In the Nation

WASHINGTON - The Senate confirmed U.S. District Judge David Hamilton of Indiana yesterday for the Chicago-based U.S. Appeals Court for the Seventh Circuit, approving a nominee targeted by conservatives as a liberal activist.

Hamilton, approved 59-39, became the eighth of President Obama's judicial nominees to be confirmed, and the third confirmed to an appeals court. All Philadelphia-area senators voted for confirmation.

Republican senators, backed by conservative allies outside Congress, had blocked a vote for five months until Democrats overcame a filibuster Tuesday. Although 10 GOP senators joined the vote to end the filibuster, only one - Hamilton's home-state Republican, Sen. Richard G. Lugar - voted yesterday to confirm him. - AP

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A pair of spacewalking Atlantis astronauts, one of them an orthopedic surgeon, hustled through antenna and cable work yesterday outside the International Space Station and even whipped off an extra chore: releasing a cargo platform, after struggling with a jammed spring-loaded device.

Michael Foreman and Dr. Robert Satcher Jr. had a spare antenna installed in just two hours after venturing out on their mission's first space walk. They also hooked up cables and a handrail, and greased some mechanisms.

Foreman and Satcher fielded congratulations from their colleagues at the end of the 61/2-hour space walk. Two more walks are planned - tomorrow and Monday. Atlantis will remain at the space station until Wednesday. - AP

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - When the U.S. House admonished Rep. Joe Wilson for shouting "You lie!" at President Obama during a health-care speech to Congress, it not only lit up talk-show lines, but also sent many people scurrying to the Internet in search of a definition.

Admonish, a verb dating from the 14th century meaning "to express warning or disapproval in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner," generated enough curiosity to crown it Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2009.

It beat out several other finalists that emerged from what the dictionary publisher's editor at large, Peter Sokolowski, called the "intersection of news and vocabulary." Runners-up announced yesterday include inaugurate, pandemic, furlough, and rogue - the latter tied to Sarah Palin and the sole carryover from the 2008 list. - AP

The historic black Burr Oak Cemetery outside Chicago, shut down after four former workers were accused of digging up graves in a scheme to resell burial plots, reopened yesterday.

The University of Kentucky, the largest university in that tobacco-growing state and home to a tobacco research center, yesterday banned all smoking on campus.

Lynne Stewart, 70, the disbarred civil rights lawyer convicted in a terrorism case, surrendered to U.S. marshals in New York yesterday to begin serving her two-year, four-month prison sentence after a state appeals court upheld her 2005 conviction.