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.   US Navy veteran says he’s gotten ‘very little’ from VA.  Billings Gazette  But, try telling that to the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Bare is one of about 18000 veterans in Montana who do not qualify for health care coverage in the VA system. He is, in government speak, a Priority 8 veteran, defined as men and women who …
2.   Generals Review Suicides, Case By Case. CQ Researcher  “Once a month, four-star Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, convenes a video conference at the Pentagon” to talk about “veterans’ suicide, with each case discussed.” The commanders of those who have died attend the meetings. An aide to Chiarelli “says the meetings are not intended to call anyone on the carpet. Nevertheless, a 350-page report – issued last year under Chiarelli’s direction – did in effect crack the whip on Army commanders,” drawing a “connection between ‘high-risk behavior’ – such as speeding, drug abuse, binge drinking and criminal conduct – and commanders who may be lax about soldiers blowing off steam during wartime.” The report did not find suicides to be clearly linked to repeated deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan, nor did a report published last year by a think tank known as the Rand Corp.
3.   Agent Orange Benefits Go To Vietnam War Veterans. Providence (RI) Journal  “More than $2.2 billion in retroactive benefits has been paid to about 89,000 Vietnam War-era veterans and their survivors who filed claims related to one of three new Agent Orange presumptive conditions, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.” At the end of August, added the Journal, VA “amended its regulations to add ischemic heart disease, hairy-cell leukemia and other chronic B-cell leukemias, and Parkinson’s disease to the list of diseases presumed to be related to exposure to Agent Orange.” The Journal pointed out that for “answers to questions about Agent Orange, veterans may call VA’s special-issues helpline at (800) 749-8387 and press 3.”
4.   Collateral Damage: Judges Say Courts Restore Lives. Fayetteville (NC) Observer “Judges for all three veterans courts The Fayetteville Observer visited this month — in Ionia and East Lansing, Mich., and Mansfield, Ohio, — say their courts are helping rehabilitate veterans and, in some instances, saving their lives.” The Observer adds, “Although federal and state budget cuts have made it harder to get grants to pay for veterans courts, they are starting up across the country faster than drug courts, said Brian Clubb of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.” According to the Observer, veterans court “judges say having a VA official on board helps connect veterans to the VA treatment services they may need.”
5.   New VA Clinic Offers More Services In Bigger Space. Chicago Sun-Times “Married couple Jeremy and Lindsey Lloyd, of Valparaiso, returned home from serving in Afghanistan together a month ago, both with anxiety issues and difficulties adjusting to life back home.” The “Lloyds were among many active service members and veterans seeking help at the new replacement Adam Benjamin Jr. VA Outpatient Clinic in Crown Point on Monday, its opening day. Jill Carley, clinic director at the Crown Point clinic, said the facility is expert at treating post-traumatic stress disorder like the Lloyds are experiencing.” She also said there a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the clinic is planned to be held at 1 p.m. on November 4th.
6.   Army Looks Toward New Ways To Fight The Pain. San Antonio Express-News There is a “growing legion of war veterans suffering from scleroderma, a painful and potentially fatal disease.” Care for the disease is part of The US Army’s “fledgling complementary alternative medicine program.” The program is “another option for GIs who have returned from combat with pain from a variety of wounds and illnesses, for whom the Army has spent billions on drugs that have resulted in complications, dependency, abuse and even accidental deaths and suicides.”
7.   Roseburg VA Seeks To Improve Women Veteran Care. Roseburg (OR) News-Review The Roseburg Veterans Affairs Medical Center “has been criticized by veterans groups, such as the Douglas County Veterans Forum, for inadequately serving the needs of women veterans. But now the hospital is making major strides in improving women’s health care, said Marcia Hall, manager of veteran care for women.” The News-Review adds, “Improvements to the Roseburg VA’s women’s clinic could not come at a better time, Hall said,” because there is an more young women are coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
8.   VA Breaks Ground On $27M Building In Oakland. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review In Oakland, Pennsylvania, on Monday, the “VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System broke ground…on a $27.3 million building that will allow researchers to develop better care, therapies and devices for wounded veterans. ‘This new facility will be the future site of clinical studies and medical breakthroughs carried out with one grand purpose – to offer groundbreaking, outstanding healthcare to our nation’s heroes, said Terry Gerigk Wolf,” who directs the Pittsburgh VA. The project, according to the Tribune-Review, is “part of a plan to close the VA Division on Highland Drive by 2014 and consolidate the system into the University Drive Division in Oakland and the Heinz Division near Aspinwall.”
9.  VA Garners Beyond The Call Award. Lebanon (PA) Daily News “In previous years, the Lebanon Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Beyond the Call award has been presented to members of the business community who have gone above and beyond in their support for the military. This year’s award went to an organization whose sole purpose is to support military veterans” — the Lebanon Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The hospital’s director, Robert Callahan Jr., commented on the news, stating, “We’re just incredibly happy and pleased to be honored” with the award. He added, “At the Lebanon VA, we have over 200 that are current active-duty folks that continue to serve, and it’s just our pleasure to be able to honor them. It’s veterans serving veterans.” According to the Daily News, the “award was presented Friday morning at the chamber’s second annual Military Affairs Breakfast at the Keystone Conference Center.”
10.  VA Purchases 4.4 Acres From Silver Cross, Will Open Hines Clinic. Nurse The Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Affairs Hospital “plans to open an outpatient clinic for veterans after the US Department of Veterans Affairs agreed to purchase 4.4 acres from the Silver Cross Healthy Community Commission in Joliet, Ill. Silver Cross Hospital plans to move into a new building in nearby New Lenox on Feb. 26, 2012.” The VA hospital is “purchasing a portion of its existing campus” and “plans to open its VA outpatient clinic after remodeling the building, with a target date of March 2013.”

More Veteran News

•  Veterans Cemetery To Expand Under $3.4 Million Grant. Las Vegas Review-Journal A $3.4 million grant from the US Department of Veterans Affairs will allow the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery to expand by 17.3 acres. Caleb Cage, executive director of the state Office of Veterans Affairs, said, “We are extremely grateful for the National Cemetery Administration for recognizing the caliber of our cemetery by investing in our future in this way.”  AP  Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval “announced the grant Monday, and said the federal funding will cover 100 percent of allowable costs for the project.” The money, according to the AP, will “fund the construction of an administration building, roads, a committal shelter, cremains burial areas, landscaping and supporting infrastructure. Covering about 17 acres, the construction will include 4,801 cremains burial plots.”

• Patterson Welcomes VA Settlement In Houston. Gilmer (TX) Mirror On Monday, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson “welcomed news that Texas veterans and their families will once again be free to worship as they choose at the Houston National Cemetery. According to reports, the US Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to settle a lawsuit over allegations of religious censorship at Houston National Cemetery. ‘This is the right decision,’ Patterson said,” adding, “Once again, it was veterans who stood up to fight for the Constitutional liberties we all enjoy, this time it was in court and not on the battlefield.”

•  Many Physicians Feel They’re Delivering Too Much Care. Wall Street Journal According to a study authored by Brenda Sirovich, a staff physician and research associate in the Outcomes Group at the Veterans Affairs hospital in White River Junction, Vermont, 42% of 627 primary-care doctors surveyed in 2009 believed their patients were getting too much care, while only six percent believed their patients were getting too little care. Fifty-two percent of the respondents thought their patients were getting the right amount of care. The Journal quotes Sirovich, who said that “as a profession and as a society, it’s good for us to think about doing a better job of educating patients and the public that more care isn’t necessarily better.”

• Pittsburgh Has Oldest Medicare Population, Yet South Fla. Spends Nearly Double. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “Doctors and hospital administrators interviewed cited a variety of factors for Miami’s boom in health care businesses: a growing pool of specialty physicians; and fraud and corruption surrounding the Medicare program.” Linda Quick, president of the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association, said medical specialists have come to Miami “thinking this was going to be a blank check for old people’s health care.” The Tribune-Review added, “Indeed, 47 percent of doctors in high-spending regions, such as Miami, reported seeing patients with high blood pressure every three months, compared with just 19 percent in low-spending areas, according to a study in Health Affairs by Dr. Brenda Sirovich, an internist and researcher” at the Veterans Affairs medical center in White River Junction, Vermont

•  VA Enlists Employees In Its Social Media Outreach. Ragan “When you represent an organization with 310,000 employees providing services to 9 million clients, communication can be a challenge.” The US Department of Veterans Affairs, however, has “built a social media program that encourages its staff nationwide to spread the word about its services to former soldiers, sailors and marines.” In order to meet VA’s stated goal of “getting the right information to the right veteran at the right time,” a “policy released last month endorsed the use of social media tools” by VA “employees to enhance communication, exchange information and streamline processes.” Lauren Bailey, VA’s acting deputy director of online communications, told Ragan that what VA wanted its employees “to be able to leverage all this new and cool technology that they might be using in their private lives to deal directly with veterans and other stakeholders.”

• Medal Of Honor Recipient Allowed To Apply For FDNY. NBC Nightly News Dakota Meyer is the “latest recipient of the Medal of Honor.” The “young Marine…saved 36 men by disobeying orders in the midst of a six-hour firefight that took out his entire platoon.” Now, the Afghanistan wants to be a New York City firefighter. The Fire Department of New York FDNY “was willing to reopen the application window to allow this brave young man to join up.”

• America’s Hidden Wars. Forbes “Six years ago, photographer Suzanne Opton began photographing the faces of soldiers heading off to war and between tours of duty in the Middle East: large, oversized heads, reclining, eyes staring into somewhere we can’t see – like lovers, says Opton, or the dead.” This week, a “book of images from the soldier project will be published together with a more recent series, ‘Many Wars,’ for which the photographer focused her camera on veterans of more than 60 years of American wars, all in treatment for combat trauma” at a Veterans Affairs “hospital in Vermont. Each image in this breathtaking – and heartbreaking – group of portraits is accompanied by a brief text about the soldier, and a short interview.”

•  W.Va. Man Who Posed As Army General To Land 6-Figure Job In Ohio Gets 2-Plus Years In Prison.  AP  Randall Keyser was sentenced to more than two years in prison for posing “as an Army general to try to land a six-figure construction management job.” Additionally, “Keyser must get mental-health treatment after his release.” Keyser had pleaded guilty to wire and mail fraud. Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer “Assistant US Attorney Rebecca Lutzko presented evidence at the sentencing hearing that showed Keyser had also impersonated a military officer when pursuing jobs in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Alabama.” During the sentencing, “US District Judge Don Nugent said Keyser’s case ‘kind of cries out’ for a sentence beyond federal guidelines.”

• Military Children Honored At Sandpiper Elementary. South Florida Sun-Sentinel “At Sandpiper Elementary School, a special program was organized to honor Broward County children of military families. ‘Our children have also served when a parent is deployed,’ Sherrill Valdes of the Veterans Administration told the audience.” Valdes “then said to the children, ‘You are a member of a very special family.'”

•  Brain Scans Paint Picture Of What The Mind’s Eye Sees. TechNewsWorld Scientists at UC Berkeley’s Gallant Lab have “used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reconstruct movies subjects watched by reading their brain activity.” The “‘more detail that we can learn about the anatomy of the brain, and about the functional anatomy of the brain, the greater the insight it will provide to us,’ Joe Rizzo, a professor at the Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Innovative Visual Rehabilitation at the VA Boston Healthcare System’s JP Campus, told TechNewsWorld. ‘That kind of information could be useful in visual rehabilitation,’ Rizzo added.”

• Veterans Gala Accents War Heroism. Buffalo News

• Navy Veteran Works To Keep National Social Club Afloat. Rockford (IL) Register-Star

•  Nisei Veterans To Receive Gold Medal On Nov. 2; Three-Day Celebration Planned. Rafu Shimpo