Official in flap over global warming quits

A former oil-industry lobbyist who changed government reports on global warming has resigned in a long-planned departure, the White House said yesterday.

Philip Cooney, who was chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, left Friday, two days after it was revealed he had edited administration reports on climate change in 2002 and 2003.

His departure was "completely unrelated" to the disclosure, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Based on documents provided to the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that helps whistle-blowers, The New York Times reported Wednesday that Cooney made changes in several federal environmental reports. The changes tended to emphasize the uncertainty of evidence that greenhouse-gas emissions are causing global temperatures to rise.

Cooney, a lawyer without a background in science, once headed the oil industry's lobbying on climate change.

Fort Riley, Kan.

Sergeant gets life term

for killing 2 soldiers

An Army sergeant convicted of shooting two fellow soldiers to death last year at his farmhouse will serve life in prison with no chance of parole, a military jury decided yesterday.

Sgt. Aaron Stanley, 23, was sentenced a day after his conviction by the same eight jurors on two counts of premeditated murder.

Stanley was convicted of killing Staff Sgt. Matthew Werner, 30, of Oxnard, Calif., and Spc. Christopher Hymer, 23, of Nevada, Mo., in September in Clay Center, about 30 miles west of Fort Riley.

Stanley, of Bismarck, N.D., said he acted in self-defense and to protect another soldier who was there, but prosecutors said he shot the two men to conceal a drug-trafficking operation.

Newport, Ind.

Nerve-agent spill

contained at depot

About 30 gallons of a liquid containing a deadly Cold War-era nerve agent spilled at an Indiana chemical-weapons depot, but it was safely contained in a sealed area and no one was injured, the Army said yesterday.

The spill occurred Friday night at the Newport Chemical Agent Destruction Facility, where more than 250,000 gallons of the agent VX are stored. VX is a liquid with the consistency of mineral oil that can kill a healthy adult with a single pinpoint droplet.

Workers were trying to determine what caused the leak.

Boston

Parents stage camp-in

over school closure

Parents angry that the Boston Archdiocese abruptly locked their kids out of school before graduation ceremonies have started a campout in a city square across from the school in protest.

About 50 people stayed in the 10 tents set up Friday night across from Our Lady of Presentation School. The archdiocese closed the school Wednesday, two days ahead of schedule. Similar sit-ins have prevented the archdiocese from closing several churches. About 80 of 357 parishes are scheduled to close as part of the church's reconfiguration.

New York

Firefighter who died

on 9/11 memorialized

A 30-year-old firefighter who rushed to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized yesterday at a Manhattan church in one of the last funerals for the 343 firefighters killed that day.

Hundreds of firefighters stood in full dress uniform as a fire truck carrying Keithroy Maynard's remains paraded to the Church of the Master with a pipe-and-drum corps playing "Amazing Grace."

Like other relatives of Sept. 11 victims, Maynard's family held a memorial service two months after the attacks, but years passed before his family felt enough of his remains had been identified to hold a formal funeral, officials said. More than 1,100 victims remain unidentified.

Compiled from The Associated Press.