NATIONAL BRIEFS

ILLINOIS: Big pot farm right in the city

Chicago police were busy chopping down 6- to 8-foot tall marijuana plants found growing on land the size of two football fields on the far South Side. Officers on routine helicopter patrol spotted the crop Tuesday under a canopy of trees about 3 miles from their hangar. Police said Wednesday that the 1,000 or so plants had been days or weeks from being harvested. Once packaged, the crop could have been worth as much as $10 million. Authorities typically try to intercept shipments of marijuana grown elsewhere. They say they've never seen such a large illegal agricultural enterprise within a city's confines.

ARIZONA: A challenging investigation

Searching a stretch of the border for clues into the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent involves treacherous territory that is heavily used by drug smugglers, offers many hiding places and is close enough to Mexico for traffickers to make a quick getaway. Whoever killed Agent Nicholas Ivie and wounded another agent in the sparsely populated desert early Tuesday may have done just that. Those who carried out the shooting near Bisbee probably had time to cross the border in the early-morning darkness before authorities could seal off an escape route, said George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Ivie and two other agents were fired upon in a hilly area five miles north of the border as they responded to an alarm triggered on one of the sensors installed along the border.

Reprieve for Wright house

The city of Phoenix and a developer who was poised to demolish a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home reached an agreement that puts any work on hold while a search continues for a buyer. An adviser for Mayor Greg Stanton said Wednesday that the agreement with the developers who bought the 1952 home in the Arcadia neighborhood delays any demolition for nearly a month. The demolition plan set off a firestorm in the architectural community. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy hurried to get historic status designation.