Texas city top source for cartels' firearms

Houston

Texas city top source for cartels' firearms

Houston has become a firearms marketplace for Mexican drug cartels, according to federal law-enforcement officials.

Gangsters have spent millions in Texas on military-style weapons and ammunition that are being used in the cartels' ongoing clashes with Mexican police, government and citizens. Houston has emerged as a buyers' haven.

"Our investigations show Houston is the top source for firearms going into Mexico, top source in the country," said J. Dewey Webb, special agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Houston division.

Mexican gangsters have chosen Houston because of its numerous gun shops, its proximity to the border and its long-established networks for smuggling narcotics into the United States, the ATF says.

New York

Cathedral damaged by fire rededicated

African drums boomed and pipe-organ music swelled as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine opened for worship Sunday after years of cleanup from a fire that struck the world's largest Gothic cathedral in 2001.

The cathedral's 98-year-old Skinner organ was played for the first time since the fire, heralding a new beginning for the spiritual home of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.

"The rededication of this magnificent cathedral church speaks to all of us with such a wonderful sense of not only resurrection and renewal but of a recognition that through all that we have come together there is a constant sense of resilience arising from this cathedral in this great city," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who joined church officials and 3,800 parishioners at the rededication service.

The opening procession traversed the 601-foot length of the sanctuary with its 124-foot vaulted ceiling. Firefighters who had battled the Dec. 18, 2001, blaze joined Episcopal bishops and leaders of other denominations, including Cardinal Edward Egan, the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

Phoenix

8-year-old's lawyer waiting for evidence

A lawyer for an 8-year-old Arizona boy accused in the shooting deaths of his father and another man said Sunday he would not decide whether to accept a plea bargain until the prosecution produced forensic evidence and psychologists completed evaluations to determine if the boy is competent to stand trial.

The lawyer, Ron Wood, declined to provide details of the plea-bargain offer. "When the time comes, we will have a discussion with the boy and the mother and decide what we are going to do," he said.

Wood said the evaluations should be completed in the next few weeks. He said the state had not yet provided him with key evidence, including the results of ballistics tests of the .22-caliber, single-action rifle allegedly used by the boy to shoot his father, Vincent Romero, 29, four times and a boarder, Timothy Romans, 39, six times.

In court papers made public on Saturday, prosecutors said the plea bargain would resolve a legal dilemma that had arisen because of the young age of the boy and the heinous nature of the crimes.

The Apache County prosecutor, Criss Candelaria, said in a court filing that if the child were found incompetent to stand trial and could not be rehabilitated within nine months, state law required that the charges be dismissed.

Seattle Times news services