Morning Roundup: A whole lotta pot edition

Good morning, Houston. Seems like it's getting harder and harder to smuggle a ton of pot around these days — just ask the 37-year-old Houston man who was arrested at a Falfurrias border checkpoint Monday after agents found 2,537 pounds of marijuana in the tractor-trailer he was driving. A border patrol dog sniffed the stash out as agents were determining the man's citizenship: He turned out to be an American citizen, and the pot turned out to be worth an estimated $2 million.

>> Local home sales slide: According to the Houston Association of Realtors, single-family home sales in Houston dropped 9.6 in March as compared to March 2006 — the first drop since 2004. Other indicators point to a slide in the local home market as well: There was a 14.1 percent increase in the number of active listings in March as compared to a year ago, and the inventory of single-family homes in March was 5.5 months, the first year-over-year decline in more than two years. Is it anything to be concerned about? Not necessarily ... yet. "We are going to watch with great interest during the coming months to see whether the decline in sales was a single-month phenomenon or the start of a slowdown," HAR Chairman Rob Cook said.

>> Four space flights this year: NASA officials announced Monday that the agency will try to launch four space shuttle flights in 2007: Atlantis on June 8, Endeavour on Aug. 9, Discovery on Oct. 20 and Atlantis on Dec. 6. The missions — one less than NASA had hoped to schedule for the year — will deliver materials to the international space station. The four-flight plan is "certainly something that can be accommodated and it can work," NASA spokesman Kyle Herring said. "But if we run into something along the way. we're going to slow down and fly when we're ready to fly."

>> Today's weather: If you haven't yet figured out the difference between partly sunny and mostly sunny, just pay attention today: This morning, it's partly sunny; by the afternoon, it should be full-on sunny. And beautiful, too, with a high near 80 and a northwest breeze. Tonight, the breeze should die down, the sky should stay clear and we should see a low in the upper 50s.

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