Mayor issues heat alert for residents

June 26, 2007

Mayor Thomas M. Menino issued a heat advisory yesterday in preparation for temperatures expected to surpass 90 degrees this week. Menino advised children and the elderly to be especially cautious, limiting activity during the day and drinking ample fluids. He also encouraged all residents to take advantage of the city's public pools and air-conditioned community centers. The Senior Shuttle service is available for seniors seeking transportation to and from these locations. A complete list of cooling facilities and emergency phone numbers is online at cityofboston.gov/heat.

A former Boston Latin School student was named the school's 28th head master yesterday, Superintendent Michael Contompasis announced. Lynne Mooney, assistant head master at the school, will assume her new post July 1. Mooney graduated from Boston Latin in 1986 and returned to the school in 2004 to work as an administrator after more than 15 years of teaching and administrative experience in three other area school districts. Mooney succeeds Cornelia A. Kelley, a 1944 Boston Latin graduate.

Newton's public works commissioner has been named to a new state post to oversee the full safety review of the Big Dig and try to foster better communication between agencies. Robert R. Rooney has been public works commissioner in Newton since 2000. In his new job as deputy secretary for public works, Rooney will help identify cost savings between the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and the Massachusetts Highway Department and bring new technology to highways, Transportation Secretary Bernard Cohen said yesterday. Rooney will also oversee the transfer of the maintenance and operation of Department of Conservation and Recreation bridges, roads, and tunnels to MassHighway.

CAMBRIDGE

A jury convicted a man yesterday of killing a co-worker nearly 22 years ago after she turned down his romantic overtures, a case that went to trial after a police interview with the victim's daughter uncovered new evidence. A Middlesex Superior Court jury deliberated for less than five hours over two days before finding Walter Emeney guilty of first-degree murder in the November 1985 killing of Patricia Clark. Emeney, now 61, received an automatic life sentence without the possibility of parole. Clark, 32, was stabbed to death in her Lowell apartment. Her daughter, Alecia, then 11, found the body when she returned home from school. Emeney, a former Fitchburg resident, was one of the people questioned at the time of the killing. But he was not formally identified as a suspect until a couple of years ago, after police interviewed Alecia Clark again as part of a routine look at cold cases. (AP)

GEORGETOWN, Maine

A Vermont man was identified yesterday as the victim of a weekend hiking accident on Malden Island. James Dupont, 29, of Essex Junction was walking with a group of hikers early Saturday afternoon when he decided to leave the trail and fell 25 feet when he apparently slipped off a cliff, the Maine Marine Patrol said. A woman who was not a member of Dupont's hiking party climbed down the cliff and dove in the water after him, said Marine Patrol Sergeant Rene Cloutier. Jessica Daly of Derry, N.H., spent more than an hour in the water with Dupont trying to revive him, Cloutier said. She was treated at a Boothbay Harbor hospital, where she remained yesterday. (AP)

WASHINGTON

The US Supreme Court yesterday agreed to consider reinstating Maine's law aimed at regulating Internet sales of cigarettes to keep them out of the hands of minors. Trade associations for delivery companies successfully argued in an appeals court that a federal statute supporting the free flow of interstate commerce preempted the Maine law. The Maine attorney general, who asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, argued that states should be allowed to exercise their historic public health police powers to stop delivery of tobacco to children. The First US Circuit Court of Appeals found that carriers had to change their uniform package- processing procedures to comply with Maine's law, in conflict with requirements of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act, which says states may not enact a law related to a service of any shipper. (AP)