Robert Burns, The Associated Press

The new U.S. military hub being constructed in Iraq’s western desert could be a model for additional joint train-and-advise operations designed to help Iraq defeat the Islamic State group, a top American general said Thursday.

The U.S. Army’s mistaken shipment of live anthrax samples to government and commercial laboratories occurred at a military post in a desolate stretch of the Utah desert that has been testing chemical weapons since it opened in 1942.

Iraqi troops abandoned dozens of U.S military vehicles, including tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces when they fled Islamic State fighters in Ramadi on Sunday, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

An admiral linked by Navy investigators to counterfeit casino chips denied Sunday that he played any role in making them.

The admiral fired last year as No. 2 commander of U.S. nuclear forces may have made his own counterfeit $500 poker chips with paint and stickers to feed a gambling habit that eventually saw him banned from an entire network of casinos, according to a criminal investigative report obtained by The Associated Press.