Veterans

The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System began offering 20-minute HIV tests at its downtown ambulatory care center Tuesday -- part of a campaign to encourage more veterans to get tested and treated for the virus. "HIV testing is the gateway to life-saving therapy," said Dr. Earl Tso, a primary care physician who is leading the downtown center's outreach effort. In the past, veterans wanting to be tested for HIV had to have blood drawn and sent to a laboratory for analysis.

A Jamaican man accused of carrying pipe-bomb parts in checked luggage at Orlando International Airport is a U.S. Army veteran who recently served as a contractor in Iraq, sources said. Kevin Christopher Brown, whom FBI agents quoted as saying he wanted to show friends in Jamaica "how to build explosive devices like he saw in Iraq," worked as a contractor there through late 2007.

Minutes after routine surgery for acute appendicitis in October 2003, Staff Sgt. Dean Witt, 25, was being moved to a recovery room at a Northern California military hospital when he gasped and stopped breathing. A student nurse assisting an understaffed anesthesia team tried to resuscitate Witt and failed. Inexplicably, Witt's gurney was wheeled into a pediatric area. Lifesaving devices sized for children, not a 175-pound adult, proved useless, according to an internal report on the incident.

A new installation at the Japanese American National Museum in L.A. will be dedicated May 31 as a permanent complement to the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism in Washington. The East Coast monument was erected in 2000 to honor Japanese Americans who fought for their country during World War II -- and to commemorate the forced internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during the war. The L.A.

Here in the Republican stronghold of eastern San Diego County, Duncan Hunter the son is attempting to succeed Duncan Hunter the father in the 52nd Congressional District. The elder Hunter is leaving Congress after 14 terms and a failed try this year for the GOP nomination for president. When he first ran for Congress in 1980, he was a 31-year-old combat veteran from Vietnam. His son is a 31-year-old combat veteran from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Samuel Snow, an 83-year-old black World War II veteran who had traveled across the country to receive an apology from the Army for being unfairly convicted on rioting charges, died early Sunday just hours after the ceremony honoring him and 27 of his fellow soldiers. Snow had been admitted to a hospital on the eve of Saturday's ceremony at Ft. Lawton in Seattle.

Soldiers have come home from war since Ulysses' turbulent return to Ithaca -- to tearful wives and cranky babies, to brass bands playing John Philip Sousa marches and to potlucks of casseroles and coleslaw laid out by neighbors. For men like Larry Criteser, though, there were no trombones or baked beans.

By the time the sun began to rise one recent Friday over his Mira Mesa neighborhood, Mitch Hood had been up for about 18 hours. He punched a caffeine tablet out of a blister pack and washed it down with two cans of Red Bull. He finished it off with a gulp of Pepsi. He figured this would keep him awake four more hours. Then, he jumped back into his video game. Hood, 25, spent two tours with the Marines in Iraq. Now, like many other veterans and millions of civilians, he faces a new enemy: sleep.

Former Marine Sgt. Shawn James has found moving from the military world to the business world a difficult journey. Add a disability, and potential partners shy away in droves, said the 33-year-old San Diego resident, who dreams of starting a company involving hybrid vehicles.

Senior physicians with the veterans health system in Los Angeles told the top U.S. military officer Saturday that the Pentagon needs to overhaul the way it discharges troops because hundreds are leaving the armed forces with undiagnosed combat-related mental health problems. Several of the physicians, including the system's chief of staff and its top psychiatrist, advocated mandatory mental health screenings for all service members who retire after serving in war zones.