctions imposed by the Biden administration for its continuing test launches.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the weapon was fired toward the east but did not immediately say where it landed or provided other details.

At least four rockets have targeted the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, two Iraqi security officials said. The area is home to diplomatic missions and the seat of Iraq's government,

Three of the missiles struck within the perimeter of the American Embassy, the officials said. Another hit a school located in a nearby residential complex. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Thousands of Israeli nationalists have staged a protest outside the parliament building in Jerusalem, urging the government not to demolish a West Bank settlement outpost.

The demonstration came a month after a Palestinian gunman fired on a car filled with seminary students at the Homesh outpost, near the West Bank city of Nablus, killing 25-year-old Yehuda Dimentman and wounding two people.