Legacies of war Forty years after the fall of Saigon, soldiers’ children are still left behind

Vo Huu Nhan was in his vegetable boat in the floating markets of the Mekong Delta when his phone rang. The caller from the United States had stunning news — a DNA database had linked him with a Vietnam vet believed to be his father.

Nhan, 46, had known his father was an American soldier named Bob, but little else.

“I was crying,” Nhan recalled recently. “I had lost my father for 40 years, and now I finally had gotten together with him.”

But the journey toward their reconciliation has not been easy. News of the positive DNA test set in motion a chain of events involving two families 8,700 miles apart that is still unfolding and has been complicated by the illness of the veteran, Robert Thedford Jr., a retired deputy sheriff in Texas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/vietnam/

UPDATE 1-Marathon refinery workers at Galveston Bay reject final offer -union

HOUSTON, April 16 (Reuters) - Striking workers at the Marathon Petroleum Corp's Galveston Bay refinery in Texas City, Texas, rejected the company's "last, best and final" contract offer, according to a union official representing the workers.

In rejecting the offer, the United Steelworkers told Marathon it was willing to resume negotiations on Monday in an effort to end the work stoppage that began on Feb. 1 by 1,100 hourly employees, said Larry Burchfield, vice president of USW Local 13-1, which represents the Galveston Bay workers.

The company's final offer could cost more than 150 people their jobs and further roll back safety policies at the 451,000 barrel-per-day refinery, Burchfield said.

"They continue to reinforce to me that their employees mean nothing to them." he said.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102595192

Huge Fire Wood Score Today

There was a bad storm last night in my subdivision. It knocked over a lot of old trees. I helped to cut some up. I got 4 truck loads of oak, ash, and maple I need to split and put on my wood pile. At least 2 cord.

WWII: Gunner fell 22,000 feet WITHOUT a parachute and survived

Ranked among the luckiest people in the world, Alan E. Magee survived a free fall of almost four miles from a B-17 bomber during a raid in WWII.

When his bomber came under fire from German anti-aircraft guns, he ran out of options. His bomber was spinning mid-air and spiralling towards the ground. Magee had to jump out of it to escape certain death. But he was not aware that he had jumped in a 4-mile drop without his parachute.

Magee’s survival story has featured in many magazines and is considered one of the most miraculous survivals of WWII. After the war, Magee did not discuss his ordeal or his survival story with anyone.

http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/wwii-gunner-fell-22000-feet-without-a-parachute-and-survived.html

Sh!t Southern Women Say

How military chaplains are finding new ways to treat vets with invisible wounds

War is such a constant in the American experience that most of us are all too familiar with the evolving names we have given its emotional consequences in the past century: Shell shock, battle fatigue, operational exhaustion, and most recently, post-traumatic stress disorder.

But most Americans are less familiar with a related, if distinct, affliction known as moral injury, with roots in foundational religious or spiritual beliefs violated during war. And increasingly, military chaplains are on the front lines, tending to these misunderstood wounds.

Psychiatrists have used the term since the 1990s, but the concept has only recently been the subject of serious research by clinicians, some affiliated with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/04/10/how-military-chaplains-are-finding-new-ways-to-treat-vets-with-invisible-wounds/?postshare=1391428951883084

Welcome to the future: US cops pay Bitcoin ransom to end office hostage drama

Blundering cops in Maine, US, have enriched malware masterminds by paying up to decrypt files held hostage by ransomware.

Four city police departments and a sheriff's office in Lincoln County share a common computer network run by Burgess Computer, which hosts the plods' administrative files.

Then one day the entire system was encrypted by the Megacode ransomware, which scrambles documents and demands Bitcoins to decrypt them.

This sort of malware typically scans computers and networks for documents, generates a random encryption key per file, uses those to encrypt the data, and then encrypts the keys using a public-private key pair. Only the crims have the private key needed to unscramble the documents, and it costs money to obtain that, effectively holding the information to ransom. Victims have a few days to pay up before the private key is deleted forever.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/13/us_police_ransomware/

This Should Be CSPAN'S Theme Song

GM to end production of current Chevy Volt

General Motors Co. will halt production of the Chevrolet Volt electric car for the summer to whittle down about seven months of unsold inventory and smooth the way for the next generation of the plug-in hybrid sedan.

The first Volt went on sale in 2010 with high expectations, but sales have been lackluster amid low gasoline prices and the release of more capable electric models from competitors. GM has sold about 70,000 Volts to date, far below initial company forecasts.

Production of the current model, which costs $34,000 and up before federal tax credits, will halt early next month, the Detroit auto maker has said. It will be replaced by a 2016 model with a sleeker design and up to 50 miles range on an electric charge. That second generation Volt will go into production at the end of the summer.

The production hiatus comes after a first quarter in which sales fell well behind Nissan Motor Co.'s Leaf electric car in the U.S. GM sold 1,874 Volts during the three-month period, equivalent to the number of Silverado pickups sold in a day, and in contrast to Nissan's 4,085 Leaf sales. Volt stocks are enough to last 210 days, or until November, at their March sales pace, according to researcher Autodata Corp. Car makers generally like to have about 60 days of inventory at dealers.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gm-to-end-production-of-current-chevy-volt-2015-04-08