Briefs package

AAS: Note Mexico briefs.

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PENNSYLVANIA

Gay wedding preacher suspended 30 days

A United Methodist minister convicted under church law of officiating at his son’s same-sex wedding ceremony was suspended for 30 days Tuesday and told he will lose his credentials if he violates any of the church’s rules in that time. Before the ruling, the Rev. Frank Schaefer, who was convicted for officiating at his son’s 2007 wedding ceremony in Massachusetts, told the jury Tuesday that he is unrepentant and refused to promise he wouldn’t perform more gay unions. “I will never be silent again,” he said, as some of his supporters wept in the gallery. “This is what I have to do.”

VIRGINIA

Police say son stabbed senator

The son of a state senator stabbed his father in the head and chest Tuesday before apparently killing himself with a gun, according to initial reports from police. Authorities were still piecing together a motive and the circumstances that led up to the stabbing of Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds. “We’re leaning towards it being an attempted murder-suicide,” State Police spokeswoman Corrine Geller said. Deeds’ 24-year-old son, Gus, died at the home of a gunshot wound. The senator was in fair condition at a hospital Tuesday evening.

WASHINGTON

Lawmaker charged with cocaine possession

U.S. Rep. Henry “Trey” Radel was charged with cocaine possession after what an official described Tuesday as a “buy and bust” operation. The 37-year-old Republican freshman lawmaker from Florida said in a statement that he struggles with alcoholism and intends to seek treatment and counseling. Radel made no mention of his political future. A Drug Enforcement Administration official said Radel was arrested after buying cocaine from an undercover law enforcement officer. Authorities allege Radel possessed cocaine on Oct. 29. He was scheduled to appear this morning in District of Columbia Superior Court.

SOUTH AFRICA

2 killed, 29 injured in mall collapse

A roof at a South African shopping mall that was under construction collapsed Tuesday, killing two people and injuring 29 as survivors screamed for help, police and witnesses said. Rescue teams used cranes, sniffer dogs and spotlights as the search for any more survivors stretched into the night. The collapse happened in Tongaat, near the eastern coastal city of Durban, and rescue teams rushed to help workers who were trapped beneath the rubble. Initial reports said that up to 50 people were trapped in the debris.

MISSOURI

Supremacist gets stay of execution

A federal judge granted a stay of execution for white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin just hours before his scheduled death. U.S. District Court Judge Nanette Laughrey ruled Tuesday that a lawsuit filed by Franklin and 20 other death-row inmates challenging Missouri’s execution protocol must first be resolved. Franklin, 63, was scheduled to die at 12:01 this morning for killing Gerald Gordon, 42, in a sniper attack outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977. It was one of as many as 20 killings committed by Franklin, who targeted blacks and Jews in a cross-country killing spree from 1977 to 1980. Franklin has also admitted to shooting and wounding civil rights leader Vernon Jordan and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.

PENNSYLVANIA

Train takes wrong turn on way to NYC

Amtrak officials are looking into how a New York-bound train took a wrong turn and ended up in the Philadelphia suburbs. The Keystone train that originated in Harrisburg somehow got on the wrong track after leaving Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station last week. It wound up at a local train station in Bala Cynwyd that is serviced by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. The train apparently missed a signal after leaving Philadelphia. Officials helped the crew return to the city, where passengers caught another train to New York.

MEXICO

Inmates rule prisons, commission says

Mexico’s human rights commission says violent incidents have increased and inmates rule in many of Mexico’s prisons, a sign of corruption and the lack of resources facing the corrections system. Commission President Raul Plascencia said incidents such as riots, homicides and prison breaks have increased from 52 for all of 2011 to 119 so far this year. The commission released a diagnosis of the system Tuesday based on visits and interviews at 101 of Mexico’s most populated prisons.

MEXICO

Eight bodies found in pits

Authorities in the northern Mexico border state of Sonora found eight bodies Monday in two clandestine burial pits. Sonora state police were acting on a tip when they found the pits along a dirt road near the city of Navojoa. The bodies include six men, one woman and a girl. Investigators said the victims may have been dead as long as a year and a half. The causes of deaths are being investigated.

RUSSIA

Pilot error cited in jet crash

The pilots of a Boeing 737 that plunged into the ground at Kazan airport lost speed in a steep climb then overcompensated and sent the plane into a near-vertical dive, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by Russian aviation experts. All 50 people aboard were killed. The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee, which oversees civil flights in much of the former Soviet Union, said the plane’s engines and other systems were working fine until the moment the plane crashed Sunday night.