DATELINES

Court won’t rehear appeal in bomb plot

A federal appellate court won’t rehear an appeal from Mohamed Mohamud, the Somali American sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to bomb downtown Portland, Oregon, during the annual lighting of a Christmas tree.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously upheld Mohamud’s conviction. Mohamud’s attorneys sought to have the appeal heard before the entire bench, but the court denied the request Thursday.

President Donald Trump recently highlighted the Mohamud case in his executive order for a revised travel ban on people from Somalia and five other predominantly Muslim countries. Two federal judges this week blocked the order from taking effect.

Chief: Building was checked before blaze

An apartment building under construction in North Carolina’s capital city had been inspected 50 times, most recently on Monday, before it went up in flames near an entertainment district, the fire chief said Friday.

Several other buildings were damaged when the fire broke out Thursday night, some of them severely, Raleigh Fire Chief John McGrath said at a news conference. A firefighter suffered minor injuries and five people were treated for smoke inhalation, he said. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

The building’s woodframed construction burned quickly, McGrath said. He said the structure had been inspected 50 times and met all code requirements.

“Unfortunately, this building is at the stage when it was extremely vulnerable, before sprinkle systems got in, fire resistant walls were put up,” the fire chief said.

Home explodes in DC suburb

A house in a Maryland suburb of the nation’s capital was leveled early Friday by a thunderous explosion heard for miles around, a blast so powerful it shattered windows and caused other damage to several neighboring homes, authorities said.

The explosion shook the city of Rockville about 1 a.m. and scattered debris widely, a fire official said, adding that while the cause wasn’t immediately known.

Snake slithers from vent, shocks driver

Something more than air came slithering out of a car vent in Florida.

Monica Dorsett says she “almost crashed her car” when a red rat snake crawled out the air conditioner vent as she drove down a highway in Venice.

Dorsett tells Fox 13 she was in traffic on March 10 when she saw the snake slither out of the vent to the left of her steering wheel. She cut across two lanes and stopped in a parking lot.

Venice is about 210 miles northwest of Miami.

Small fire erupts in Empire State Building underground level

The Empire State Building’s owner says it’s all-clear at the famous skyscraper after a small electrical fire on a belowground floor.

No injuries were reported in Friday’s fire. Other floors and the tourist-attracting Observatory remained open.

Firetrucks lined streets around the tower after the Fire Department of New York was summoned around 2:30 p.m., while the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade was underway nearby.

Allan Drury, a spokesman for utility Con Edison, says there was a problem with an electrical service line to the building. Firefighters say the situation was under control within about two hours.

Military attack kills 42 off Yemen’s coast

The boat packed with dozens of Somali refugees was more than 30 miles off war-torn Yemen’s coast when a military vessel and a helicopter gunship swooped in, opening fire in the dead of night Friday, killing at least 42 people. The attack, which Yemen’s Shiite rebels blamed on a Saudi-led coalition, highlighted the perils of a heavily used migration route running from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf, right through Yemen’s civil war.

The coalition has been heavily bombarding the nearby coast around the Yemeni port of Hodeida, where it accuses the rebels, known as Houthis, of smuggling weapons in small boats. There was no immediate coalition comment.

Syria fires at Israeli jets after airstrikes

Syria fired missiles at Israeli warplanes on a mission to destroy a weapons convoy destined for the Iranianbacked Lebanese militant group Hezbollah prompting it to deploy its missile defense system, Israeli officials said Friday, in a rare military exchange between the two hostile neighbors.

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck several targets in Syria and were back in Israeli-controlled airspace when several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria toward the Israeli jets.

Israeli aerial defense systems intercepted one of the missiles, the army said, without elaborating.

EU-Turkey deal wobbly a year later

The waters off the Greek island of Lesbos once echoed with the shrieks of people drowning as they struggled to reach Europe, and the thrumming of rescue helicopters.

A coastguard patrol Friday encountered nothing more alarming than a few fishing boats.

A deal between Turkey and the European Union stemmed the flow of migrants who used to come ashore here by the hundreds every day — or died trying to make the crossing from Turkey in flimsy boats.

One year later, that agreement appears at risk amid deteriorating EU-Turkish relations, raising fears that Lesbos once again will become the scene of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Walcott, Caribbean poet, dies at 87

Derek Walcott, a Nobel prize-winning poet known for capturing the essence of his native Caribbean, died Friday on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

“Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia,” said a family statement. It said the funeral would be held in St. Lucia and details would be announced shortly.