WACO, Texas, April 25 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama
will assume a familiar role consoling family and friends of
disaster victims on Thursday when he speaks at a Texas memorial
for firefighters killed in a massive explosion at a fertilizer
plant.

Just a week after he traveled to Boston following the
Marathon bombing that killed three people, he will speak at a
memorial on the campus of Baylor University in Waco to honor the
11 first responders who died in the blast.

WEST, Texas, April 24 (Reuters) – Hundreds of firefighters
and a drum and pipe band joined residents of a Texas town on
Wednesday to honor a firefighter who died one week ago in an
explosion at a fertilizer plant that killed 13 others and
injured some 200.

Authorities said on Wednesday they have not determined the
cause of the blast at the West Fertilizer Co in the town of
West, a Czech-American community between Austin and Dallas.

WEST, Texas, April 23 (Reuters) – When Texas farmer Donald
Adair bought the floundering West Fertilizer Co in 2004, his
neighbors in the rolling countryside near West were grateful he
had saved them from driving extra miles to Waco or Hillsboro to
buy fertilizer, feed and tools.

After the plant exploded last week, flattening homes,
damaging schools, killing 14 people and leaving some 200 others
with injuries including burns, lacerations and broken bones,
they still described the 83-year-old owner as honest and good.

WEST, Texas (Reuters) – A rail car filled with extremely hazardous ammonium nitrate did not cause the fiery explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant, investigators said on Tuesday, in their first statement ruling out possible sources of the deadly blast six days ago.

Fourteen people died in the explosion at the West Fertilizer Co last Wednesday, and some 200 were injured.

WEST, Texas (Reuters) – When Texas farmer Donald Adair bought the floundering West Fertilizer Co in 2004, his neighbors in the rolling countryside near West were grateful he had saved them from driving extra miles to Waco or Hillsboro to buy fertilizer, feed and tools.

After the plant exploded last week, flattening homes, damaging schools, killing 14 people and leaving some 200 others with injuries including burns, lacerations and broken bones, they still described the 83-year-old owner as honest and good.

WEST, Texas, April 22 (Reuters) – The only one of four
schools in a Texas town to escape damage from a deadly
fertilizer plant blast reopened on Monday with hugs for students
and parents, as some residents expressed frustration they had
not been allowed to return to damaged homes.

Fourteen people were killed and some 200 injured in the huge
explosions at the West Fertilizer Co. facility that supplied
agricultural chemicals and fertilizer to area farmers.

WEST, Texas (Reuters) – Texas officials released the names of four volunteer firefighters on Sunday killed in a deadly blast in this close-knit Texas town, as authorities identified the center but not the cause of last week’s deadly fertilizer plant blast.

Among the dead named at a news conference outside city hall in West, Texas, were brothers Doug and Robert Snokhous, remembered by their family as “lifelong best friends” who lived half a mile from each other and worked together at an ironworks in nearby Waco.

WEST, Texas (Reuters) – Hundreds of residents of this close-knit Texas town sought healing at a church service on Sunday, as schools were readied to reopen and authorities investigated the cause of this week’s deadly fertilizer plant blast.

About 200 residents in the town of West, Texas – including farmers, veterans and migrant workers – packed into Church of the Assumption in the center of the town for Catholic mass early on Sunday.

NACO, Arizona (Reuters) – A Senate immigration plan seeking billions of dollars to secure the porous Mexico border sparked some skepticism in southern Arizona, where wary residents of the border area said previous efforts to ramp up enforcement had failed to stop illegal crossings.

“They ain’t going to stop it unless they build that wall 50 feet high and … 50 feet deep,” said Jesus Morales, the fire district chief in Naco, a tiny community southeast of Tucson, which is separated from its namesake town in Mexico by a 10- to 13-foot-high (3- to 4-metre-high) steel fence.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A Paris auction house is facing a court hearing aimed at halting the controversial sale of a trove of antique tribal masks revered as sacred ritual artifacts by a Native American tribe in Arizona, an international tribal advocacy group said on Tuesday.

The Hopi Tribe, living in a dozen scattered villages on a northeastern Arizona reservation, wrote to auctioneer Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou last month asking it to cancel its planned sale of 70 objects including the sacred Katsinam masks, and asked for their return.