The Detroit Pistons, Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers are looking for new coaches.

Detroit fired Lawrence Frank and Cleveland sacked Byron Scott on Thursday, while Doug Collins downgraded his role at Philadelphia to adviser.

President-elect Nicolas Maduro was set to be inaugurated in Venezuela Friday, even as election officials moved to defuse a political crisis by yielding to demands for an audit of the results in Sunday's bitterly contested elections.

The last minute development came after Maduro flew to a South American summit in Peru Thursday, where he received international support for his new government hours before he was to be sworn in to succeed the late Hugo Chavez who died of cancer March 5.

The two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing killed a university police officer and hurled explosives at police in a car chase and gun battle overnight that left one of them dead and his brother on the loose, authorities said Friday as thousands of officers swarmed the streets in a manhunt that all but paralyzed the Boston area.

The suspects were identified by law enforcement officials and a family member as Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, brothers from a Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings.

You meet someone, there's chemistry, and then come the introductory questions: What's your name? Come here often? Are you my cousin?

In Iceland, a country with a population of 320,000 where most everyone is distantly related, inadvertently kissing cousins is a real risk.

Twitter has launched a service for people to find music they like and tweet songs from iTunes, Spotify and Rdio.

Twitter said in a blog post that an app will be available for download from Apple's online store Thursday. A Web version is also expected Thursday. Twitter said the service will eventually be available on Android devices as well.

Almost three weeks after China reported finding a new strain of bird flu in humans, experts are still stumped by how people are becoming infected when many appear to have had no recent contact with live fowl and the virus isn't supposed to pass from person to person.

The uncertainty adds to challenges the Chinese government is facing in trying to control the spread of the H7N9 bird flu virus that has already killed 17 people and infected 70 others in the country, mostly along the eastern seaboard.

A Dutch court on Thursday rejected a bid by a meat wholesaler to quash an order recalling 50,000 tonnes of beef potentially contaminated with horsemeat.

"The court rejects the request for a preliminary injunction," on Dutch food authority NVWA's recall of meat handled by Willy Selten, judge Reinier van Zutphen said at the commercial court in The Hague.

Palestinians are turning to their fledgling high-tech sector as they lay the groundwork for a future state, saying the unique hardships of life in the West Bank have fostered a creative spirit conducive to the world of startups.

Dozens of high-tech hopefuls recently competed for the honor of having the best business idea at the West Bank's premier startup conference. Just a few kilometers (miles) away, Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli security forces at a military checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday painted a dim picture of the world's environmental progress, two decades after he founded the environmental group Green Cross International.

Laying much of the blame on a lack of leadership and vision, he railed against governments for falling short on nuclear disarmament, waste, development and climate change.

Eight-time defending champion Rafael Nadal extended his Monte Carlo Masters winning streak to 44 matches by beating Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-2, 6-4 Thursday, while second-seeded Andy Murray was thrashed 6-1, 6-2 by Stanislas Wawrinka in the third round.

Top-ranked Novak Djokovic put his sore right ankle to the test again as he came back from a set down for the second straight match to beat Juan Monaco of Argentina 4-6, 6-2, 6-2.