English sides Liverpool and Tottenham are through to the knockout stage of the Europa League after beating Udinese and Panathinaikos respectively on Thursday.

Steaua Bucharest, Stuttgart and FC Basel claimed the remaining berths in the last 32 to be played in February.

NASA, the agency that epitomized the "Right Stuff," seems lost in space and doesn't have a clear sense of where it is going, an independent panel of science and engineering experts said in a stinging report Wednesday.

The one place the White House wants to send astronauts — an asteroid — doesn't seem to be getting the engines firing at NASA, they said.

Alicia Keys raised more than $1 million for her charity and honored Oprah Winfrey for her humanitarian efforts Thursday night.

Keys' Keep a Child Alive celebrated its annual Black Ball — dubbed Black Ball Redux — at the Apollo Theater. The R&B singer performed alongside Bonnie Raitt, Jennifer Hudson, Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes and Angelique Kidjo, who was also honored.

An Egyptian granite sculpture of a sphinx that risked ending up on the black market for antiquities is destined instead for a Rome museum.

Italian Tax Police Maj. Massimo Rossi says the sphinx, perhaps as old as the 4th century B.C., was found on the outskirts of Rome last week. It was in a box hidden in a greenhouse near an ancient Etruscan necropolis.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will produce one of its existing lines of Mac computers in the United States next year.

Cook made the comments in part of an interview taped for NBC's "Rock Center," but aired Thursday morning on "Today" and posted on the network's website.

Residents of a sleepy French village in Bordeaux have been left dumbfounded after discovering their local 18th-century chateau was completely bulldozed "by mistake."

The mayor's office in Yvrac said Wednesday that workers who were hired to renovate the grand 13,000-square-meter (140,000-square-foot) manor and raze a small building on the same estate in southwest France mixed them up.

Mosquito control officials in the Florida Keys are waiting for the federal government to sign off on an experiment that would release hundreds of thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes to reduce the risk of dengue fever in the tourist town of Key West.

If approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it would be the first such experiment in the U.S. Some Key West residents worry, though, that not enough research has been done to determine the risks that releasing genetically modified mosquitoes might pose to the Keys' fragile ecosystem.

Covering nearly 300 football fields in a remote patch of desert, the Shams 1 solar project carries off plenty of symbolic significance for the United Arab Emirates.

It will be the first, large-scale solar project in the oil-rich country when it is completed at the end of the year, and the largest of its kind in the Middle East. At full capacity, the 100-megawatt, concentrated solar project will be able to power 20,000 homes. For those behind the project, it's the surest sign yet that solar is coming to the region in a big way.

Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.

The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.

The San Antonio Spurs reclaimed a share of the NBA's second-best record with a 110-99 win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday, due mostly to a season-high 53 rebounds.

Tony Parker and Gary Neal each scored 22 points for the Spurs, who joined Oklahoma City on a 15-4 record, trailing on winning percentage behind the Memphis Grizzlies on 13-3.