•1.    Pell Grant Cuts Hurt For-Profit College After 8-Fold Increase.  Bloomberg The Bloomberg US For-Profit Education Index of 13 companies dropped 0.2 percent. Congress, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and attorneys general in Florida, Kentucky, Iowa and Illinois are investigating a range of issues at for-profit colleges, ...

•2.    LoBiondo Releases List of VA-Approved Dialysis Centers in South Jersey.  Cape May County Herald    Continuing his commitment to South Jersey veterans, US Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo (R-2nd) Thur., April 14 released the latest information about local dialysis services approved by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ...

•3.    Admiral TL McCreary's Senate Testimony on Veteran Employment.  Military.com  President of Military.com before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee April 13, 2011 Madam Chairwoman, Ranking Member Burr, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today to discuss veteran employment.

•4.    Quilters create PJs for homeless veteran 'sisters'.  Mason City Globe Gazette  The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that there are 6500 homeless female veterans throughout the country. On Friday, Senne will take the pajamas to a DAR state meeting for distribution. She said she also got generous donations of toothpaste and ...

•5.    Budget committee eyes end to VA care.  Hilton Head Island Packet  Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has told a veterans' group it is studying a plan to save $6 billion annually in Veterans Affairs health care costs by cancelling enrollment of any veteran who doesn't have a service-related medical condition and is not poor. ...

•6.    O'Mara seeks nominees for Senate's Veterans Hall of Fame.  Penn Yan Chronicle-Express (blog)  “So many veterans served our nation courageously and honorably, and then returned home to lift the lives of our local communities. The Senate Veterans Hall of Fame is just one more way to give a veteran a well-deserved and well-earned expression of our ...

•7.    State Legislature considers honor guard bills.  phillyBurbs.com  "This is an important step in ensuring that area veterans will receive the honor that they and their families deserve." Lawmakers said the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs contracts with nonprofit veterans' service organizations to ...

•8.    Veterans have a chance on Friday to learn their rights and benefits.  Clarksville Leaf Chronicle ... Tennessee Department of Veteran's Affairs, VA healthcare, local veteran' groups, as well as federal, state and local agencies will be providing information and will be able to enroll eligible veterans and beneficiaries as well.

•9.    Veteran Affairs wants colleges to support Yellow Ribbon.  The South End  Colleges nationwide are being encouraged to join the Department of Veteran Affairs to participate in the post-9/11 Yellow Ribbon Program for the 2011-2012 school year, which will give qualifying veterans and service members and their dependent's ...

•10.                       Scranton Zoning Board OKs plans for veterans housing.  Scranton Times-Tribune  Catholic Social Services housing director Stephen Nocilla said the US Department of Veterans Affairs requires facility residents who are found to use drugs or alcohol to be kicked out. He added the federal agency performs background checks on ...

•11.                       Government Increases Hiring Of Veterans, But Unemployment Rate Still High. Washington Post  "Veterans made up more than a quarter of new hires" by the Federal government "in the last fiscal year, an increase of 4,700 since the Obama administration pledged to bring more servicemembers returning to civilian life into the civil service. Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry attributed the progress in the employment of veterans, including those disabled in combat, to an "aggressive" effort to find them good government jobs." Berry "acknowledged that some agencies have made more progress than others - beyond the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments, which are obvious fits for veterans."

•12.                       Utah Top Officials Honor Vets At SLC Shelter. Salt Lake Tribune On Wednesday, Utah's "Lt. Gov. Greg Bell, joined by officials from the Utah Division of Housing and Community Development, visited" 87-year-old World War II veteran Paul Soria, to thank the vet for his 25 years of work at Salt Lake City's Road Home homeless shelter. "under the direction of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, has embarked upon an ambitious plan to end homelessness among veterans in the next five years."

•13.                       Study Finds Drop In Deadly VA Hospital Infections. New York Times  "An aggressive four-year effort to reduce the spread of deadly bacterial infections at veterans' hospitals," one that "employs a 'bundle' of measures," including screening of all patients and isolation of those testing positive, is "showing impressive results and may have broad implications at medical centers across the country." The study of 153 VA hospitals across the US "found a 62 percent drop in the rate of infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, in intensive care units over a 32-month period," with "a 45 percent drop in MRSA prevalence in other hospital wards, like surgical and rehabilitation units."

•14.                       VA Resuming Some Minimally Invasive Surgeries. AP  "Minimally invasive surgeries will resume at a southern Illinois Veterans Administration medical center that halted all operations since 2007 after a spike in patient deaths, the VA announced Wednesday. Procedures considered 'standard-level surgeries,' including appendectomies and hernia repair that carry low complication risks, are cleared to resume at the VA site in Marion, Ill., spokeswoman Peggy Willoughby said." Federal "lawmakers from Illinois heralded the development, noting that the surgical shutdown often forced veterans served by the medical center to travel long distances - at times hundreds of miles - to get the procedures done at VA sites elsewhere."

•15.                       "Critical" Shortage Of Army Neurologists For Troops. NPR "The Army is facing a 'critical' shortage of neurologists, partly because of recent policy changes designed to improve diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injuries, according to a new military medical memorandum." Those "policies, issued last June, require soldiers who have suffered three or more mild traumatic brain injuries in a year to receive a comprehensive evaluation by a neurologist or similarly qualified doctor." 

•16.                       Shinseki Confident Proper Reviews Have Been Conducted At Hospital. Carmi (IL) Times  Wednesday in "saying that the announcement by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that inpatient surgeries at the Marion VA Medical Center in (VAMC) are restarting is good news for veterans in southern Illinois. In a letter to the Illinois Members of Congress, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki expressed confidence that all necessary reviews to ensure safety and quality of care have been completed successfully at the facility." 

•17.                       Family Takes In Elderly Veterans As Part Of "Angels" Program. Huntington (WV) Herald-Dispatch 75-year-old veteran Marvin Hill is what the staff at a Veterans Affairs hospital in West Virginia "calls an 'angel,' one-half of the 'Where Heroes Meet Angels' slogan used by the center's Medical Foster Home program on its printed materials and website." That program "matches veterans who need 24­hour supervision with caregivers willing to adopt a veteran into their home and provide care for them, while including them in family activities." Hill has high praise for the program.

•18.                       Treadmill Walking Improves Parkinson's Symptoms. WebMD  "People with Parkinson's disease who walk on a treadmill at a comfortable, low-intensity speed may be able to improve their gait and mobility, new research indicates." All research "participants exercised three times a week for three months, supervised by exercise physiologists" at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

•19.                       Vouchers For Homeless Veterans Get $50 Million Boost In Spending Package.   CQ "A program to provide chronically homeless veterans a place to live saw an unexpected increase of $50 million in the fiscal 2011 spending bill to be considered Thursday by the House." The legislation "(HR 1473) would fund additional vouchers for the Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program, which provides veterans who are homeless an allowance to find transitional or permanent housing. The $50 million allocation, which was not requested by President Obama in his fiscal 2011 budget, comes after lawmakers earlier this year debated the number of vouchers to include in fiscal 2011."

•20.                       ArlingtonCemetery Acknowledges More Burial Errors. Washington Post  "Arlington National Cemetery officials recently discovered eight instances in which family members were buried at the same grave site but all the names were not added to the headstones marking the graves." The facility's "management also estimated the cost for accounting for every one of the cemetery's 330,000 graves - which they acknowledge may never be completed - to be $4.3 million. The disclosure of the problems with the headstones came in an update Wednesday from Army Secretary John McHugh to Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who demanded a status report on the cemetery two weeks ago. It comes of the eve of a hearing by a House subcommittee that is expected to grill Army leaders about accountability at the cemetery."

•21.                       Historian Aims To Identify Unknown Union Soldiers. Atlanta Journal-Constitution

•22.                       Veterans Affairs' IT Budget To Receive Modest Cuts. NextGov

•23.                       Vets Experienced, Skilled, But Still Jobless. Army Times

•24.                       Unemployed Veterans Go Green. KTVI-TV

•25.                       ShepherdCenter's Program Aids Soldiers. Atlanta Journal-Constitution

•26.                       Veteran's Information Night Explores Effects On Children. WBGH-TV