TODAY’S TOP STORIES
Kevlar for the Mind: Talk therapy’s promise for PTSD
Developing effective treatments for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder is a main focus of psychiatric research. To date, results have been modest at best. This is unfortunate and disappointing considering the millions of dollars that have been funneled into civilian and governmental research labs. | Military Times >>

VA: Files containing personal information thrown in trash
Officials with the Department of Veterans Affairs in the Black Hills said this week they’re taking steps to notify veterans affected by an information breach caused by an employee who accidentally threw away personnel files on its Hot Springs campus. | Associated Press >>

Cardiologist details troubles at Chicago-area VA hospital
A cardiologist who worked at a Chicago-area Veterans Affairs hospital says the facility had a yearlong backlog of unread heart tests. Lisa Nee testified Thursday at a Senate hearing on claims against the Department of Veterans Affairs. U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois chaired the Senate subcommittee hearing. | Associated Press >>

AFGHANISTAN
At the Taliban meeting this week where Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was named as the Islamist militant group’s new head, several senior figures in the movement, including the son and brother of late leader Mullah Omar, walked out in protest. | Reuters >>

The new leader of the Afghan Taliban vowed to continue his group’s bloody, nearly 14-year insurgency in an audio message released Saturday, urging his fighters to remain unified after the death of their longtime leader. | Associated Press >>

The first signs of the deep fractures within the Afghan Taliban surfaced on Friday as the son of Mullah Mohammad Omar rejected the choice of his successor, just hours after the group issued a statement praising their new leader as one of the late chief’s most “trusted” associates. | Army Times >>

IRAQ
Iraq’s embattled Kurds feel trapped by the resurgent conflict between Turkey and the militant Kurdish PKK movement and would like to see both sides return to the negotiating table, Iraqi Kurdistan’s foreign minister told reporters here Friday. | Huffington Post >>

The United States and its allies launched 19 air strikes in Iraq and 11 in Syria on Friday in the coalition campaign against Islamic State militants, the U.S. military said on Saturday. The strikes in Iraq included six near Mosul, four near Ramadi and three near Sinjar, destroying staging areas, fighting positions, tactical units and other Islamic State targets, the Combined Joint Task Force said in a statement. | Reuters >>

After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 extremist fighters killed, the Islamic State group is fundamentally no weaker than it was when the U.S.-led bombing campaign began a year ago, American intelligence agencies have concluded. | Fox News>>

MILITARY AFFAIRS
According to the new book, Combat-Ready Kitchen: How The U.S. Military Shapes The Way You Eat, many of the packaged, processed foods we find in today’s supermarkets started out as science experiments in an Army laboratory. The foodstuffs themselves, or the processes that went into making them, were originally intended to serve as combat rations for soldiers out in the battlefield. | NPR >>

Two of the three female Ranger School students and 125 male students will move on to Florida this weekend after successfully completing the course’s 20-day Mountain Phase. The third female student, along with 60 male classmates, will recycle the Mountain Phase at Camp Merrill in Dahlonega, Georgia, the Army said Friday. They will re-start the Mountain Phase on Aug. 8. | Army Times >>

The Navy’s newest nuclear-powered attack submarine joined the fleet Saturday, with top Navy officials saying that it couldn’t come soon enough with ever-increasing demands from combatant commanders. | Washington Times >>

#VETSRISING
For Price, a retired medic with the Utah Army National Guard who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, being in the water with a rod and reel in hand brings healing he hasn’t found elsewhere. “When I first stood in the water, for the first time in years I felt peace, real peace,” Price recalls of his initial foray into fly-fishing.” I had given up that peace was possible.” | Daily Herald >>

Veterans and active duty servicemen hit home run after home run Saturday evening when they took the field as the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team. Players have lost limbs in combat, several in Afghanistan and Iraq. But to the team, life without limbs is limitless. | Burlington Free Press >>

An area police officer and Iraqi war veteran has a new mission these days: rescuing neglected, abused, and abandoned dogs. There are times in life when we all need a helping hand.For Paul Poulos, after a decade on active duty in Iraq, that hand turned out to be a paw. | WFMJ Ohio >>

INSIDE WASHINGTON
President Obama on Thursday tapped the former top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee to take over as the top veterans employment official in the Labor Department. Mike Michaud, who served for 12 years as a Democratic congressman from Maine before a failed gubernatorial bid in 2014, will take over as the assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training post, pending Senate confirmation. | Military Times >>

A doctor who blew the whistle on problems at the Veteran Affairs hospital in Phoenix testified Thursday that some things have improved since last year’s revelations, but there is still work to be done. | Tucson Sentinel >>

The Veterans Affairs Department could start processing applications for the new veteran identification card by the second half of September. Created by an act of Congress last month, the card is intended as a way for veterans to prove they served in the military without having to carry around and present a DD-214, Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty. | Military.com >>