Friday Morning Joe: Russia crossed border, Pentagon's mysterious slush fund, Asia still on, Army intel contest, 1,000 robots ...

By Northwest Military News Team on August 15, 2014

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Israel secured supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon last month without the approval of the White House or the State Department.

Op-ed: Time to rein in the Pentagon's mysterious slush fund.

Late Thursday night armored vehicles and military trucks from Russia crossed the border into Ukraine near Donetsk.

U.S. President Barack Obama declared Thursday that U.S. airstrikes had broken the siege of an Iraqi mountain sheltering civilian refugees and that troops conducting reconnaissance there would be withdrawn.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he has agreed to leave office and clear the way for his designated successor to take over.

The Obama administration's Iraq policy seems premised on the idea that the terrorist Islamic State is so toxic that it will be self-limiting and ultimately self-defeating. But that's not the view of senior U.S. intelligence officials.

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said that troops would continue to monitor and assess  "human suffering" throughout the country, even as he acknowledged that the situation of thousands of members of an Iraqi religious sect who had been marooned on a mountaintop in Iraq is much better than first thought.

The United States will supply Lebanon's army with additional munitions and ordnance in a bid to bolster the force after clashes with jihadists, the US ambassador to Beirut said Thursday.

The Defense Department's spokesman on Thursday said military leaders remain committed to carrying out President Obama's pivot to Asia, despite ongoing unrest in other parts of the world.

In just the past year, the Pentagon sprinkled $500 million worth of military equipment to local law enforcement.

Groups on the left and right are uniting behind calls to end what they say is the rise of a "militarized" police force in the United States.

The most senior U.S. military officer to visit Vietnam for decades held talks with Communist Party officials in Hanoi on Thursday, in the latest boost to ties between the former wartime foes.

The U.S. Army plans to hold a competition in fiscal 2016 to develop the next phase of its controversial battlefield intelligence system.

Deaf and hearing impaired people say a bill opening up the Air Force to them is a call they do hear.

The Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh III has issued a call to all Airmen, to help create the 2015 CSAF Professional Reading Program.

Consumer agency: "Fee scam" cheated troops of $5 on financing contracts.

A plush-disguised camera lets drivers keep an eye on back-seat infants.

Here's a clever way to rid your home of unsightly cables: just hide them in plain sight.

A thousand tiny robots swarming into shapes like intelligent insects.

Here's the winning game board from the National Scrabble Championship.

Tom Hanks' new app turns mobile devices into typewriters.

Enjoy a prog-rock playlist curated by the Flaming Lips.

Finally: Fourteen Things You Don't Know About Back to the Future.

Of course someone has made an eight-bit version of the Twin Peaks intro. ...

LINK: Original photo by Justin Connaher