WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff was sentenced to 2› years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation — the probe that showed a White House obsessed with criticism of its decision to go to war.

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the highest-ranking White House official sentenced to prison since the Iran-Contra affair, asked for leniency, but a federal judge said he would not reward someone who hindered the investigation into the exposure of a CIA operative. The operative's husband had accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

No date was set immediately for Libby to report to prison.

"Mr. Libby failed to meet the bar. For whatever reason, he got off course," said U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who spent years investigating the case, said, "We need to make the statement that the truth matters ever so much." He had asked for a sentence of up to three years, while Libby had asked for probation and no time in prison.

4TH JFK TERROR SUSPECT SURRENDERS

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad — A Guyanese suspect in an alleged plot to bomb a fuel pipeline feeding New York's John F. Kennedy Airport surrendered to police Tuesday in Trinidad, a police official said. Abdel Nur turned himself in at a police station outside the Trinidadian capital of Port-of-Spain, police spokeswoman Wendy Campbell said.

He is the fourth man arrested the alleged plot, including a former opposition member of Guyana's parliament and a former airport air cargo employee who was arrested in New York.

Trinidadian Police Commissioner Trevor Paul had warned Monday that Nur should be considered armed and dangerous and he appealed to the public for help in finding him.

"I am confident that the pressure brought to bear by the Trinidadian police authorities contributed to his surrender," said Mark Mershon, the head of the FBI in New York. "We are very grateful for their tremendous cooperation in this investigation."

Nur is the uncle of former world welterweight boxing champion Andrew "Six Heads" Lewis, one of Guyana's most famous citizens, according to several newspapers — including one that quoted the boxer himself.

BUSH: RUSSIA SHOULDN'T FEAR U.S. DEFENSE

PRAGUE, Czech Republic — President Bush on Tuesday accused Russia of backsliding on democratic reforms but promised President Vladmir Putin he has nothing to fear from a U.S. missile defense shield in Europe. "The Cold War is over," Bush insisted.

"Russia is not our enemy," Bush emphasized as relations between Washington and Moscow fell deeper into an icy chill with Putin's threat to retarget rockets at Europe.

In a swift turn of events, China joined Russia in criticizing the U.S. anti-missile system. Then, Bush faulted both Russia and China for their troubled records on democracy.

The accusations and finger pointing created a tense atmosphere for the annual summit of leaders of the world's most prosperous nations, beginning Wednesday in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm, Germany. Even before the missile shield dispute, the three-day meeting faced disagreements on issues ranging from global warming to aid for Africa.

In the evening, Bush arrived in Germany unhappy about news from home. Just after Air Force One lifted off from Prague, the president learned that former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for lying and obstructing the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

GOP SEEKS TO OUST JEFFERSON FROM HOUSE

WASHINGTON — Republicans moved on Tuesday to seek Rep. William J. Jefferson's expulsion from Congress, a day after the Louisiana Democrat was indicted on charges of taking more than $500,000 in bribes.

Jefferson, meanwhile, relinquished his seat on the House Small Business Committee before members of his own party could vote to kick him off the panel.

In a two-paragraph letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Jefferson, 60, said he was taking the step "in the light of recent developments in a legal matter." He acknowledged no wrongdoing.

Republicans, citing Pelosi's election-season promise to run the most ethical House in history, sought Jefferson's expulsion from the chamber, possibly before he comes to trial on the bribery charges.

Republican Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio was pushing for a vote late Tuesday on a resolution to bar Jefferson from serving on any House committee and to direct the ethics committee to decide by July 11 whether the allegations in the indictment merit his expulsion, according to a partial draft of the document obtained by The Associated Press.

OBAMA WARNS OF 'QUIET RIOT' AMONG BLACKS

HAMPTON, Va. — Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.

The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.

"This administration was colorblind in its incompetence," Obama said at a conference of black clergy, "but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane.

"All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see," he said.

Obama's criticism of Bush prompted ovation after ovation from the nearly 8,000 people gathered in Hampton University's Convocation Center, particularly when he denounced the Iraq war and noted that he had opposed it from the outset.

6 KILLED AFTER PLANE CRASHES IN LAKE MICHIGAN

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The patient lay on the operating table, prepped for transplant surgery. In the air over Lake Michigan, a twin-engine plane sped his way, carrying a team of surgeons and technicians, along with a donor organ on ice. The plane never made it, crashing into the lake's choppy waters and killing all six people aboard Monday.

Now the critically ill patient could become the accident's seventh fatality.

"It was a very sad moment in the operating room" when word was received that the plane had gone down on its way from Milwaukee, said Dr. Jeffrey Punch, chief of transplant surgery at the University of Michigan Health System hospital in Ann Arbor.

Hospital officials and organ-donation authorities would not identify the transplant patient — other than to say he was a man — and would not say what type of organ he was awaiting, citing medical privacy rules. But one of the doctors killed was a cardiac surgeon, suggesting the patient was about to get a new heart or lungs.

He was put back on the waiting list for another organ and was reported to be "very critically ill." Authorities would not comment on his chances of finding another organ in time.

VATICAN PLANS TO USE SOLAR ENERGY

ROME — Some Holy See buildings will start using solar energy, reflecting Pope Benedict XVI's concern about conserving the Earth's resources, a Vatican engineer said Tuesday. The roof of the Paul VI auditorium will be redone next year, with its cement panels replaced with photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity, engineer Pier Carlo Cuscianna said.

The 6,300-seat auditorium is used for the pontiff's general audiences on Wednesdays in winter and in bad weather during the rest of the year. Concerts in honor of pontiffs are also staged in the hall, with its sweeping stage.

The cells will produce enough electricity to illuminate, heat or cool the building, Cuscianna said.

"Since the auditorium isn't used every day, the (excess) energy will feed into the network providing (the Vatican) with power, so other Vatican offices can use the energy," he said.

A feasibility study for the planned conversion, published recently in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, found it made economic sense. It quoted from Benedict's speeches defending the environment and noted that his predecessor, the late John Paul II, also championed the safeguarding of natural resources.

LARRY DAVID SEPARATES FROM WIFE OF 14 YEARS

NEW YORK — The enthusiasm is gone: Larry David and his activist wife, Laurie, have separated after 14 years of marriage. The split was "very amicable and ... they're going to continue to raise their two (daughters) together as friends," spokeswoman Heather Lylas said Tuesday.

No further details were provided.

David, 59, is the star and creator of the HBO hit comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm," which chronicles the always strange daily doings of its curmudgeonly centerpiece. The TV Larry David's much put-upon wife is played by Cheryl Hines.

David also co-created the NBC classic "Seinfeld."