Italy may be better-known for its football skills, but on ranches across the country, cowboys are honing their skills of horsemanship and cattle management, and dreaming of taking on the Americans at their own game.

Team penning and ranch sorting is believed to have started as a competitive sport in California in the early 1940s. Since then it has spread to countries with long traditions in cattle breeding throughout South America and Europe.

Federal health regulators on Tuesday approved an inflatable medical balloon that aids weight loss by filling up space in the stomach.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared Reshape Medical's balloon as another option for millions of obese Americans who have been unable to lose weight via more traditional methods.

Controversy over Planned Parenthood's supplying fetal tissue for research has focused attention on a little-discussed aspect of science.

Some of the organization's affiliates, in fewer than five states, provide the tissue. That's not illegal and the organization says it has done nothing improper.

A Democratic senator skeptical of broad government surveillance objected Tuesday to a bill that would have required social media and online sites like Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook to alert U.S. authorities of any terrorist activity.

The proposal had been tucked into a broader bill authorizing intelligence programs throughout the 2016 budget year and became the subject of several private meetings on Capitol Hill between congressional staff and industry officials.

The last of the wild horses on Great Abaco island in the Bahamas has died, prompting caretakers to collect tissue for possible cloning and hopefully bring back a viable population.

Milanne Rehor, project director for the Wild Horses of Abaco Preservation Society, said Tuesday that a U.S. veterinarian removed tissue from the dead mare and the material has just been shipped to an animal cloning technology company in Austin, Texas.

Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Naval intelligence analyst whose conviction of spying for Israel stoked fierce international passions, has been granted parole and will be released from prison in November after nearly 30 years.

The decision to free Pollard from his life sentence, announced Tuesday by his lawyers and then confirmed by the Justice Department, caps an extraordinary espionage case after decades of legal and diplomatic wrangling. Critics have condemned the American as a traitor who betrayed his country for money and disclosed damaging secrets, while supporters have argued that he was punished excessively given that he spied for a U.S. ally.

Instead of grand talk about how the Olympics will break new ground by going to a majority-Muslim country for the first time, or by making their first visit to Central Asia, Almaty's bid for the 2022 Winter Games is about tradition.

After a backlash against Sochi's $50 billion Winter Olympic extravaganza last year, the onus is on Almaty and its rival for the 2022 Games — Beijing — to show how they would host the games without big budgets and huge construction projects.

Alex Rodriguez doesn't remember any clubhouse conversations as a young player about still being in the game at 40 years old.

"You talk more about 35, coming into your mid-30s. Forty's not really talked about," Rodriguez said. "So, sure, there's a certain amount of pride."

The coach of Mexico's national soccer team is known for his histrionic displays of emotion during games.

Now Miguel Herrera's off-field composure is being questioned after a television sports anchor claimed the coach punched him at the Philadelphia airport following Mexico's 3-1 victory over Jamaica to take the Gold Cup.

With Boston no longer in contention, IOC President Thomas Bach urged U.S. Olympic leaders on Tuesday to pick "the most appropriate city" as a substitute candidate for the 2024 Games. Two-time Olympic host Los Angeles could fit the bill perfectly, according to several IOC board members.

The U.S. Olympic Committee severed ties with Boston on Monday, finally pulling the plug on a bid that had been hampered by dismal poll ratings, strong local opposition and months of political wrangling.