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. Understanding veterans’ benefits.  Providence Journal  More than 25 million US military veterans are alive today, and about 70 million veterans, family members and related survivors are potentially eligible for Department of Veterans Affairs benefits. The VA and state and local government agencies offer

2. Open Forum: American Legion supports veterans.  Brainerd Daily Dispatch  Minnesota has a national reputation as a veteran-friendly state, and our programs to bring our veterans home and ensure that they and their families prosper is second to none. Recently we heard Gov. Dayton and the leadership of both houses say that

3. There’s more to Veterans Commission allocation than fact that it’s an increase.  Canton Repository  These funds are set aside to assist military veterans in obtaining and retaining county, state and federal benefits. Reports released last year by the US Department of Veterans Affairs shows that from 2005 to 2009, the Stark County Veterans Service

4. Vets clinic a reality.  Daily Iberian  Local veterans are encouraging their fellow servicemen and women to keep abreast and stay informed as the project progresses. In a press release last week, US Rep. Jeff Landry said he received notice from the US Department of Veteran Affairs stating

5. New program to give homeless female veterans a Welcome Home.  The Herald-Mail
The US Department of Veterans Affairs and the US Department of Labor will provide funding for the program once the building has been renovated. The Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs will provide assistance where necessary, Rose said.

6. Veterans may qualify for property tax deductions.  Journal and Courier … IN veterans: A $12480 deduction is available to veterans who: (1) served at least 90 days of honorable service and are totally disabled (not necessarily service-connected but the disability must be evidenced by a US Department of Veterans Affairs …

7. Shinseki Promises Better Care For Troops. Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer “Secretary of Veteran Affairs Eric Shinseki testified last Wednesday that his office would work to improve how veterans returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are treated.” Shinseki’s comments to the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on military construction and veterans affairs “coincide with Rep. Sanford Bishop’s push to get…VA to improve its treatments of vets.

8. Mall Memorial Plan Ends With Missing Money. Washington Times The Black Patriots Foundation was to raise money to build a memorial on the Mall honoring blacks who fought in the Revolutionary War. Congress “authorized the US Mint to issue a commemorative coin to jump-start fundraising,” but that money has disappeared. While the Treasury Department’s office of inspector general reported there was “a lack of oversight on the part of the US Mint and widespread abuses by the foundation,” no “administrative sanctions were issued, no one faced charges and the money was deemed irretrievable.”

9. Preventing Suicide Among Servicemembers And Veterans. ABC News In Boston recently, “Dr. Janet Kemp, national director of the Suicide Prevention Hotline at the Department of Veterans Affairs,” and 1,100 others attended a “suicide prevention conference” hosted by VA and the Department of Defense. There is also a “National Veterans Crisis Hotline in Canandaigua, N.Y. There have been some 400,000 since the center first opened in July, 2007 and many of those calls result in rescues.”

10. April Mobile Veterans Center Schedule. Wayne (PA) Independent There was an announcement that the April schedule for visits to Tunkhannock by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ mobile veterans center, which provides services to veterans and their families.” The center is “scheduled to visit the area of the Route 29 and Route 6 bypass in Tunkhannock (across the street from Gay’s True Value) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, April 4. It will be available at Boback’s office, located at 6 Cross Country Complex in Tunkhannock, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, April 18.”

HAVE YOU HEARD?

Photo Collection: Women in Uniform, WWII – Present

In honor of Women’s History Month, VA is celebrating the accomplishments of female service members. In doing so, we used Facebook, Twitter, and the VA blog to collect 170 photos of women in uniform. View the photos

 

IN OTHER NEWS

• VA Doc Fired For Forwarding Political Emails. AP A doctor at the US Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix, is “losing his job because he forwarded to co-workers an email from a staffer for Sen. John McCain.” The 74-year-old Bagdade is the “fourth federal employee fired in the past two years for violating the 1939 law that generally bars federal employees from political activity at work.”

• Local Summit Examines Veterans’ Issues. Dutchess (NY) Sound & Town During a panel discussion last Tuesday, “experts in veterans affairs and advocacy from throughout the region” discussed “how well the community is providing for returning military veterans. ‘I think we do a remarkable job taking care of veterans,’ said Gerald Culliton, director of the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in the Hudson Valley,” although he added, “I need the community to help me get these veterans into the system.”

• Asking Military Retirees To Pay A Bit More For Health Care Is Reasonable. Washington Post Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is “correct” in saying “the spiraling cost of the health-care system for military personnel, retirees and their families” is “simply unsustainable,” and he is “correct to press for modest increases in premiums paid by those covered by the system, known as Tricare.”

• Arlington Cemetery Struggles With Old Reservations. Washington Post “Officials at Arlington National Cemetery – still unable to fully account for who is buried where at the nation’s premier military resting place – are struggling to determine who has reserved plots and whether some of those gravesites are already in use. Years of sloppy recordkeeping have left officials with no reliable data on how many reservations have been made” for Arlington plots.

• Nebraska Couple Create Photo Exhibits Of US War Dead. Reuters Creators of a traveling photo exhibit for 98 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are putting together similar exhibits for various states in America. The first exhibit showed photos of fallen soldiers from Nebraska and western Iowa.

• Conference To Honor Indiana’s Women Veterans Often Considered Forgotten.AP “Indiana women who served in World War II, Vietnam and other wars will converge on Indianapolis in April for a conference honoring their service to the nation. Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs Director Tom Applegate says the state began holding such conferences in 2007 because many women veterans did not even consider themselves veterans.”

• Alaska Business People. Anchorage Daily News (3/21) “Elizabeth Baltensperger, LCSW, is the new Women Veterans Program manager” for the Alaska Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. Baltensperger is “responsible for executing planning for women veterans’ health issues that improves the overall quality of care provided to women veterans, and for achieving program goals.”

• America’s Deadliest Nuke Disaster. Newsweek “In a scattering of graveyards around” the US, are “three bizarre tombs, each of which holds a lead-lined coffin buried extra-deep and covered with many feet of concrete.” Those “graves hold the still highly radioactive remains of three young servicemen, named Richard Legg, John Byrnes, and Richard McKinley, who died in this country’s only fatal nuclear accident-a total fuel meltdown that occurred when an atomic reactor went suddenly and disastrously critical” at “what was then known as the National Reactor Testing Station in eastern Idaho.”

• La Mesa Veterans, Are You Still Renting? The La Mesa (CA) Patch

• The Hartford Nabs VA Exec From Jackson. Investment News

• Shamrocks For Soldiers. Straus News