Found below are a few military news items that caught my attention this past week. I am hopeful that the titles and short commentary will encourage SFTT readers to click on the embedded links to read more on subjects that may be of interest to them.

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Tensions High over North Korea
“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely,” President Trump said on Friday, in his latest salvo in the exchange of rhetoric with the isolated regime. “Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!”  The statement, made via Twitter, comes one day after Trump wondered whether he had been stern enough in talking about North Korea earlier this week, when he promised to meet Pyongyang’s threats with “fire and fury.”  Read more . . .

Food Rations May Become a Military Profit Center
Amazon is using everything at its disposal to take on the grocery and food delivery business. The online retailer purchased Whole Foods Market in June for $13.7 billion, announced new meal-prep boxes that challenge Blue Apron in July, and now it’s turning to the military for its next move. According to a CNBC report, Amazon wants to use military food technology to create prepared meals that don’t need to be refrigerated. This would allow the company to store and ship more food more efficiently and to offer ready-to-eat, (hopefully) tasty meals at a lower price.  Read more . .

Is the VA Planning to Close Incomplete Healthcare Applications?
A well-known whistleblower in the Department of Veterans Affairs warned Wednesday that the VA appears to be getting ready to close tens of thousands of incomplete healthcare applications, even though it’s been clear for more than a year that the VA was failing to give veterans a chance to complete these applications. Scott Davis is a public affairs officer for the VA’s Member Services in Atlanta who has testified before Congress about problems within the VA.  Read more . . .

Deja Vu All Over Again at the VA
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been forced to employ the former Washington, D.C., medical center director for the time being after the employee was fired for failing “to provide effective leadership at the medical center.” Brian Hawkins was fired in July after it was revealed he had sent sensitive information to his wife’s personal email account. However, Hawkins appealed the termination and the federal Merit Systems Protection Board issued a stay on the decision on Aug. 2, allowing Hawkins to build a defense that he was wrongfully let go. VA Secretary David Shulkin pushed back against the stay and has prohibited Hawkins from working around patients.   Read more . . .

Tighter Controls Over Opioid Prescriptions at the VA?
The U.S. Department Veterans Affairs Office of the Inspector General released a report Aug. 1 that recommended non-VA health care providers being paid by the VA to provide services to veterans be required to submit opiate prescriptions directly to VA pharmacies. According to the report, veterans are one of the highest risk pools of people to become addicted to opiates and that veterans could receive treatment in the form of opiates from non-VA doctors without regard for the possibility of co-occurring mental health problems. “Veterans receiving opioid prescriptions from VA-referred clinical settings may be at greater risk for overdose and other harm because medication information is not being consistently shared,” said U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General Michael J. Missal. “That has to change. Health care providers serving veterans should be following consistent guidelines for prescribing opioids and sharing information that ensures quality care for high-risk veterans.”  Read more . . .

Link Between PTSD and Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia?
More and more evidence is suggesting that developing post-traumatic stress disorder early in life can raise the risk of dementia in old age. New research finds a molecular link between the two conditions, which paves the way for new therapies. An increasing number of epidemiological studies have suggested that people who develop a neuropsychiatric condition such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in childhood are also likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease later in life.  Read more . . .

How Combat Vet’s PTSD Affects Families
Soldiers who experience the horror and terror of conflict often return home far different people than they were when they left. Many are angry, suffer from depression, harbour suicidal thoughts or attempt to isolate themselves from the world, hoping to avoid triggers that can instantly force them to relive their experiences. While increasing attention has been paid in recent years to helping armed forces members cope with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), not as much attention has been paid to the experience and grief of intimate partners and families who experience trauma in trying to deal with the changes a loved one, coping with PTSD, goes through.  Read more . . .

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