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WASHINGTON (AP) — Transgender people will now be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military. Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement today at the Pentagon, saying it's the right thing to do. He said "Americans who want to serve and can meet our standards should be afforded the opportunity to compete to do so." Carter laid out a one-year plan to implement the change which will end one of the last bans on service in the military.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's Defense Ministry is releasing footage showing airstrikes on dozens of vehicles described as a convoy of Islamic State fighters fleeing the western city of Fallujah following its recapture by the Iraqi military. Scores of militants are thought to have been killed in the airstrikes. Authorities in Iraq are praising the operation. They say it was carried out exclusively by the Iraqi military using "more than 20 helicopters."
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A video obtained by the a Turkish newspaper (Haberturk) shows a man being shot purportedly during Tuesday's triple suicide bombing at the Istanbul airport that killed 44 people and wounded hundreds. Turkish media report the man was a plainclothes police officer who asked one of the suicide bombers for identification and was subsequently shot. The Turkish government is blaming the airport attack on Islamic State militants.
JERUSALEM (AP) — State Department spokesman John Kirby is calling the stabbing death of a Israeli-American teenager "unconscionable." A 17-year-old Palestinian youth sneaked into a fortified Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Thursday, broke into a home and stabbed to death the 13-year-old girl as she slept in bed before security guards arrived and killed him. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says. "The entire world needs to condemn this murder."
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Brad Paisley says he's shocked and heartbroken by the destruction from deadly flooding in his home state of West Virginia. Today, the singer visited Clendenin, a town of 1,200 people ravaged by the swollen Elk River last week. Paisley is hoping to raise $1 million for flood-recovery efforts and has given $100,000 of his own money toward that cause. Six people in Kanawha (KUH-naw) County died and 23 were killed statewide.
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