Westwood

Two-alarm fire takes life of unidentified adult

One person died in a two-alarm fire that broke out Wednesday evening in a Westwood home, according to the state fire marshal’s office. The fire started shortly before 5:30 p.m. at 70 Tamarack Rd., said Dedham Deputy Fire Chief James Neilan. Nearby towns sent trucks and crews to assist the Westwood Fire Department in fighting the fire, including Dedham, Dover, Norwood, and Needham, Neilan said. The adult victim died after being taken to the hospital with serious injuries, according to the state fire marshal’s office. The victim’s identity is being withheld until the medical examiner’s office makes a formal identification and the family is notified, said Jennifer Mieth, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Fire Services. The cause of the fire was under investigation, Mieth said late Wednesday night. The death was the state’s third fire fatality this year, she said.

MONTPELIER

Legislature vote would be first to OK pot use

The Vermont Senate is going to proceed with a vote that would make the state the first in the county to authorize the recreational use of marijuana by an act of the Legislature, rather than via a citizen referendum. Ahead of the Wednesday vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee wanted to be sure how much marijuana people would be allowed to possess in a single ‘‘dwelling unit.’’ The proposal would legalize the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana and possessing two mature marijuana plants or four immature plants in each dwelling unit no matter how many people live in the unit. The bill does not contain a legal mechanism to regulate the sale of marijuana, but lawmakers are pushing for that. (AP)

BOSTON

BC study: Butterflies predated flowers

Moths and butterflies fluttered around the earth in the Jurassic period, millions of years earlier than previously thought, even before there were flowers to provide them with nectar for food, according to a new study by a group of researchers including Boston College professor Paul K. Strother. In an article published Wednesday in Science Advances, Strother and his colleagues made the case that moths and butterflies known as Lepidoptera emerged during the Jurassic period. Previously, it had been thought they emerged during the Cretaceous period, when the first flowers emerged, according to a statement from BC. With no flowers around, the insects developed a sucking proboscis to find nutrition by drawing off water drops from the tips of immature gymnosperm seeds.

CONCORD, N.H.

Woman working on appeal in Rwanda case

A woman serving a sentence in federal prison for lying about her role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide to obtain US citizenship is working on an appeal. In August, a federal judge denied an appeal bid from Beatrice Munyenyezi, who was convicted and sentenced in 2013 in the same federal courthouse in New Hampshire where she was granted citizenship years earlier. She’s serving a 10-year sentence in Alabama and faces deportation afterward. Munyenyezi’s appealing to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. She says the judge didn’t review the stripping of her citizenship. Munyenyezi was convicted of lying about her role as a commander of one of the notorious roadblocks where Tutsis were singled out for slaughter. She also denied affiliation with any political party, despite her husband’s leadership role in the extremist Hutu militia party. (AP)