About 4,400 of the United States’ 13,000 troops in Afghanistan have started to leave, the military said Tuesday. A Feb. 29 deal with the Taliban gives the United States the next 135 days to pull out its troops in a bid to end the 18-year war.

Is the deal still on track? On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lauded Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s plan to allow the release of some Taliban prisoners. But rifts remain: In February, an Afghan soldier gunned down two U.S. fighters and injured six others after an argument.

With 9,000 cases of COVID-19 and 463 deaths, the Italian government put the whole country under a travel ban on Monday night. The revised quarantine affects 60 million people. It will last until April 3, extending school closures and banning all public gatherings and nonessential travel. Delivery trucks are still running, and authorities said people can still travel for work.

At least 32 people died on Friday when two gunmen attacked a political event in Kabul. Several senior Afghan politicians, including former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah, gathered to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Afghan Shia leader Abdul Ali Mazari. Dozens of people sustained injuries.

A truce went into effect at midnight on Thursday amid escalated fighting in northwestern Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to create a security corridor along a major highway and conduct joint patrols beginning March 15. They also plan to help more than 900,000 people displaced by the fighting to return home.

Schools, sporting events, and businesses around the world are operating under new restrictions as the COVID-19 outbreak expands. South African and Egyptian health officials confirmed their first cases on Thursday. The disease has infected more than 95,000 people globally and more than 3,200 have died, most of them in China. After a suspected infection at a hotel in Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine’s Health Ministry shut down churches and mosques in the area, including the famous Church of Nativity.

The United States carried out a defensive strike against Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, less than a week after signing a peace agreement with the insurgent group. The strike answered a Taliban assault on Afghan government forces that killed at least 11 soldiers and four civilians, U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett said.

Iran has tripled its stockpile of enriched uranium since November. The United Nations reported Tuesday that the Islamic republic has 2,250 pounds of the nuclear material, far more than the 660-pound limit allowed under the 2015 deal with world powers. Iran broke the terms of the deal after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of it in 2018.