Arizona: Peak Named For Soldier.

A federal panel renamed a central Phoenix mountain for the first American Indian woman to die in combat while serving in the American military, ending one of the country's most contentious fights over a place name. Less than a month after the soldier, Specialist Lori Piestewa of the Army, was killed in Iraq in 2003, a state panel renamed Squaw Peak in her honor. Many Indians found the old name offensive and had been trying to change it, but critics called the renaming a heavy-handed, political move by Gov. Janet Napolitano's administration. The federal Board on Geographic Names made the name change official in an 11-to-2 vote, Lou Yost, the board's executive secretary, said. Specialist Piestewa, 23, a Hispanic-Hopi mother of two from Tuba City on the Navajo Reservation, died after her convoy was ambushed in March 2003. Some members of 507th Maintenance Company, including her best friend, Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch, were taken prisoner; others died. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]