When White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley joined President Obama's team at the beginning of the year, he was expected to bring stability and a centrist approach to managing a sometimes chaotic White House.

His close connection to the business world was one of the strongest selling points as chief of staff. Daley built close friendships with business leaders during his years at JP Morgan Chase, and the White House hoped he could undo some of the bad blood that developed between Obama and business leaders during the first two years of the term.

The federal probe into drug trafficking from Florida to Owsley County expanded last week when eight more people were indicted. Molik Ali Alston, 41 of Miami Gardens, Fla., Josh Terry, 25 of Beattyville, Tony Gibson, 22, Cameron Herald, 31, Jesse Herald, 58, Jimmy Miller, 35, Phyllis Reed, 65, and John White, 21, all of Booneville were indicted Thursday, July 28, for allegedly conspiring “with each other and others to knowingly and intentionally distribute a quantity of pills containing oxycodone.”

AFGHANISTAN – A day after greeting Kentucky troops serving in Iraq and Kuwait, Gov. Steve Beshear met more Kentucky servicemen and women in Afghanistan Wednesday. The governor’s trip is part of a special Department of Defense trip for selected governors and marks the first time a sitting Kentucky governor has visited active war zones.

The Urban County Government has released a portion of its case file regarding the murder of Amanda Ross by former state lawmaker Steve Nunn. The files appear to contain hundreds of pages of documents, including search warrants, email messages and summaries of interviews with Nunn's friends, acquaintances and political colleagues regarding his relationship with Ross. She was found gunned down outside her townhouse in downtown Lexington on Sept. 11, 2009.

While many schools are focused on the start of another academic year, the Kentucky School for the Deaf is honoring students who should have graduated several decades ago. Aaron Adams, Jr. Henrietta Burnette, Bobby Lee Oliver. Those were some of the names read at a graduation ceremony Wednesday afternoon at the Kentucky School for the Deaf in Danville.

Peer out from an International Space Station window, and you might be greeted by this spectacular view, selected as NASA's image of the day. It's a simultaneous sunset and moonset; because the space station orbits the earth every 90 minutes, the crew experiences this about 16 times a day. Not bad.

Officials in Jiangmen, China, are banning residents from keeping dogs, in a move that will take effect at the end of August, according to Chinese media. In one week, owners can begin taking their dogs to drop-off centers, where they will be either adopted by residents of rural areas or euthanized.

The ban targets dogs in densely populated sections of Jiangmen, a city with a population of 3.8 million. Any owners who wish to keep their dogs must apply for a license, reports China Daily.

Last in a three-part series

For a decade, Helen Zhang has had a dream: to run an international scientific journal that meets international standards. So she was delighted to be appointed journal director for Zhejiang University in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.

In 2008, when her scientific publication, the Journal of Zhejiang University-Science, became the first in China to use CrossCheck text analysis software to spot plagiarism, Zhang was pleased to be a trailblazer. But when the first set of results came in, she was upset and horrified.

For some inventions, say the light bulb, everyone knows who invented it.

But at the U.S. Capitol on a hot July day, no one seemed to know who invented the air conditioner. Even as the statue of a man many call the air conditioner's inventor stood just down the hall.

After an hour or so of searching, Mike Veselik, from Chicago, came close to knowing.

"I know that a doctor from Florida came up with it, trying to stop people from having fevers I think it was," Veselik said.

The Justice Department announced today that it had made 52 people and charged 72 in connection with an international child pornography ring with members in countries from the United States to Serbia.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the operation was the largest of its kind and took almost two years to complete.

NPR's Carrie Johnson reports: