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Robert Serge
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From: gretchen@mail.iava.org
To: booperser@live.com
Subject: IAVA Daily News Brief- July 22, 2014
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 07:48:27 -0600
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IAVA Daily News Brief - Tuesday July 22, 2014
SSG Ryan Pitts receives the Medal of Honor from President Obama. | Twitter >>
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| TODAY'S TOP STORIES |
As The VA Flounders, Community Nonprofits Step In For Veterans
Some 46,000 locally based organizations are serving veterans across the country, and in many cases doing it more effectively than the VA. Using a mix of VA cash and other government grants, corporate gifts, local donations and often drafting volunteers, these groups are providing services to veterans and their families to get their lives back on track - from housing, job training and financial and marital counseling to addiction treatment, short-term loans, car repairs, even baby sitting. | Huffington Post >>Progress on VA reform deal
Members of a committee tasked with reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs have moved slightly closer toward closing a deal, even as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid predicted the committee's failure. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a co-chairman of the House and Senate VA conference committee, said Monday the panel's 14 Senate-members have agreed to offset portions of the reform legislation. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated overhauling the agency could cost around $30 million. | Politico >>
Ryan Pitts on the Medal of Honor: The 'real heroes' are the nine men who died
The ceremony was over and former Staff Sgt. Ryan M. Pitts, the nation's newest Medal of Honor recipient, walked toward the microphones set up in front of the West Wing, his pants bloused over his black boots and the nation's highest award for combat valor draped over his chest. "The real heroes are the nine men who made the ultimate sacrifice so the rest of us could return home," Pitts said quietly, a reference to the nine soldiers who died defending Observation Post Topside beside him in the summer of 2008 in Wanat, Afghanistan. "It is their names, not mine that I want people to know." | Washington Post >>
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| AFGHANISTAN |
A suicide bomber has killed four people, including at least three foreign security guards, in an attack outside Kabul airport, officials say. The Taliban said they carried out the bombing, which targeted a key counter-narcotics building. | BBC >>
A suicide bomber targeted a police convoy in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on Monday, killing two people, a policeman and a civilian, a local official said. | Associated Press >>China does not seek to fill a void left in Afghanistan by the withdrawal of U.S. troops but will play a "huge" commercial role in helping rebuild the country, a newly appointed Chinese special envoy said on Monday. | Reuters >>
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| IRAQ |
Attacks overnight in two Iraqi cities killed at least 16 people, officials said Monday as authorities struggle to stop the Sunni militants' offensive that has left huge areas in northern and western Iraq outside of government control. | Fox News >> Thousands of foreign fighters have bolstered the ranks of militant groups in Syria and Iraq in recent months, according to U.S. officials, driving fresh concern about potential terrorist plots aimed at the United States or its allies. | LA Times >>
Iraq's prime minister on Sunday condemned the Islamic State extremist group's actions targeting Christians in territory it controls, saying they reveal the threat the jihadists pose to the minority community's "centuries-old heritage." | Associated Press >> |
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| MILITARY AFFAIRS |
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is probing a shooting that injured four U.S. servicemembers at Camp Schwab in northeast Okinawa, officials said. | Stars and Stripes >>
Of the millions of veterans who come to the VA for help, Sam Bennett was an unusually difficult case. He was born to a single mother of seven in a two-room shack a few miles down Route 16 from the state prison at Raiford, deep in Florida's interior scrubland. Dad was doing time at Raiford, 17 years. | Huffington Post >> The Montana Army National Guard sent 17 soldiers and two CH-47 Chinook helicopters to Washington state to support wildfire fighting operations. Adjutant General Matthew Quinn says mutual aid agreements between the states allow Montana resources to be used in Washington state. | NBC Montana >>
(Via NBC Montana)
A National Guard soldier was mauled by a brown bear on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson while participating in a training exercise Sunday morning, officials said. A JBER release said the soldier was mauled by a sow defending her cubs - the second such attack in just more than two months on the Anchorage base. | Stars and Stripes >>
The Montana Army National Guard sent 17 soldiers and two CH-47 Chinook helicopters to Washington state to support wildfire fighting operations. Adjutant General Matthew Quinn says mutual aid agreements between the states allow Montana resources to be used in Washington state. | Military Times >>
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| NEW GREATEST GENERATION |
Enjoying the outdoors this time of year is something many enjoy, but for disabled veterans it's impossible because their wheelchairs can't make it over the rough terrain. Fortunately for at least some veterans, a new kind of wheelchair offers more than just mobility. | WDIV Detroit >> It feels like life has come full circle for Joey Odoms. When he was a teenager, he would listen to former Ravens national anthem singer Mishael Miller belt out hymns at his grandmother's church in Baltimore. When he was a soldier in Afghanistan, Odoms met Head Coach John Harbaugh and told him that he wanted to be the Ravens' next national anthem singer. | Baltimore Ravens >>
 (Via Baltimore Ravens )
At first glance, the offices of Lima One Capital could be those of any other downtown Greenville business. Look a little closer, and you'll see titles like "From Navy Blue to Corporate Gray" and the U.S. Army and Marine Corps' "Counterinsurgency Field Manual," bound in OD green, on a bookshelf in the lobby. | The Greenville News >>
An Army veteran who was wounded during the Iraq War is worried a citation will result in him losing his 14 pet ducks, which he says are therapeutic. | Fox News >>
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| INSIDE WASHINGTON |
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says lawmakers tasked with hammering out a bipartisan legislation that would overhaul the Veterans Affairs Department have agreed that budget cuts should help fund any eventual bill. | The Hill >>
New high-tech job training efforts being launched by the White House this week will include veteran-specific programs and placement efforts, Vice President Joe Biden told the Veterans of Foreign Wars annual convention on Monday. | Army Times >>
Vice President Joe Biden on Monday said the Obama administration would continue to press Congress on approving Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Robert McDonald and passing legislation to address problems at the VA. "It's time to get it done now," Biden, speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference in St. Louis, said of legislation on Capitol Hill to reform the VA. "Stop fooling around." | Politico >>
Bob McDonald, President Barack Obama's pick to head up the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs, faces such a hidebound bureaucracy that experts say the way forward is clear: He must clean house. | Stars and Stripes >> |
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A wide range of views, positions and publications are represented in these articles. These views, positions and publications are not endorsed by nor do they necessarily represent the views of IAVA.
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