Kelly Roser's attorneys say an otherwise exemplary military career was upended by a one-time positive drug test for marijuana that prompted a general discharge. But her drug use, they argued, was brought on by gender dysphoria.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is eliminating its in-house compensation and pension exam program and will outsource all of the exams, which are crucial to determining whether veterans are eligible for VA benefits.

Three Dover-area Vietnam War veterans recently received a acknowledgment of their service to the country, and emotions ran high. "It's a great honor," said Air Force retiree Lawrence Gant. "I never anticipated getting anything like this."

Officials for the Department of Veterans Affairs declined to participate Wednesday in a Senate hearing about the progress in implementing the Mission Act, a law passed two years ago to help improve health care for veterans.

As of Thursday, VA is treating 4,749 active cases of the virus, 372 of which are its own employees — an increase from the 2,700 cases that the agency was treating in early September.

President Donald Trump has signed a bill into law that contains dozens of methods to prevent suicide among veterans, including measures to boost mental health research and staffing at the VA and establish a grant program for state and local groups.

As coronavirus restrictions unfurled a dangerous mix of depression and anxiety, the scourge of suicide cut through a tiny community of amputee veterans in recent months, claiming at least three in a group where isolation is already a potent risk factor.

Tricare Select Group A retirees will be required to pay new fees starting Jan. 1, 2021. An individual’s enrollment fee will be $12.50 monthly, or $150 annually. Family fees will be $25 monthly, or $300 annually.

Nearly 200 dependents of veterans in the last three years have had to repay GI Bill benefits after the service members failed to complete contract requirements, sometimes unknowingly, leaving them tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

A 30-year Army veteran who was the longest continuously serving Ranger in Vietnam and one of the war’s most decorated enlisted soldiers has died.

The House passed sweeping bipartisan legislation Wednesday that would give up to $174 million during the next five years to state and local organizations that provide suicide-prevention services to veterans and their families.

Agents with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations told Lisa Wilken there was no record of her 1994 rape when they showed up at her door. However, Wilken says there should be plenty on file about her case.

Despite the boost and efforts from Congress, some say a shockingly low number of veterans are applying for upgraded discharges.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has lost the internet domain rights to GIBill.com, which some advocates fear could open the potential for scammers to target veterans.

The Women in Military Service for America Memorial, at the gateway to Arlington National Cemetery, is regularly placed on lists of “hidden gems” within the nation’s capital — a perspective on the memorial that its leaders are trying to change.

The gap in veterans who are approved for benefits drew the ire of lawmakers who argued the VA should give presumptive care for veterans, saying the agency does not have clear guidelines for who gets burn-pit compensation.

A welcome-home program for Vietnam veterans that was postponed by COVID-19 in March will take place Nov. 16-21 and include volunteers reading the names of the 58,318 soldiers listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall of Southwest Florida in Punta Gorda, and a celebration concert by singer Lee Greenwood at the Charlotte Sports Park.

With less access to in-person therapy and isolation from friends and family, many veterans are reporting feeling disconnected from their community, according to a survey released by Wounded Warrior Project in September.

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden agreed in a questionnaire released Wednesday by a military advocacy group that the DOD needs to compete with near-peer military powers and the VA needs to continue investing in private-sector health care.

The measure would approve benefits for Vietnam War veterans suffering form bladder cancer, hypothyroidism, hypertension and Parkinson’s-like symptoms – conditions thought to be caused by exposure to the chemical herbicide Agent Orange.

A committee set up by the Massachusetts Legislature to investigate the factors that contributed to the deadly coronavirus outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home held its first hearing Tuesday.

On a warm afternoon this week, as 95-year-old World War II veteran Eldon Knuth was awarded the Bronze Star, he was treated as delicately as an ancient vase. Organizers of the ceremony at his Thousand Oaks retirement village mounted a defense against an invisible but deadly new enemy: COVID-19.

A bill passed Tuesday night waives the federally mandated time limit for presenting Army Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe the nation’s highest award for valor.

The Defense Department is replacing its 30-year-old identification cards for military families, retirees, and civilians workers in an effort to upgrade the cards and avoid security risks.

Currently, the Department of Veterans Affairs provides dental treatment only to veterans whose dental issues are related to their military service.

World War II has become known as “The Last Good War,” the subject of countless movies, books and documentaries over the decades. And yet, 75 years after V-J Day, there are still stories of wartime courage and daring that haven’t been publicly told. Jack Wilde's is one of them.

After the war, Hal Halvorsen dropped chocolate bars for the children of Berlin as part of a humanitarian airlift. They soon started calling him the “Candy Bomber.”

Congress approved a measure last week that will ensure student veterans continue to receive full GI Bill benefits into the next school year, even as many classes have gone online-only in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Department of Veterans Affairs never established a maximum amount of time veterans should have to wait to see private-sector doctors through the agency’s new community care program, an independent watchdog reported this week.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that the greatest challenge for the Department of Veterans Affairs is filling tens of thousands of job vacancies, and if elected president he would supercharge the VA’s budget to boost wages to compete with the private sector.

White employees who applied for management positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs were promoted at twice the rate of Black workers, according to VA data released last week.

About 60% of veterans surveyed reported feeling disconnected from their family, friends, or community. Half of veterans agreed their mental and physical health has worsened since social distancing themselves.

The new law increases the funding available to veterans with certain permanent, service-connected disabilities from about $85,000 to about $98,000. It also extends the benefit to blind veterans.

Video

A picture of the badly burned Army veteran was used in social media postings with a message saying "Trump says he's a loser. I say he's a hero. What do you say?" But Bobby Henline says, "It's not true."

Only two U.S. presidents are buried at Arlington National Cemetery: William Howard Taft, who died in 1930, and John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.

The Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in North Little Rock on Tuesday celebrated its 141-acre expansion, which enlarged it from 82 acres to 223 acres.

Obituary

Two Democrats accused Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie on Tuesday of using department resources to campaign for the reelection of President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates.

A House bill introduced Thursday would ensure that any veteran who dies from coronavirus in the care of the Department of Veterans Affairs would have service-connected disabilities noted in the cause of death to protect survivor benefits.

The Wounded Veterans Recreation Act amends the current eligibility standards for national park passes and would grant the passes to millions more U.S. veterans.

Dayton Area Ford Dealers intend to honor area veterans of the Global War on Terror with the Ford Oval of Honor next month at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.

Retired Marine Sgt. Brendan Cabey officially adopted Ramos, his former military working dog, on Sept. 11, in front of the USS Constitution in Boston.

Veteran suicides outpace fatalities in Afghanistan. Last year, 6,143 veterans killed themselves, according to VA data, while 22 service members died in Afghanistan.

Active-duty service members who die from an incident that was not in support of combat operations would no longer be eligible for burial at Arlington National Cemetery under a new proposed rule posted Tuesday to the Federal Register.

The unidentified veteran sought treatment at the Memphis VA Medical Center in summer 2019. An ER doctor discharged the veteran with instructions to go to the facility’s outpatient mental health clinic, but there was no evidence the patient received treatment there.

Sgt. Brieux Dash hung himself March 14, 2019, on a door in the locked mental health unit at the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center.

Larry Carter's story — before the Marine Corps and law enforcement — began with a self-professed “terrible” childhood.

When Army veteran Nathan Tirey received a blood cancer diagnosis last year, he became one of about 176,200 people who receive the life-changing news annually.

A Navy Fireman 1st Class, Rex E. Wise was stationed onboard the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese aerial forces bombed the harbor.

By this time next year, Veteran Health Indiana plans to open the $40 million, more than 45,000-square-foot veteran's health clinic now under construction on Terre Haute's east side.

Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty said he wrote “Fortunate Son” in 1969 to target the hypocrisy of flag-waving Americans who cower when the time comes to serve.

Dorothy Cole enlisted in the Marines immediately after the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

One of William Caldwell's most memorable projects was working on the Lisa Ann (also known as Rivet Amber), orginally a Boeing C-135B aircraft that Caldwell and his team equipped with a large 7 MW Hughes Aircraft phased-array radar system.

When Gerry Wright was a young man serving in the Army in Vietnam, he sprayed Agent Orange from a tanker truck onto the vegetation where the enemy could hide — and onto himself.

Two Marines Corps veterans were among the men charged this week in connection with the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Jalen Aric Lipscomb, 23, of Shelby, N.C., is accused of killing Christopher Carson after the two got in an argument.

Horanzy also helped found the Philadelphia Liberty Bell Chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and was the chapter’s last surviving member.

The owner of a trucking school in California was sentenced to four years in prison for his involvement in a GI Bill scheme that bilked more than $4 million from the Department of Veteran Affairs, according to the U.S. Attorney General’s Office for the central district of California.

Until now, Wyoming was part of a handful of states that lacked a national cemetery – a place where veterans and their families can be honored for their sacrifices and laid to rest alongside fellow service members.

Former employees at the Kansas City Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center have described a culture of systemic racism.

There was Old Glory, sitting in a grocery store in Florida that also traded in antiques. To Lloyd Hyatt, that just didn’t seem right. “That flag did not belong in there,’’ said Hyatt, a retired U.S. Navy veteran who purchased the flag for $59.95 — not to keep for himself, but as a first step in its return to its rightful owner.

The Government Accountability Office will investigate claims of systemic racism within the Department of Veterans Affairs, lawmakers said Thursday, two months after a government union said most of its surveyed members saw racism as a problem inside the agency.

A former Department of Veterans Affairs doctor working in West Virginia pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that he sexually assaulted veterans under the guise of medical treatment, according to the Justice Department.

VA officials said the agency is already reaching out to the veterans impacted, including the next-of-kin of those who are deceased. The department is offering free credit monitoring to anyone whose Social Security numbers were accessible.

The disclosures by the state Department of Health mean one out of every three veterans or their spouses at the Menlo Park Memorial Veterans Home has died from the virus since the pandemic began.

Retired Senior Airman Brian Kolfage said that while the financial accounts of “We Build the Wall” are currently frozen due to the indictment, attorneys for the organization are trying to get those funds unfrozen and the wall restarted.

When attached to a grenade launcher, the Acquire Read Deploy Sight reads out the angle the weapon platform is raised and calculates the distance the round will travel.

OBITUARY

In 1962, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Steve Stibbens joined the Pacific Stars and Stripes in Tokyo and was the newspaper’s first reporter to set foot in Vietnam later that year.

The Honoring All Veterans Act would change the VA's motto to read, “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those ‘who shall have borne the battle’ and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.”

Omitted from one bill was a measure that would require all VA employees to receive safety training to help reduce veterans’ access to firearms and medication by using safe-storage techniques.

Four congressional lawmakers are pushing to award the Medal of Honor posthumously to Cpl. Waverly B. Woodson Jr., a Black Army medic who was wounded on D-Day and spent the next 30 hours treating injured men on the beach until he finally collapsed from his own wounds.

David Russell Russell spent Tuesday morning shaking hands and being hugged at a party celebrating his 100th birthday at American Legion Post 10 headquarters. “How does it feel to be 100 years old?” someone asked. “I don’t know, I’ve never been this old before,” the vibrant Russell said with a laugh and a smile. “I guess I made it.”

Seventy-five years ago, 70,000 marines battled for control of the island of Iwo Jima. Harry Jackson Sr. was among them. He would eventually earn a Silver Star for his heroics, but his family believes he should have the Medal of Honor.

To Navy veteran Tim Weston, teaching is like show business. "You have to have an act,” he said. And Weston, now retired from his job as a middle school English teacher, has found a new stage.

Army veteran Latoya Mandas is a regular customer at Subway, but she never thought that her frequent visits to the fast-food restaurant would get her a $25,000 shopping spree.

A wrongful death lawsuit against the operator of the Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home in Hilo has been filed by the sons of Chris Drayer, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who died after contracting COVID-19 in Hawaii’s largest coronavirus nursing home outbreak.

In the year since Texas enacted a program designed to alert the public when a veteran or service member at risk of harming themselves goes missing, only one eligible person has opted into the service and no alerts have been sent out.

While COVID-19 cases are on an upswing in the Flathead County, the decades-long specter of suicide is still the chief health concern for veterans of the armed forces in Montana and the nation.

Walter Swann and Francis Demaio Swann and Demaio met as recruits in the U.S. Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Ill., in August 1962. After 58 years apart, they reconnected by phone this year.

Asterio “Terry” Canda, 80, had a mild stroke and was admitted on Aug. 22 into the Yukio Okutsu State Veterans Home in Hilo. But the 95-bed veterans home quickly became a COVID-19 hot spot, and the worries grew for Canda's family members as the death toll started to mount.

The chairman of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Board of Trustees said recent criminal indictments of top staff in connection with the deadly COVID-19 outbreak at the facility will not change the complexion of an upcoming special meeting of the trustees.

Thomas Faleskie, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who flew helicopters in the jungles of Vietnam, was surprised by an unexpected ceremony.

The full text of remarks made by President Donald Trump and others at a White House ceremony on Wednesday honoring veterans of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

During a lesson hosted by the Wounded Warriors Project. Instructors from VB Surf Sessions offered both surfing and paddleboard tips as part of the project’s goal of keeping veterans connected and active.

Upon his death, John wants an American flag draped over his casket and then handed to his children. Of all the veterans' benefits he has sought over the past five decades — tuition assistance, health care access, and disability benefits, it's this gesture of an official military funeral he most desires.

Hawaii government hospital administrators will take over running a state-owned veterans' care home on Hawaii island from a private operator that has struggled with COVID-19 infections and deaths.

On the day she announced criminal charges against top officials of the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, Attorney General Maura Healey said her office is also scrutinizing other long-term care facilities.

A group of about 50 friends, family and well-wishers gathered Friday to dedicate a historical marker to Medal of Honor recipient Joe Mann, made possible by the work of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.