Ethiopia's chances of reaching the 2014 World Cup in Brazil became a little more realistic on Sunday after beating Botswana to open a two-point gap at the top of its group in African qualifying.

Ghana beat Sudan 4-0 to apply the pressure on leader Zambia in their group after the 10-man Zambians were held 1-1 in Lesotho.

Have a heart problem? If it's fixable, there's a good chance it can be done without surgery, using tiny tools and devices that are pushed through tubes into blood vessels.

Heart care is in the midst of a transformation. Many problems that once required sawing through the breastbone and opening up the chest for open heart surgery now can be treated with a nip, twist or patch through a tube.

The massive bronze sculpture is formally known as "Draped Seated Woman," a Henry Moore creation that evoked Londoners huddled in air raid shelters during the Blitz.

To the East Enders who lived nearby, the artwork was known as "Old Flo," a stalwart symbol of people facing oppression with dignity and grace.

Six of 19 pilot whales that were stranded Sunday on a beach in the South African city of Cape Town have died and authorities said they planned to euthanize some of the surviving whales.

Police and other rescue workers had hosed down the surviving whales at Noordhoek Beach to try to keep them alive.

Security forces in Bahrain on Saturday fired tear gas to prevent protesters from reaching the house of a jailed human rights activist who is the focus of an international campaign seeking his release.

Riot police clashed with hundreds of marchers trying to gather at the home of Nabeel Rajab, who has been sentenced to two years in prison on charges of backing "illegal" protests.

Supporters of President Bashar Assad gathered in downtown Damascus amid tight security on Saturday for the funeral of one of Syria's best-known clerics who was assassinated in a brazen mosque bombing earlier this week.

Security forces sealed off all roads leading to the eighth century Omayyad Mosque where the funeral for Sheikh Mohammed Said Ramadan al-Bouti, an 84-year-old pro-government cleric, was held.

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.