Nation, world briefs 3/9/15

Flight 370's beacon battery expired

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- The first comprehensive report into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 revealed Sunday the battery of the locator beacon for the plane's data recorder had expired more than a year before the jet vanished March 8, 2014. The report came as Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the hunt for the plane would not end even if the scouring of the search area off Australia's west coast comes up empty. Apart from the anomaly of the expired battery, the detailed report devoted pages after pages describing the normality of the flight, which disappeared while heading from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, setting off aviation's biggest mystery. Despite an exhaustive search for the plane, no trace of it has been found.

Baby alive hours later in sunken car

SPANISH FORK, Utah -- A baby survived a car crash in a frigid river after being strapped in a car seat upside-down for about 14 hours before being found by a fisherman, officers said. The 18-month-old girl's condition was upgraded from critical to stable but critical condition at a Salt Lake City hospital, but her 25-year-old mother, Lynn Groesbeck of Springville, was found dead in the car, police said Sunday. The fisherman discovered the car on its top about 12:30 p.m. Saturday in the Spanish Fork River in Spanish Fork, about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City, police Lt. Matt Johnson said. Investigators believe the wreck occurred about 10:30 p.m. Friday when a resident near the scene reported hearing something, Johnson said. The resident was unable to find anything out of the ordinary when checking the area.

9 hurt in garage roof collapse

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. -- Nine people were injured after a garage roof collapsed Saturday during an early St. Patrick's Day party at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo that spiraled out of control and caught city and university officials off-guard. Several thousand students, most wearing green, poured into the neighborhood near the university Friday night and still were partying as the sun rose Saturday. That's about the time the roof with about three dozen people standing on it collapsed as screams and gasps could be heard. In the most serious injury, a person's thigh was impaled by a piece of debris, the city said in a statement. None of the injuries was life-threatening.

3 dead in attack on U.N. base in Mali

BAMAKO, Mali -- Three people, including a U.N. soldier, were killed and 14 wounded in a rocket attack early Sunday on a U.N. base in Mali's northeastern city of Kidal, the United Nations mission in Mali reported. More than 30 rockets and shells hit the U.N. base in Kidal early Sunday morning, killing a U.N. soldier and two civilian children, said Olivier Salgado, the spokesman for the U.N. mission in Mali.

Ally urges Clinton to explain emails

WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should explain her actions involving the use of a private, nongovernment email account when she was the country's top diplomat, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday, becoming the first major Democrat to urge Clinton to share more details of the private account. Feinstein said the former first lady and New York senator "needs to step up and come out and say exactly what the situation was," adding, from "this point on, the silence is going to hurt her." Hillary Clinton has been criticized for her use of the private email account and whether she complied with federal rules requiring officials to retain their communications. Clinton says she's turned over all relevant emails -- totaling 55,000 pages -- to the State Department for review.

-- From wire reports