Yahoo! News: Iraq

1st US penis transplant could raise hope for maimed soldiers
Benghazi Investigation Produces More Infighting and Few Results
Penis operation highlights past, future of organ transplants
Clinton’s Most Important Weapon in Her Battle Against Trump
Pope criticizes West for trying to export own brand of democracy to Iraq, Libya
Newly leaked internal newsletters give rare glimpse inside the NSA
Why 100-year-old borders drawn by two Europeans still define the Middle East
How T. Boone Pickens would get America out of the Middle East
IS has lost nearly half the area it once claimed in Iraq: Pentagon
IS blasts rock Syria gas field: monitor
The First Penis Transplant in the U.S.
How Did the 'Secret' Sykes-Picot Agreement Become Public?
Trump Takes on British Politicians
French thinker Bernard-Henri Levy goes to war against IS
UN urges Greece to address migrant detention woes
Bloodshed blurs Middle East borders set 100 years ago by UK-French pact
U.S., allies stage 14 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq, Syria: U.S. military
Iraq launches operation to retake Anbar town
Oil price ultra-bear Goldman Sachs turns mildly bullish
Turkey and US-led coalition hit IS group in Syria
Germany puts refugees to work... for one euro
Cannes Adds Bernard-Henri Levy's 'Peshmerga' to Official Selection
On more than one issue, GOP's Trump sounds like a Democrat
US envoy in anti-IS battle: 'perverse caliphate' shrinking
New website helps Germans and migrants meet, talk about life

1st US penis transplant could raise hope for maimed soldiers

Posted: 16 May 2016 03:19 PM PDT

A 64-year-old cancer patient has received the nation's first penis transplant, a groundbreaking operation that may also help accident victims and some of the many U.S. veterans maimed by roadside bombs. ...

Benghazi Investigation Produces More Infighting and Few Results

Posted: 16 May 2016 03:19 PM PDT

On Sunday Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, sent a scathing letter to the committee's Republican chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, complaining of "repeated, unnecessary, and ever-changing demands from the Department of Defense." Cummings accused Republicans of ignoring statements from their own chief counsel, Lt. Gen. Dana Chipman, a retired 3-star general, who appears to think the U.S. military response on the night of the attack was appropriate. Gowdy is seeking a number of witnesses from the Defense Department who he feels may offer new testimony about the U.S. military's actions on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, which left a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead.

Penis operation highlights past, future of organ transplants

Posted: 16 May 2016 02:46 PM PDT

CHICAGO (AP) — Add one remarkable case to the 30,000-plus organ transplants expected to be performed nationwide this year: A cancer patient who received a donor penis.

Clinton’s Most Important Weapon in Her Battle Against Trump

Posted: 16 May 2016 01:49 PM PDT

Although she is tantalizingly close to wrapping up her drive for the Democratic nomination, rival Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to keep her off stride with late-inning primary victories, as he did recently in Indiana and West Virginia and is threating to do again on Tuesday in Kentucky and Oregon. In a searing assessment of the former secretary of state's prospects as her party's standard bearer, The Washington Post on Sunday quoted more than a dozen Clinton allies concerned that she has stumbled badly in adapting to the anti-establishment mood sweeping the country. While Trump may begin the general election campaign with some of the highest negative numbers of any candidate in modern times, Clinton is not far behind.

Pope criticizes West for trying to export own brand of democracy to Iraq, Libya

Posted: 16 May 2016 01:45 PM PDT

Pope Francis criticized Western powers for trying to export their own brand of democracy to countries such as Iraq and Libya without respecting indigenous political cultures, according to an interview published on Monday. Speaking to France's Roman Catholic newspaper, La Croix, Francis also said Europe should better integrate migrants and praised the election of the new Muslim mayor of London as an example of where this had been successful. "Faced with current Islamist terrorism, we should question the way a model of democracy that was too Western was exported to countries where there was a strong power, as in Iraq, or Libya, where there was a tribal structure," he said.

Newly leaked internal newsletters give rare glimpse inside the NSA

Posted: 16 May 2016 01:13 PM PDT

Whether it's scuba diving in Guantanamo Bay, or listening in on the phone calls of Russian mobsters, the NSA's internal newsletter shares its agents' activities. And thanks to Edward Snowden, we can read up on all of it.

Why 100-year-old borders drawn by two Europeans still define the Middle East

Posted: 16 May 2016 12:32 PM PDT

One December morning in 1915, with World War I not yet 18 months old, a young diplomat stalked into the offices of the British prime minister in London, carrying with him a map and a bold plan for the future of the Middle East once the allies had defeated Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Britain, he said, would retain control of the territory to the south of the line, while the French would have Greater Syria north of the line. Recommended: Think you know the Greater Middle East?

How T. Boone Pickens would get America out of the Middle East

Posted: 16 May 2016 12:31 PM PDT

The famed oilman thinks it's finally time for the United States to become energy-independent.

IS has lost nearly half the area it once claimed in Iraq: Pentagon

Posted: 16 May 2016 12:21 PM PDT

The Islamic State group has continued losing control over territory across Iraq and Syria, a Pentagon spokesman said Monday, including almost half of what it had once held in Iraq. The Defense Department had previously estimated that IS fighters had lost control of about 40 percent of the territory they claimed in Syria and about 10 percent of the land they held in Syria.

IS blasts rock Syria gas field: monitor

Posted: 16 May 2016 11:43 AM PDT

Powerful blasts rocked a key gas field in central Syria on Monday, with a monitor saying they were caused by the Islamic State group blowing up pumping stations. The Shaer gas field -- one of the biggest in the central province of Homs -- has been the site of fierce fighting between IS jihadists and Syrian government loyalists. "There were three huge explosions there carried out by IS on Monday," said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The First Penis Transplant in the U.S.

Posted: 16 May 2016 11:27 AM PDT

A man in Massachusetts has become the first person in the United states to have a penis transplant. The patient was Thomas Manning, a 64-year-old whose penis was amputated because of cancer. Massachusetts General Hospital made the announcement Monday that a team of a dozen surgeons and about 30 health-care workers, led by Dr. Curtis L. Cetrulo and Dr. Dicken Ko, performed the procedure last Friday.

How Did the 'Secret' Sykes-Picot Agreement Become Public?

Posted: 16 May 2016 10:56 AM PDT

Soon after coming to power, the Bolsheviks printed the text in Pravda —not the last time the Russians would play spoiler to Western efforts to control events in Syria and Iraq.

Trump Takes on British Politicians

Posted: 16 May 2016 10:32 AM PDT

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been agitating U.S. allies abroad for months now with his calls for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., promises to re-assess longtime strategic partnerships, and seeming embrace of authoritarian rulers like Russia's Vladimir Putin. Trump continued to voice his support for the movement in the United Kingdom to extricate the country from the European Union -- a position that puts Trump directly at odds with the government of Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as U.S. President Barack Obama. "A lot of the migration and a lot of the acceptance of people is because of the European Union, I think that's been a disaster," he said.

French thinker Bernard-Henri Levy goes to war against IS

Posted: 16 May 2016 08:38 AM PDT

The globe-trotting French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy made a dramatic late entry into the Cannes film festival Monday with a "close-up look" at the Kurds' battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq.

UN urges Greece to address migrant detention woes

Posted: 16 May 2016 08:26 AM PDT

Greece must regulate and improve conditions for thousands of migrants -- many of them children -- detained in camps for weeks as they wait for asylum under a sketchy EU-Turkey deal, a UN human rights official said Monday. "The perceived lack of information, plus overcrowding, creates confusion, frustration, episodes of violence, fear," Francois Crepeau, the United Nations' special rapporteur on migrant human rights, told reporters. In a written statement, Crepeau also urged Greece to "renounce the idea" of detaining migrants for long periods except in cases of documented danger to others or flight risks.

Bloodshed blurs Middle East borders set 100 years ago by UK-French pact

Posted: 16 May 2016 07:50 AM PDT

By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A century after Britain and France secretly mapped out a Middle East they would control upon defeating the Ottomans in World War One, its borders have been blurred by sectarian bloodshed - and some in the region see opportunity in the chaos. Nowhere is this more felt than over Syria and Iraq, whose territories diplomats Mark Sykes of Britain and Francois Georges-Picot of France broadly demarcated with pen strokes in the May 16, 1916 pact, and which are now riven by the advances of Islamic State insurgents and Sunni-Shi'ite infighting. The Sykes-Picot centennial has occasioned conferences and policy papers in Israel.

U.S., allies stage 14 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq, Syria: U.S. military

Posted: 16 May 2016 04:58 AM PDT

The United States and its allies conducted 14 strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on Sunday, the coalition leading the operations said. In a statement released on Monday, the Combined Joint Task Force said six strikes near four cities in Syria struck three tactical units and a financial headquarters and destroyed a vehicle, a rocket rail and four fighting positions. In Iraq, eight strikes near five cities denied access to terrain, suppressed a mortar position and destroyed a bunker, an artillery piece and two vehicles, among other targets, the statement said.

Iraq launches operation to retake Anbar town

Posted: 16 May 2016 04:14 AM PDT

Iraqi security forces and allied fighters launched an operation on Monday to retake the town of Rutba from the Islamic State jihadist group, the military said. Special forces, soldiers, police, border guards and pro-government paramilitaries are involved in the operation to retake the Anbar province town, Iraq's Joint Operations Command said in a statement. Tanks and artillery are taking part in the operation, which is also backed by air support from Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition against IS, it said.

Oil price ultra-bear Goldman Sachs turns mildly bullish

Posted: 16 May 2016 04:13 AM PDT

(Reuters) - U.S. bank Goldman Sachs, one of the most bearish forecasters on oil over the past year, on Monday raised its short-term price outlook as it said the market had flipped into a deficit due to production outages in Nigeria and Canada. Goldman, one of the most active banks in commodities, had been predicting as recently as a few months ago that oil prices could fall below $20 a barrel due to global oversupply. "The oil market has gone from nearing storage saturation to being in deficit much earlier than we expected," Goldman said.

Turkey and US-led coalition hit IS group in Syria

Posted: 16 May 2016 03:08 AM PDT

ISTANBUL (AP) — A Turkish news agency says Turkish shelling and air strikes by the U.S.-led military coalition killed 27 Islamic State militants in Syria.

Germany puts refugees to work... for one euro

Posted: 16 May 2016 01:36 AM PDT

From 6:30 to 8 pm, he is employed by the city of Berlin to dish out dinner to 152 other Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and Moldovan refugees in a sports hall, which had been turned into an emergency shelter for the newcomers. The so-called "one-euro jobs" have been touted as a springboard for the newcomers into Germany's job market, but experts remain sceptical about their effectiveness.

Cannes Adds Bernard-Henri Levy's 'Peshmerga' to Official Selection

Posted: 15 May 2016 09:00 PM PDT

"This film, which we have just discovered, offers a close-up look at the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters," festival organizers said in unveiling the special screening of the documentary.

On more than one issue, GOP's Trump sounds like a Democrat

Posted: 15 May 2016 05:01 PM PDT

NEW YORK (AP) — As he tries to charm Republicans still skeptical of his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump has a challenge: On several key issues, he sounds an awful lot like a Democrat.

US envoy in anti-IS battle: 'perverse caliphate' shrinking

Posted: 15 May 2016 02:22 PM PDT

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — The Obama administration's diplomatic point man in the fight against the Islamic State group said Sunday that the extremists have been losing control over territory and that "this perverse caliphate is shrinking."