Restaurants Recognize U.S. Military Veterans

Restaurants Recognize U.S. Military Veterans
Golden Corral

Applebees

McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants Recognize U.S. Military Veterans on
November 8
Seafood Industry Leader Continues 11-Year Tradition of Honoring Veterans with
a Complimentary Entree




PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- For the 11th straight year,
McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants (Nasdaq: MSSR) will host its
Veterans Appreciation Event on Sunday, November 8, at participating
restaurants across the country. As part of the celebration, McCormick &
Schmick's will offer U.S. military veterans a complimentary entree in
appreciation for their service to our country.

"As we enter the second decade of this program, we are privileged to honor the
men and women who have bravely served our country," said Bill Freeman, CEO of
McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants. "McCormick & Schmick's is a great
place to celebrate with friends and family over a delicious meal and we're
proud to keep this tradition alive in each of our restaurants."

McCormick & Schmick's is known for its fresh seafood and the special menu for
the Veterans Appreciation Event will be no exception. Veterans will be able to
choose a complimentary lunch or dinner entree on November 8. Some of the
mouth-watering selections include Cashew-Crusted Tilapia, Grilled Atlantic
Salmon, Seafood Fettuccini Alfredo and Cedar-Planked Salmon, to name a few.
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Restaurants Recognize U.S. Military Veterans

Coast Guard plane and a Marine Corps helicopter collided off California coast

Military aircraft collide off Calif. coast

THOMAS WATKINS - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Oct 30, 2009 8:03:16 EDT

LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy were searching for as many as nine people off the Southern California coast following a collision between a Coast Guard plane and a Marine Corps helicopter, officials said.

The crash was reported at 7:10 p.m. Thursday, about 50 miles off the San Diego County coast and 15 miles east of San Clemente Island, Coast Guard spokeswoman Petty Officer Allyson Conroy said.

A pilot reported seeing a fireball near where the aircraft collided, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said, and the Coast Guard informed the FAA that debris from a C-130 plane had been spotted. Seven people were on board the plane, and two people were aboard the helicopter, he said.
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/ap_midair_collision_103009/

In pre-dawn darkness, Obama salutes victims of war

President Obama witnessed the return to U.S. soil of the bodies of 18 Americans killed in Afghanistan, an experience he called "sobering." (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/associated Press)

In pre-dawn darkness, Obama salutes victims of war
By Michael Fletcher and Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 2009

On Wednesday, President Obama started his day in the Oval Office as he always does, with intelligence and economic advisers alerting him to trouble spots and bits of improvement. He ended it 20 hours later, after a surprise trip to Dover Air Force Base, where he witnessed the return of 18 Americans killed this week in Afghanistan.

His day already had been crowded. By nightfall, the president had appeared in public five times. He honored a Senate pioneer, named an opponent to a panel, signed the defense bill, planted a tree and held a reception for a crowd jubilant over a new law. He made jokes, offered embraces, posed for photos, spoke firmly. He had dinner with his two girls, on the eve of their first Halloween in Washington. His wife was in New York at the first World Series game.

All the while, he knew the most sober and grim public duty of his new presidency awaited him after midnight.
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In pre-dawn darkness, Obama salutes victims of war

Slain soldier from Fort Lewis wanted to make a difference

Waltz family photo

Slain soldier from Fort Lewis, Vancouver 'wanted to make a difference'
Ian Walz, a Vancouver, Wash., man who was thrilled when Barack Obama was elected president, was killed Tuesday along with six other Fort Lewis soldiers in an improvised explosive attack in southern Afghanistan.

By John Branton and Dave Kern

Columbian (Vancouver) staff writers



Ian Walz, a Vancouver, Wash., man who was thrilled when Barack Obama was elected president, was killed Tuesday along with six other Fort Lewis soldiers in an improvised explosive attack in southern Afghanistan.

An eighth Fort Lewis soldier was killed that day in a separate attack.

Wednesday night, Obama personally offered condolences to Walz's relatives at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Family members said Walz played football at Hudson's Bay High School, where he graduated in 2002, and had worked for years in the produce section of the WinCo store in Hazel Dell.

Walz, 25, was part of the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division out of Fort Lewis.

"He wanted to go to school and become something useful. He wanted to make a difference in the world."

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Slain soldier from Fort Lewis wanted to make a difference

10 weeks therapy could not undo years for combat veteran

Correction:
I am leaving up the mistake I made on this post. For some reason, I did the post as he only received 10 "days" of therapy. A reader sent me an email to point out my mistake. While the point I made is a valid one, the comment was not right. I am very sorry for this mistake. I must have let my anger over another death take over what I was reading.

10 Days? That's it? The best programs last a month at least. Some programs last several months of in-house therapy to get them back on their feet on more solid ground.

I don't believe what they are hearing is helping enough in many parts of the country. It's not that all programs do not work, but they are not all the same. There are many psychologists without a clue what PTSD is but they are treating PTSD veterans. PTSD is still being misdiagnosed in many offices as anything but the wound the carry. If they are looking for bipolar, they'll find it when it's really PTSD. If they are looking for depression, they will find it and so on. What everyone doing this work needs to understand very clearly is that PTSD comes after trauma. That is the only way this changes lives. It does not come on like the flu and it is not a genetic mental illness. It comes after abnormal events outside the control of people.

No one is designed to endure endless traumatic events striking daily. Take civilians in a war zone and you'll find PTSD. Take inner city kids living near drug dealers and gunfire and you'll find PTSD. Law enforcement officers, firefighters, National Guardsmen and regular military are all exposed do abnormal events and no matter how much we depend on them, they are all still human just like the rest of us. They are also compassionate people and that is what opens the door to PTSD.

Scientists found the region of the brain where our emotions are held. They have seen the changes when someone is being changed by PTSD. It is an emotional wound, called an anxiety disorder but I call it a wound to the soul and so do most people with knowledge of what PTSD is.

It's time they got this right everywhere. The life of a veteran should not be predicted by where they live. Healing should never be regional.

Stress disorder plagued soldier
By: Andrea Koskey
Examiner Staff Writer
October 29, 2009

DALY CITY — Two days before 27-year-old Reuben “Chip” Santos took his own life, he sent an e-mail to his family telling them he was tired.

In response to the e-mail, his father headed to New Mexico, where his son, a decorated Army veteran who was raised in Daly City, was attending school. But before the elder Santos arrived, the family received word that Chip had succumbed to the post-traumatic stress disorder that had plagued him for years.

“He only received 10 weeks of therapy,” said Debra Burton, Santos’ aunt and family spokeswoman. “And it was a short, questionable process.”

Although Santos was also seeing a therapist at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., where he attended school, it wasn’t enough.

read more here

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Stress-disorder-plagued-soldier-67091442.html

Broadcaster’s death still under investigation

Broadcaster’s death still under investigation
Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, October 30, 2009
NAPLES, Italy — Italian railway police still are awaiting toxicology results from an autopsy of a 20-year-old American Forces Network broadcaster found dead Oct. 20 near Aviano Air Base, Italy, an official said Thursday.

The body of Airman 1st Class Lauren Lagudi, who was stationed at Aviano, was found near the train station in Pordenone, about 10 miles from the air base.

Railway police believe Lagudi died by accident or by suicide, but they have not ruled out the remote possibility of foul play, said an Italian police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
read more here
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65744

Military to issue report on overseas troops cut off from kids

Military to issue report on overseas troops cut off from kids
By Charlie Reed, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, October 31, 2009
The military will be required to submit a report on the number of troops who have been cut off from their children by family members overseas during the last two years, according to an amendment in the newly approved Defense Authorization Bill.

Though it stops short of requiring the Defense Department to implement new policies to assist servicemembers affected by international child abduction, the amendment is intended to spur such a move, according to sponsor Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J.

"This will be the catalyst for significant reform," Smith told Stars and Stripes on Thursday.

The report, which is due to Congress within 180 days, requires the military to document current practices to assist servicemembers entangled in overseas custody battles. Smith, however, said there appears to be no consistent policy within the DOD to address the problem.

The amendment came as good news to troops such as Navy Cmdr. Paul Toland, who has been fighting for rights to his 7-year-old daughter in Japan since she was a baby. While stationed at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, Toland married a Japanese woman who he claims later abducted their daughter in 2003. Toland’s ex-wife died in 2007 and his former mother-in-law refuses to allow visitation, he said.

While U.S. laws provide for custody rights for both parents after a divorce, not every country protects those rights nor provides them.



http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=65743

Two more non-combat deaths in Iraq

10/27/09 MNF: U.S. Soldier dies in non-combat related incident
A Multi-National Corps-Iraq Soldier died today of a non-combat related injury at Camp Victory. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense.


10/29/09 MNF: U.S. Soldier dies in non-combat related incident
A Soldier who was currently assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) died Wednesday of a non-combat related injury at Camp Adder, Iraq. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense.
go here for links
http://www.icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx

Sgt. Wolf, mother of two, killed in Afghanistan while husband serving there too

Hawthorne mother of two is killed on duty in Afghanistan
October 28, 2009 11:31 am

A Hawthorne woman with two young daughters died Sunday in Afghanistan when the vehicle in which she was traveling was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Army Sgt. Eduviges G. Wolf, 24, of Hawthorne, was killed in Afghanistan's Kunar province when insurgents attacked the vehicle, military officials announced Tuesday.

Wolf's husband also was serving in Afghanistan at the time of her death and was returning home to be with their daughters, ages 1 and 3, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Wolf, who enlisted in the Army in 2003, had been deployed to Afghanistan since June, according to officials at Ft. Carson, Colo., where her unit, the 704th Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, is based.
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Hawthorne mother of two is killed on duty in Afghanistan

Fort Lewis MP dies in Iraq

Fort Lewis MP dies in Iraq

MATT MISTEREK; The News Tribune


A highly decorated military police officer from Fort Lewis who saw previous action in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan died Tuesday in Iraq in what the Department of Defense is calling a noncombat incident.

Maj. David L. Audo, 35, of Saint Joseph, Ill., died in Baghdad, according to DOD and Fort Lewis news releases issued Wednesday. He was assigned in July to Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment of the 22nd Military Police Battalion at Fort Lewis, and at the time of his death was the executive officer for the battalion’s forward element in Iraq.

He married Rebecca K. Johnson in 1998, according to her Web site, and they have two children, according to The News-Gazette of Champaign, Ill.
read more here
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/northwest/story/934024.html