Rafael Nadal wanted to play a lot of tennis at the Western & Southern Open, though maybe not all in one day.

Nadal survived a three-set, three-tiebreaker match against fellow Spaniard Fernando Verdasco on Thursday, advancing to the quarterfinals with a 7-6 (5), 6-7 (4), 7-6 (9) victory that kept him on court for 3 hours, 38 minutes. Then, he played a doubles match that went an hour and 10 minutes, followed by interviews.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is buying Autonomy Corp. to expand its lineup of business software products as it lowers its profile in consumer electronics.

The acquisition, announced Thursday, comes amid a flurry of other dramatic moves that will reshape HP, the world's largest technology company by revenue. The shake-up will sharpen HP's focus on selling products and services to businesses and government agencies, instead of making gadgets for consumers.

Computers, like humans, can learn. But when Google tries to fill in your search box based only on a few keystrokes, or your iPhone predicts words as you type a text message, it's only a narrow mimicry of what the human brain is capable.

The challenge in training a computer to behave like a human brain is technological and physiological, testing the limits of computer and brain science. But researchers from IBM Corp. say they've made a key step toward combining the two worlds.

U.S. President Barack Obama demanded Thursday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "step aside" and imposed tough sanctions on Damascus including an asset freeze and ban on U.S. investments in Syria.

"We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside," Obama said.

hat old moon might not be as antique as once thought, some scientist think. They say it is possible that it is not a day over 4.4 billion years old.

But other astronomers disagree with a new study's conclusions. They think the moon is up to its typical age-defying tricks and is really pushing 4.6 billion as they have suspected all these years.

MetroPCS Communications Inc., America's fifth-largest wireless phone carrier, is jumping into the unlimited music business behind its smaller competitor, Cricket.

The company said Wednesday it is now offering unlimited on-the-go access to 12 million tracks through subscription music provider Rhapsody. The plan is bundled with unlimited voice, text and Web access on Android-powered smartphones for $60 a month.

Downbeat Japanese export and British retail sales figures renewed worries over the state of the global economy on Thursday and hit already fragile confidence in stock markets.

Investors are worried about both the debt situation in both the U.S. and Europe and the pace of the global economic recovery following a run of weak economic data.

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality he says is behind Europe's current economic crisis. The pontiff insisted that morals and ethics must play a greater role in formulating economic policy in the future.

"Man must be at the center of the economy and the economy must not be measured only by the maximization of profit but according to the common good," the pontiff told reporters aboard his plane as he traveled to Madrid for the Catholic Church's World Youth Day.

Russia's space agency says it has lost contact with a communications satellite shortly after its launch.

The Express-AM4 satellite was launched early Thursday atop a Proton-M booster rocket from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Tucked away in a nondescript office park in northern Kentucky, Noah's followers are rebuilding his ark.

The biblical wooden ship built to weather a worldwide flood was 500 feet long and about 80 feet high, according to Answers in Genesis, a Christian ministry devoted to a literal telling of the Old Testament.