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PISCATAWAY, N.J. (AP) - Rutgers has fired basketball coach Mike Rice after a videotape aired showing him shoving, grabbing and throwing balls at players in practice and using gay slurs during practice.

The videotape, broadcast Tuesday on ESPN, has prompted scores of outraged social media comments as well as sharp criticism from Gov. Chris Christie. The head of the New Jersey Assembly called for Rice to be fired.

With mounting criticism on a state and national level, the school decided to take action on Wednesday, relieving Rice of his duties after three largely unsuccessful seasons at the Big East school. There will be a national search to replace him.

Rutgers athletic director Tim Pernetti was given a copy of the video in November. After hiring independent investigators to analyze the tape, he suspended Rice for three games and fined him $50,000.

   

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — YouTube says more than 1 billion people are now visiting its online video site each month to watch everything from zany clips of cute kittens to sobering scenes of social unrest around the world.

The milestone announced Wednesday marks another step in YouTube's evolution from a quirky startup launched in 2005 to one of the most influential forces in today's media landscape.

YouTube crossed the 1 billion threshold five months after Facebook Inc. said its online social network had reached that figure for the first time.

The vast audience has given YouTube's owner, Google Inc., another lucrative channel for selling online ads beyond its dominant Internet search engine.

Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in 2006 when the video site had an estimated 50 million users worldwide.

NEW YORK (AP) - Police are searching for the driver of a BMW and a passenger who fled the scene of a Brooklyn accident that killed a pregnant woman and her husband on their way to a hospital. Their baby boy survived.

ABC News reports:


Police say the driver of the BMW slammed into the car carrying Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21, at an intersection in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn early Sunday.

Their fellow Orthodox Jews gathered on the street Sunday afternoon for their funerals. Afterward, the cars carrying the bodies left and headed to another service in Monsey, N.Y., where Nachman Glauber grew up.

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - The first buses carrying passengers from a disabled cruise ship are pulling away to take them to next stop on their odyssey.

The cruise ship terminal in Mobile, Ala., was raucous late Thursday as passengers streamed off the Triumph.

What was supposed to be a pampered voyage changed for the worse when an engine fire Sunday knocked out primary power to the ship.

After, the trip was marked by overflowing toilets, food shortages and foul odors.

Carnival said passengers have the option of a seven-hour bus ride to the Texas cities of Galveston or Houston or a two-hour trip to New Orleans. Some also can stay in Mobile.

All passengers had disembarked by 1:00 a.m. Central Time.

The Associate Press posted video of interviews with some of the passengers as they left the ship.

MOSCOW (AP) -- A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 1000 people, many of them hurt by broken glass.

"There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people's houses to check if they were OK," said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region.

"We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound," he told The Associated Press by telephone.

Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement.

Interior Ministry spokesman Vadim Kolesnikov said more than 400 people had sought medical treatment after the blasts, and at least three had been hospitalized in serious condition. Many of the injuries were from glass broken by the explosions.

Kolsenikov also said about 600 square meters (6000 square feet) of a roof at a zinc factory had collapsed.

Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite.

Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.

Russian news reports noted that the meteor hit less than a day before the asteroid 2012 DA14 is to make the closest recorded pass of an asteroid -- about 17,150 miles (28,000 kilometers). There was no immediate demonstrable connection.

Russia Today posted videos of the meteorite streaking over Chelyanbinsk.