Top 10 Veterans Stories in Today’s News

Veterans!  Here’s your Top 10 News stories of the day compiled from the latest sources

We encourage you to browse our list so that you can take what you want and keep what you need…..

1. Final destination of Veteran’s nursing home still contested.  St. George Daily Spectrum
   Possible sites residents have offered are located in Ivins, Toquerville, St. George and Cedar City. Meanwhile, the state Veterans Affairs office is prepared to create a nine-member site selection committee that would include two representatives each
2. Experts’ opinions differ on risks posed by Agent Orange sprayed at Ritchie.  The Herald-Mail  Agent Orange is a blend of herbicides that the US military sprayed in Vietnam to remove foliage that provided cover for its enemy, according to the US Department of Veterans Affairs website. It contained minute traces of a compound known as dioxin, …
3. Counseling center for veterans opens today in Jupiter.  Palm Beach Post  By Bill DiPaolo The center, which will be operated by eight full-time employees of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, will offer individual and group outpatient services for combat veterans and their families. The areas of counseling include …
4. Portland website helping veterans with legal questions.  Press Herald  William Russo of the office of general counsel at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, learned about the website from the White House press conference in November. Russo has spread the word about the site, and he believes it will help veterans …
5. Future in limbo for injured Marine seeking release from base.  Bakersfield Californian
   … that income would likely depend on an evaluation of Hines’ disabilities. A separate benefits claim could be filed afterward through the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Says Bikakis, a former Marine: “I hope they can resolve this thing favorably.”
6. Shore Memorial Hospital’s plan to offer dialysis and radiation to veterans. Press of Atlantic City  CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE – Cape May County freeholders on Tuesday endorsed a plan by Shore Memorial Hospital to offer dialysis and radiation treatments to veterans. The Somers Point hospital is seeking permission from the US Department of Veterans Affairs
7. Veterans get mobile access to their eHealth records.  Computerworld By Lucas Mearian Computerworld – The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today announced a new online feature that allows active duty and retired service members to access their electronic health records (EHRs) with the click of a mouse.
8. Fact Check: Where the Most New Veterans Live.  Voice of San Diego At least 28666 veterans from the two conflicts lived in San Diego County as of Feb. 15, the most recent count by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The next highest county, Los Angeles, had at least 17470. Part of the reason federal authorities
9. Veterans could use reinforcements on the home front.  Yakima Herald-Republic The series, titled “Coming Home: The Scars of War,” noted the Walla Walla office of the US Department of Veterans Affairs serves about 2400 or so known Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in Northern Idaho, Eastern Oregon and most of Central Washington.
10. Veterans agent for five local towns to step down.  Milford Daily News However, he also admitted it is a difficult time for service officers, specifically in dealing with the US Department of Veterans Affairs. “We are going through a period of frustration,” he said. “The federal level is unable to adjudicate the claims of

HAVE YOU HEARD?

The National Center for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention now has a newly revised Web Site, www.prevention.va.gov that provides a wealth of information, tips, and resources about Healthy Living for Veterans, VA employees, stakeholders and clinicians. The Web site provides links to resources for Health Care Clinicians, National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention’s newsletters and publications, VHA Prevention Policies and Guidelines, the MOVE! weight management program, My HealtheVet and Healthfinder.gov. It includes featured Hot Topics, calls attention to the latest in prevention news, and provides links to Partnership for Health brochures, which provide information on a range of prevention topics such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure and taking aspirin to help prevent heart attacks for men and strokes for women.

IN OTHER NEWS

• Troops often left to decide whether suspicious activity warrants detention.  The rules regarding the taking of detainees are prescribed generally by ISAF but leave much to the discretion of the commander on the ground. In cases of suspicious materials a commander can detain a suspect if he believes the suspect has weapons or presents a security threat to coalition forces.

• Military dog gets new home, wheelchair.  The first thing you see when you walk into the home of Sgt. Jeffrey Souder and his wife, Jeanne, is the large, friendly German shepherd Irano who greets you.

• Heidelberg’s bunny hunters: Hare today, gone tomorrow.  Three rabbits munch on a sunset snack at Patrick Henry Village, oblivious to a pair of high-beam headlights marking them as targets for an approaching hunter.

• Concern Expressed About Size Of 2012 VA Budget. Army Times While the “Veterans Affairs Department is one of the few federal agencies getting an increase under the proposed 2012 budget,” the “$132 billion request may not go far enough when compared with the needs it is meant to address.

• Blind Iraq Vet Still Serving In US Army. CNN Newsroom Captain Scotty Smiley, the US Army’s “first active blind duty officer,” who lost his sight to a car bomb while serving in Iraq. Smiley, who wrote a book about his experience called “Hope Unseen,” he is a “company commander in charge of over 200 men and women” in a “medical recovery and rehabilitation unit.”

• Iraq Vet Heckled At Meeting On Whether ROTC Should Return To Columbia University. New York Post Columbia University students recently heckled a 28-year-old “war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether” the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) “should be allowed back on campus.” After noting that the object of the heckling was Anthony Maschek, a “Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant” who was “awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008,”

• Troubled Vets Being Helped By Special Courts. Army Times A “veterans treatment court in Tulsa,” Oklahoma, has helped 37-year-old Iraq veteran John Clum, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) before facing the court, which is “like more than 50 others created during the past three years across the nation.” Such courts specialize in “working with troubled veterans to get them counseling, link them to government benefits, help them regain the sense of discipline and camaraderie they had in uniform, and steer them onto a more positive course in life.”

• US Army Aggressively Investigating Sexual Assault Complaints. Army Times “The Army is aggressively investigating sexual assault complaints, the commanding general at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., said Feb. 16 – a day after more than a dozen” US veterans “filed a lawsuit accusing the Pentagon of failing to take their complaints of sexual abuse seriously.”

• National Security Leaders Worry Public Lacks Awareness Of Military Sacrifices. Politico The impact of extended deployments on spouses, children, and troops, noting that “some of Washington’s top national security leaders are worried that Americans don’t know – or worse, don’t care” about such sacrifices, which for some troops has led to struggles with “substance abuse, post-traumatic stress, and devastating physical and mental wounds.” While top “Defense Department officials and other leaders began talking quietly last year about a ‘gap’ or ‘split’ between the military and the general population,” in “recent weeks,” they have “been expressing those concerns more often and more boldly.”

• Former College Basketball Star Helping Wounded Vets. University of Notre Dame Profile of 33-year-old Danielle Green, a “former Notre Dame basketball standout who lost her lower left arm and hand when she was wounded by a rocket-propelled enemy grenade while serving” with the US Army “in the Iraq war in May 2004.” As Green “rebuilds her own life, she is putting her experience to work as a readjustment counselor for the Department of Veterans Affairs, helping fellow service vets cope with the physical and psychological trauma they have encountered on the battlefield.”

• Military Associations Receptive To Tricare Fee Hike. Army Times “The Pentagon’s controversial push to ratchet up health care fees for working-age retirees got a surprisingly warm reception from military associations in Washington, setting the stage for the first fee hike since the Tricare health system” began “15 years ago.”

• Psychiatrist Concerned About VA Rule For PTSD Claims. Washington Post “How could a Veterans Administration rule making it easier for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder to file disability claims be a bad thing? In a ‘Policy Review’ essay called ‘PTSD’s Diagnostic Trap,’ psychiatrist and Yale University School of Medicine lecturer Sally Satel argues that full disability status can undermine the possibility of recovery,” because injured “soldiers can apply for and receive VA disability benefits . . .

• VA Best Practice Helping Homeless Vets Around The Country. Fatherhood Channel “In 2009, a program by the non-profit PAIRS Foundation in collaboration with the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia was selected as Best Practice” by the US VA “for the program’s impact on veterans and family members” affected by combat deployment.

• VA And HUD Issue First-Ever Report On Homeless Veterans. Providence (RI) Journal

• Ease Transition From Military To Civilian Life. Killeen (TX) Daily Herald Jason Alderman, who “directs Visa’s financial education programs,” listed a “few resources to help with the important financial and job-transition decisions” that “retiring and discharged military personnel” may face. Among the resources listed was the “Department of Veterans Affairs’ VetSuccess Program ( www.vetsuccess.gov),” which “provides additional assistance to military personnel released because of service-connected disabilities.

• Wells Fargo To Send Refunds To Troops, Veterans. Army Times
• What Might Happen If Federal Government Shuts Down Again. Washington Post
• As National Cemeteries Expand, More Vets Choose Cremation. Tampa (FL) Tribune
• Volunteers Sought For National Veterans Wheelchair Games. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette