World/Nation
Former U.S. House Speaker Hastert indicted
CHICAGO - Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert agreed to pay $3.5 million in hush money to keep an unidentified person silent about "prior misconduct" by the Illinois Republican who was once second in line to the U.S. presidency, according to a federal grand jury indictment handed down on Thursday in Chicago.
The indictment, which does not describe the misconduct Hastert was allegedly trying to conceal, charges the 73-year-old with one count of evading bank regulations as he withdrew tens of thousands of dollars at a time to make the payments. He is also charged with one count of lying to the FBI about the reason for the unusual bank withdrawals.
Each count of the indictment carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Hastert, who had worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., since shortly after he left Congress in 2007, resigned from the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro LLC, a spokesman for the lobbying group said Thursday.
The firm's website had described Hastert as a "featured attorney" as late as Thursday afternoon, but his contact details appeared to have been removed from the website hours later. Firm spokesman Jason Huntsman did not have further details.
Kurdish fighters in Syria on march against IS
BEIRUT - In contrast to the Iraqi army's failures, Kurdish fighters in Syria are on the march against the Islamic State group, capturing towns and villages in an oil-rich swath of the country's northeast under the cover of U.S.-led airstrikes.
As the Kurds close in on Tel Abyad, a major commercial center on the Turkish border, their advance highlights the decisive importance of combining airstrikes with the presence of a cohesive and motivated ally on the ground - so clearly absent in Iraq.
In Syria, a country now split mostly between al-Qaida-style militants and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, the U.S. has found a reliable partner in the country's main Kurdish fighting force, known as the YPG. They are moderate, mostly secular fighters, driven by revolutionary fervor and deep conviction in their cause.
Since the beginning of May, they have wrested back more than 200 Kurdish and Christian towns in northeastern Syria, as well as strategic mountains seized earlier by IS. Along the way, they have picked up ammunition, weapons and vehicles left behind by Islamic State fighters.
The push has gotten them closer to Tel Abyad, a major avenue for commerce for the extremist group through which it smuggles foreign fighters and sells black-market oil to help fund its conquests. The city is also a key link between Turkey and the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State group's de-facto capital in its self-declared caliphate.
CDC investigates shipments from Utah of anthrax
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Army's top general said Thursday that human error probably was not a factor in the Army's mistaken shipment of live anthrax samples from a chemical weapons testing site that was opened more than 70 years ago in a desolate stretch of desert in Utah.
Samples from the anthrax lot ended up at 18 labs in nine states and an Army lab in South Korea, leading more than two dozen people to get treatment for possible exposure.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, told reporters the problem may have been a failure in the technical process of killing, or inactivating, anthrax samples.
Odierno said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what went wrong at Dugway Proving Ground, the Army installation in Utah where the anthrax originated.
Officials said the government labs that received the suspect anthrax were at the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland and the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia. The rest were commercial labs, which the Pentagon has declined to identify, citing legal constraints.
Iconic lighthouse in Martha's Vineyard moves
AQUINNAH, Mass. - A Martha's Vineyard lighthouse that is among the most endangered historic landmarks in the U.S. began its gradual march back from a rapidly eroding cliffside on Thursday.
Powerful hydraulic pistons inched the 160-year-old Gay Head Lighthouse about 5 feet at a time along steel rails lathered with soap, starting just before noon. By midafternoon, it had moved more than 25 feet.
The 52-foot-high, 400-ton brick-and-mortar structure is expected to arrive at its final destination - a concrete pad about 135 feet due southeast - as soon as today.
"We've got plenty of time. We're not in any rush," said Jerry Matyiko, a seasoned mover of large structures, whose crews have relocated five lighthouses, including the famed Cape Hatteras Light in North Carolina. "Preparing it was the hard part. Moving it is the easy part."
Workers spent weeks painstakingly digging under the lighthouse to lift it a few short feet off the ground, using dozens of hydraulic jacks supported by a network of wood-and-steel beams.
- The Associated Press