Andy Murray had a shaky start to his preparations for the 2013 season Thursday, losing in straight sets to Janko Tipsarevic in the opening match of the World Tennis Championship exhibition tournament.

Two early breaks in each set helped Tipsarevic dispatch the third-ranked Murray 6-3, 6-4.

Retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who topped an illustrious military career by commanding the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in 1991 but kept a low public profile in controversies over the second Gulf War against Iraq, has died. He was 78.

A sister of Schwarzkopf, Ruth Barenbaum of Middlebury, Vermont, said Thursday that he died in Tampa, Florida, from complications from pneumonia. "We're still in a state of shock," she said by phone. "This was a surprise to us all."

British scientists have called off the hunt for exotic life in an ice-bound Antarctic lake after their mission was hit by a technical hitch.

Researchers with the British Antarctic Survey had hoped to drill into Lake Ellsworth, which they believe has been frozen over for hundreds of thousands of years, in the hope of finding microbial life forms that might provide new insight into the evolution of life on Earth. They also hoped the lake floor's sediments might yield a new record of the Earth's climate.

Samantha Grossman wasn't always thrilled with the impression that emerged when people Googled her name.

"It wasn't anything too horrible," she said. "I just have a common name. There would be pictures, college partying pictures, that weren't of me, things I wouldn't want associated with me."

Josh Smith scored 31 points and Al Horford added 22 as the Atlanta Hawks beat the Detroit Pistons 126-119 in double overtime on Wednesday after blowing a 22-point fourth-quarter lead.

Detroit reserves Will Bynum and Charlie Villanueva scored a combined 26 points in the final period of regulation to spark the Pistons' comeback and force overtime.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered officials to inspect Olympic sites at the 2014 Winter Games' capital, Sochi, which was hit by an earthquake.

The Emergency Situations Ministry reported a 5.5 magnitude earthquake in the area early Wednesday morning.

China's new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.

The measures suggest China's new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors' anxiety about the Internet's potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their insistence on controlling information despite promises of more economic reforms.

Even Mark Zuckerberg's family can get tripped up by Facebook's privacy settings.

A picture that Zuckerberg's sister posted on her personal Facebook profile was seen by a marketing director, who then posted the picture to Twitter and her more than 40,000 followers Wednesday.

Long lines of cars and people formed Wednesday to take advantage of a guns-for-groceries exchange program that was moved up in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting.

Police officers filled bins with more than 1,500 rifles and handguns outside the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and the Van Nuys Masonic Temple, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

Taiwan's pop king Jay Chou has played roles as varied as superhero, vampire and cowboy. So his latest album about an influential but corrupt court eunuch may not sound all that odd to his fans.

In "Gong Gong with A Headache" released Thursday, Chou raps about the eunuch who has a secret passion for women but "must not touch them." ''Gong Gong" is a name for court eunuchs in China.