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U.S. drones fired missiles at Taliban hideouts in Pakistan killing at least 10 militants in response to a deadly attack on Karachi airport in the first such raids by unmanned CIA aircraft in six months.

On brink of disintegration: Another city falls in Iraq.

The al-Qaida-inspired group that led the charge in capturing two key Sunni-dominated cities in Iraq this week vowed to march on to Baghdad.

The return of al-Qaeda.

The Senate passed a bill Wednesday night that would allow appropriators to begin work on the 2015 Intelligence Appropriations bill.

The Veterans Affairs Department is, by many accounts, broken, and Congress has a lot of ideas to fix it.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed emergency legislation on Veterans Affairs Department health visits and administrator accountability, paving the way for the reforms to become law in a matter of days.

The House adopted an amendment to allow veterans to apply for food stamps while their disability claims are pending with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

After two overwhelming votes in two days, members of Congress say they are confident they can agree on a bill to improve veterans' health care and send it to the president's desk by the end of the month.

US House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor's stunning primary defeat is a huge blow to the US defense sector, and could allow an up-and-coming GOP deficit hawk to replace Cantor, or even become House speaker.

Hagel testified before lawmakers, answering anger-laced questions about the negotiated release of Bowe Bergdahl.

The House Appropriations Committee approved funding for 38 of the fifth-generation fighters - four more than the Defense Department requested.

How the Army should pivot to Asia.

The Air Force just copped to its secret stealth drone.

Program offers partially paid break from Army.

Army develops first-of-its-kind phase-coherent fiber laser array system.

Networking brings international training to JBLM.

A 3,000 gallons per minute reverse osmosis water purification unit and two 3,000 gallon water bags were used in support of the Quartermaster Liquid Logistic Exercise at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

NASA's real life Enterprise may take us to other star systems one day.

How a 3,000-car race would look if the Earth was the Moon.

The world's biggest TV can be yours for $1.7 million.

A new documentary tells the story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Finally: Puff Daddy/Diddy/Sean Combs released a music video inspired by Game of Thrones.

Be careful when you fry a drone over a beach in Connecticut. ...

LINK: Original photo courtesy of the New York National Guard

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Straight Talk: Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza discusses Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the community and the future.

Senate Dems breaking with White House over plan to leave U.S. troops through 2016.

Sunni insurgents from an al Qaeda splinter group closed in on Iraq's biggest oil refinery after seizing the northern city of Mosul in a devastating show of strength against the Shi'ite-led government. 

Iraq's terrorists are becoming a full-blown army.

US urges Iraqi unity to defeat violent insurgency.

Bowe Bergdahl Release: Expect pointed questions as Hagel takes the hot seat.

The president has come under criticism over the swap for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Special Forces deaths fuel A-10 debate.

US House appropriators killed an amendment that would have kept alive the Air Force's A-10 fleet, becoming the first defense panel to endorse the service's cost-cutting plan.

Bonus pay is part of Air Force nuke reforms.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers closed another chapter in Afghanistan as the Transatlantic Afghanistan District's South Area Office was inactivated.

This Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor's loss ranks as the biggest Congressional upset in modern memory.

A House of Representatives panel voted for a 1.8 percent troop pay raise in fiscal 2015, though the boost is far from guaranteed.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said a bipartisan deal to overhaul the Veterans Affairs Department will soon hit the Senate floor.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk slams US Air Force certification process.

What the Army's new COIN manual is missing.

The Canadian government has vowed to significantly boost military capability in the Arctic, but after years of such promises, a major roadblock still stands in the way - money.

White supremacists are recruiting at Fort Carson, Colo.

Extremely rare photo of two armed F-16s escorting a Boeing Dreamliner.

NASA releases spectacular X-ray image of an entire spiral galaxy.

Motorcycle jumps over plane that's flying sideways close to ground.

Watch the trailer for Dumb and Dumber To.

Of Course: Morrissey canceled the rest of his tour.

So now Will Ferrell and Chad Smith have challenged Lars Ulrich to a drum-off ...

Lovely: This is a marriage proposal fit for a journalist.

Finally: Get ready for Sloth Week.

This just hurts to watch. ...

LINK: Original photo by Spc. Edward Siguenza

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Five American Special Operations service members were killed in southern Afghanistan.

More violence erupts near Pakistan's busiest airport, Taliban vows full-out war.

Islamic militants overran parts of Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, today, driving security forces from their posts and seizing the provincial government headquarters, security bases and other key buildings.

A Navy ship with Marines aboard became a rescue craft in the Mediterranean, coming to the aid of passengers aboard a sinking boat.

The Veterans Affairs Department's inspector general is investigating 69 medical facilities for manipulation of appointment wait times and has contacted the Justice Department in cases where staff has found evidence of potential criminal or civil wrongdoing.

Developments over the past couple of weeks have led analysts to expect "a wave of attacks" by the Pakistani Taliban, of which the assault on the airport in Karachi from Sunday night into Monday appears to be the first.

The House Armed Services Committee will investigate the Obama administration's swap of an American prisoner held for five years for five Taliban leaders that caused a political firestorm over the lack of congressional notification and fears the high-level Taliban could return to the Afghanistan battlefield.

NATO launched one of its largest military maneuvers in the Baltic states since tensions spiked with neighboring Russia over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

America's ultimate strategy in a clash with China.

Chinese weapons that worry the Pentagon.

Army kicks off first-of-many 239th birthday events.

Army-licensed action figures, minus the firepower, target preschoolers.

The interior of the VG-22 Osprey could have been used in Aliens.

Guy jumps from speeding truck into 328-foot-deep gorge.

The masterful 360-degree long shot in Sunday's Game of Thrones.

Watch the trailer for Jeffrey Brown's new book, Goodnight Darth Vader.

Watch Arcade Fire cover Echo and the Bunnymen's The Cutter - with Ian McCulloch.

What?: Will The Kinks reunite?

Hear Morrissey perform a new song.

List: Movies that were shelved for years before they were released.

Finally: Ghostbusters infographic.

Getting excited for the World Cup? The whole world is! So much so that they're doing ridiculous things like playing soccer with flaming coconuts that basically shoot out flames whenever they kick it around. Oh and they're doing all that kicking barefoot.

LINK: Original photo by Spc. Joshua Edwards

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GOP to Obama: Fix VA.

Ukraine's new president Petro Poroshenko said his country would never give up Crimea and would not compromise on its path towards closer ties with Europe, using his inaugural speech to send a defiant message to Russia.

Gunmen take hundreds of students hostage on Iraq university campus.

The Bergdahl boomerang: GOP lawmakers who long urged a rescue now sour on the idea.

Bergdahl's father said one of his son's Taliban captors lost his son in a U.S. drone strike.

Vet unemployment drops, beating nation's unemployment rate.

A handy guide to the potential candidates to be the next VA secretary.

Inside the liberal take-over of U.S. national security.

The five most powerful navies on the planet.

The most important disruptive technology systems and ideas that DARPA is working on.

Scientists at University of Akron claim they've cracked the code, so to speak, by creating a super-tough screen out of transparent electrodes.

A cocktail glass designed to work in zero gravity.

Mystery solved: This is the monster that ate a great white shark.

The definitive reason why you should delete your Facebook account.

The game has really stood the test of time: Tetris' 30th anniversary.

The BoJack Horseman trailer for the animated Netflix series, which debuts in August.

Orange in the New Cat ...

LINK: Original photo by Petty officer 2nd Class Jacob Dillon

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Hero student tackle gunman, saves Seattle Pacific University students.

Department of Defense observes the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

Veterans from the 29th Infantry Division returned to the shores of Omaha Beach at dawn today after 70 years - this time the storms replaced by a bright sun and their mission of war giving way to a desire to remember their fallen comrades.

Congress appears poised to adopt new legislation making it easier for veterans to get private medical care and harder for underperforming administrators to keep their jobs.

North Korea said it had detained an American tourist for violating its laws after entering the secretive state in April, bringing the number of U.S. citizens held by Pyongyang to three.

A small team of American military advisers will soon head to Ukraine to assess that embattled nation's "mid- and long-term needs for defense reform."

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers wants French President François Hollande to halt the sale of two warships to Moscow, warning the vessels could be used to invade other European nations.

The Pentagon released its annual assessment of Chinese military power, and the 96-page report paints a picture of China's broad-based efforts to modernize and expand its military forces.

War's elite tough guys, hesitant to seek healing.

Why turbulence happens, and why it's not so scary after all.

Yes, it's a chocolate drone.

Top Gun is actually dumb.

Coca-Cola has created 16 caps that turn its bottles into useful objects.

Watch the Afghan Whigs perform on Letterman after an 18-year gap.

Courtney Love wants her own breed of roses.

Watch the trailer for You Are Here, which stars Zach Galifianakis, Amy Poehler and Owen Wilson.

More live than you'll ever be ...

LINK: Original photo by Staff Sgt. Malcolm McClendon

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A Navy jet crashed into the sea as it prepared to make a late-night landing on an aircraft carrier, but the pilot ejected and was listed in stable condition.

A Marine jet crashed into a residential area and destroyed two homes in a Southern California desert community Wednesday, but no one was injured.

Criticism over troop withdrawal emerges from beyond G.O.P.

The top Afghanistan war commander, Gen. Joseph Dunford, said he is confident that NATO members will contribute at least 4,000 additional conventional military forces to the post-war mission in Afghanistan.

The U.S. military said about 1,800 of the nearly 10,000 U.S. troops the U.S. plans to leave in Afghanistan at the end of the year would be conducting counterterror operations.

The top man reportedly being considered to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs was recently quoted criticizing the administration's signature healthcare law.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) has introduced a bill that would allow veterans to sue Department of Veterans Affairs employees who have falsified medical records.

The top U.S. military official in South Korea said a hacking incident might have compromised the personal information of thousands of South Koreans employed by the American command.

The bizarre club of war zone deserters.

A rare look inside the Air Force's drone training classroom.

The End of An era: 376^th Air Expeditionary Wing inactivation ceremony.

The small Idaho hometown of released captive Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has canceled plans for a celebration later this month.

Sgt. Bergdahl could be entitled to about $300,000 in back pay and special compensation following his release as a prisoner.

The last of the 29 Navajos who developed an unbreakable code that helped win World War II has died.

Hidden tricks and features that are going to make iOS 8 a powerhouse.

The most amazing infinity pool ever seen.

Watch Jack White's new music video.

Vanity Fair has a piece about the making of Ghostbusters.

The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting roundtable with Chuck Lorre, Mike Judge, Jenni Konner, Mike Schur, Armando Ianucci and Marc Maron about what it's like to run a TV comedy.

Finally: Tom Cruise hair quiz.

Are you better than Don Draper from Mad Men?

LINK: Original photo by Sgt. Giancario Casem

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Ayatollah Ali Khameni said in a speech he believes President Obama will not use force to stop Iran's nuclear program.

Putin looks east to bolster ties with North Korea.

The U.S. Air Force plans to temporarily deploy heavy bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons to Europe one day after President Barack Obama announced he would increase the U.S. military presence in the region.

Video: A dazed Bowe Bergdahl is led by two militants to a Blackhawk helicopter in eastern Afghanistan ending his five years' in captivity.

The hero who died looking for Bowe Bergdahl.

Prisoner swap blows up on White House.

An internal military investigation found that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl intentionally sneaked away from his forward operating base in Afghanistan just before he disappeared in 2009 - and that may not have been the first time he left the post without permission.

Senate Republicans said they would offer legislation to allow veterans to go to any hospital within 40 miles of their home to get healthcare.

An armed Russian fighter jet flew within 100 feet of a US Air Force RC-135U and taunted the intelligence-gathering aircraft with an aggressive maneuver over international waters north of Japan.

Terrorism is and remains the top threat to the United States, Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Mike Vickers said.

NSA Chief: Snowden "probably not" a foreign agent.

Report: Blue Angles boss tolerated porn, lewdness.

From 1914 to 2014, here's what a hundred year difference looks like after the siege of Antwerp.

The New York Times has a piece about anonymity on social media.

TMZ has posted 22 more secret behind-the-scenes photos from the Star Wars Episode 7 secret production studio in the UK

Amazing bowling tricks.

Stream Jack White's new album on iTunes.

Finally: Comic book movie comment section bingo

The FCC does not like John Oliver. The reason why below ...

LINK: Original photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan David Chandler

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President Obama said he will ask Congress for $1 billion to bolster security for Poland and other nations in Europe in light of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Report: Chinese cruise missiles could pose biggest threat to U.S. carriers.

The Department of Veterans Affairs official internal data show it failed to treat three out of five veterans within its 14-day target period for care.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey said today that the Army may pursue an investigation that could lead to desertion charges against Bergdahl.

The White House defended the release of five Guantanamo detainees in exchange for a US soldier held by the Taliban, as many ordinary Afghans criticized the deal for emboldening the militants.

When throngs of people converge along the beaches of Normandy, France, to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, U.S. soldiers will be there, in dozens of ceremonies and many of them in the most dramatic spectacle on the calendar.

The Air Force announced two major awards, awarding Lockheed Martin the contract for its Space Fence program and Raytheon the winner of its Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals (FAB-T) system.

The Pentagon has ambitious plans to develop a prosthetic for the brain that would restore memory functions.

Computer security experts from academia, industry and the larger security community have organized themselves into more than 30 teams to compete in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Cyber Grand Challenge.

Military fast food fans will benefit from the easing of new Labor Department wage rules that threatened to cause the closure of many such eateries on installations.

Solar roadways will not happen anytime soon.

Roller coaster ride looks like a trip out of this planet.

Nice one, nature!

The brand new OS X Yosemite is perhaps the most dramatic redesign of Apple's operating system to date.

List: Bands that make more than $50,000 a show.

What?: Pamela Anderson appears in Morrissey's new spoken-word video.

College radio is dying - and we need to save it.

Preview Dave Grohl's new HBO series, which coincides with a new Foo Fighters album.

Spin names the best albums of the year so far.

IFC's Garfunkel and Oates series premieres in August.

Gangnam Style broke two billion views on YouTube ...

LINK: Original photo by Army Sgt. Dayan Neely

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New research links Iraqi dust to sick soldiers.

The release yesterday of former prisoner of war Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, after a years-long international effort to free him from nearly five years of captivity in Afghanistan, was an important day for U.S. troops and for the United States.

Those who worked for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's release face mounting questions over the prisoner swap that won his freedom.

The Afghan president is angry at being kept in the dark over a deal to free five Taliban leaders in exchange for a captured U.S. soldier, and accuses Washington of failing to back a peace plan for the war-torn country.

Some of the veterans and soldiers who served with Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl call him a deserter whose "selfish act" ended up costing the lives of better men.

The chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs committee has released details of a refashioned bill to address the problems plaguing the federally run veterans' health care system.

Al-Qaida has decentralized, yet it's unclear whether the terrorist network is weaker and less likely to launch a Sept. 11-style attack against the United States, as President Obama says, or remains potent despite the deaths of several leaders.

The Defense Department is pushing for more transparency in providing information on international drone strikes in countries such as Yemen, while still not releasing drone strike data for its continued operations in Afghanistan.

The U.S. defense sector is having a remarkable year on Capitol Hill. In fact, it is batting 1.000 so far, with three of four congressional defense panels protecting weapon programs and adding funds to buy platforms the military didn't even request.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel that oversees defense spending has added funding next year for EA-18 electronic warfare jets, but not A-10 attack planes.

As his West Point speech reaffirmed, President Obama doesn't have his own brand of foreign policy.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's go-to weapon system is not found on any base, in any hangar or aboard any ship. It's a review.

MacArthur Leadership Awards go to 28 officers.

Air Force Academy grad follow sisters - alums of West Point and Annapolis.

Can "Spidey Sense" be taught?

Star Trek is hilariously ridiculous when you eliminate the camera shake.

How to take eye-popping pictures of tiny bugs.

Sad News: Ann B. Davis (Alice from The Brady Bunch) has died.

Only 564 days to go to Star Wars Episode VII.

Cameron's house from Ferris Bueller's Day Off sold (for less than expected).

Arsenio Hall's show has been canceled.

Good morning!

LINK: Original photo by Staff Sgt. Chrissy Best

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At least 100 members of Congress have called for the resignation of Eric Shinseki, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, over mismanagement of veterans' health care, but so far the White House is unmoved.

Hagel says "indispensable" U.S. still not the world's police.

A House bill that passed will restore autonomy to a Gulf War illness board that had been stripped away by the Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year.

U.S. House defense appropriators moved one step closer to approving $570.4 billion in base and war spending for the Pentagon, including funds for an 11th aircraft carrier and electronic-attack planes.

The move to bring all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan at the end of 2016 will mean major cuts in supplemental funding.

Senate Democratic leaders are planning a two-pronged legislative response to the scandal embroiling the Veterans Affairs Department, which has become an issue in several Senate races.

The gap between supply and demand for spy planes just got bigger.

The U.S. Marine Corps cannot meet its amphibious assault needs with its current stable of ship-to-shore connectors.

Problem solvers tackle Army complexity.

There have now been 12 successful coups over the past eight decades of Thailand's modern monarchy. But the latest, on May 22 did not follow the usual script, which runs: lock down Bangkok while the rest of the country watches.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff has rejected the notion that the U.S. is politically exhausted during his visit to the United Arab Emirates this week.

Lockheed Martin reached an agreement to purchase the Space Operations arm of Astrotech, a move that should help the largest defense company in the world grow its launch capabilities.

Virgin Galactic cleared by FAA.

Species of plants and animals are going extinct about 10 times faster than biologists had previously believed.

This terrifying Robo-Raptor will hunt you down at 29 mph.

Led Zeppelin vs. the Beattle: Whole Lotta Helter Skelter

Lukewarm review of Halt and Catch Fire, which premieres Sunday on AMC.

Nice: Dick Van Dyke is still a great dancer.

Cool: The Wonder Years cast has reunited!

The geekiest wedding ever.

List: best sequels of all time

Finally: A GWAR-themed bar.

Finally: Maps of where bars outnumber grocery stores.

Let's call it a day ...

LINK: Original photo by Lance Cpl. Unique Robert