Basketball news

Washington's recent graduation success rate among athletes is second-best in the West for a public university, according to NCAA statistics released this week.

Durrell Summers hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 3:02 left, made two at the line with 5.7 seconds to go and finished with 21 points to help No. 2 Michigan State rally for a 75-71 win over Gonzaga on Tuesday night.

Space shuttle Atlantis rocketed into orbit Monday with six astronauts and a full load of spare parts for the International Space Station.

Two people in China who received swine flu vaccinations died in the past week but at least one death appears unrelated to the vaccine and the other was being investigated.

It hurts more to be unemployed now than the last time the jobless rate hit 10 percent. Americans have more than triple the debt they had in 1982, and less than half the savings. They spend 10 weeks longer off the job. And a bigger share of them have no health insurance.

This is the closest to a rebuilding season Gonzaga basketball has had in years. Four starters from last year's Sweet 16 team are gone.

The world's largest cruise ship cleared a crucial obstacle Sunday, lowering its smokestacks to squeeze under a bridge in Denmark.

The world's largest cruise liner on Friday began its maiden voyage to Florida, gliding out from a shipyard in Finland with an amphitheater, basketball courts and an ice rink on board.

As violence in Iraq is sharply down and Iraqi forces are taking more responsibilities, the United States is preparing for the withdrawal of all combat forces by August 2010 and everyone else by 2012.

A University of Connecticut football player died Sunday following a stabbing after an on-campus dance, hours after the team's victory over Louisville.

Four more American troops died in a bombing in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Friday, as a U.N.-backed panel completed most of its investigation into whether the level of fraud in the August presidential election would require a runoff.

Despite losing rugged team leader and immovable inside force Jon Brockman to the NBA, national experts are pegging the Huskies as perhaps a top 10 team.