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WASHINGTON, DC, February 23, 2022 /24-7PressRelease/ — The US Navy Veterans Lung Cancer Advocate says, “If you are a Navy Veteran who learned a skilled trade in the navy or at work and you have recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, please call attorney Erik Karst of the law firm of Karst von Oiste at 800-714-0303 if before 1982 you had significant exposure to asbestos in the navy-work. Financial compensation for a person like this might be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and the claim does not involve suing the navy or in most instances your employer. Compensation is based on the specifics of how the person was exposed to asbestos in the navy or at work.

“The kind of person we are trying to identify has been diagnosed with lung cancer within the last twelve months, their asbestos exposure took place prior to 1982 and they were a boiler technician, plumber, machinist, mechanic, electrician, welder, insulator or a repairman. Most people like this never get compensated because they do not realize the $30 billion dollar asbestos trust funds were set up for them too. If the individual-we have just described sounds like your husband or dad, please call attorney Erik Karst of the law firm of Karst von Oiste at 800-714-0303 to discuss possible financial compensation.”

Important compensation tip from the Advocate. “If your husband or dad has just been diagnosed with lung cancer and he has told you he had routine exposure to asbestos in the navy or at work in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s-please ask him to list a few specific examples if possible. It is this vital information that will become the foundation for his compensation. The more specific the information about asbestos exposures the better as attorney Erik Karst is always happy to discuss at 800-714-0303.” www.karstvonoiste.com/

High-risk workplaces for asbestos exposure include the US Navy, shipyards, power plants, public utilities, manufacturing factories, chemical plants, oil refineries, mines, smelters, pulp and paper mills, aerospace manufacturing facilities, offshore oil rigs, demolition construction work sites, railroads, automotive manufacturing facilities, or auto brake shops. With lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure the lung cancer may not show up until decades after the exposure. https://USNavyLungCancer.Com

States with the highest incidence of lung cancer include Kentucky, West Virginia, Maine, Tennessee, Mississippi, Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Alabama, and Delaware.

However, a US Navy Veteran or person with mesothelioma or asbestos exposure lung cancer could live in any state including New York, Florida, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Washington, Oregon or Alaska. www.karstvonoiste.com/

For more information about asbestos exposure please visit the NIH’s website on this topic: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/substances … fact-sheet.

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Press release service and press release distribution provided by http://www.24-7pressrelease.com

Vladimir Putin is expected to lay a wreath at Moscow’s Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier today as the current generation of troops contemplates a full-blown war in Ukraine.

The Russian president will mark Defender Of The Fatherland Day, which is intended to honour military service personnel, marking the date in 1918 of the first mass draft into the Red Army.

It comes as a full invasion of Ukraine looks increasingly likely, despite diplomatic efforts.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden announced the first wave of sanctions against Russia, affecting Russian banks, oligarchs, and the country’s sovereign debt.

He told reporters that Russian troops being ordered to eastern Ukraine after Mr Putin recognised the independence of two separatist regions – Donetsk and Luhansk – marked the “beginning of an invasion”.

Read more: Comparing the military forces of Russia and Ukraine

Also on Tuesday, new satellite pictures from space technology company Maxar showed several fresh Russian troop and equipment deployments in western Russia and more than 100 military vehicles at a small airfield in southern Belarus, which borders Ukraine.

NATO members, including the US and UK, have been moving troops to allied countries near Ukraine such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland in recent weeks.

Read more: How strong is NATO’s position in eastern Europe?

In other key developments:

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has cancelled a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, which had been planned for Thursday in Geneva

• United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticised Mr Putin’s assertion that Russian troops heading to Luhansk and Donetsk were “peacekeepers”, saying: “When troops of one country enter the territory of another country without its consent, they are not impartial peacekeepers – they are not peacekeepers at all.”

• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK was sanctioning five Russian banks and three oligarchs, freezing their UK assets and banning travel to Britain

• The EU issued sanctions aimed at 351 Russian politicians who voted to recognise the breakaway regions, as well as 27 other Russian officials and institutions from defence and banking

• Australia, Canada, Japan, and Germany were also among the countries to announce sanctions on Russia

• The fate of a tentatively-agreed summit between Mr Biden and Mr Putin, brokered by the French president, is uncertain. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said talking about summit plans was “premature”.

Read more: ‘Turning up to a gunfight with a peashooter’: Johnson under fire for limited sanctions against Russia

On Tuesday, Russian legislators gave President Putin permission to use armed forces abroad – a possible sign that a broader attack on Ukraine is imminent.

But he has yet to unleash the full strength of the 150,000 troops he has amassed on three sides of Ukraine.

Likewise, Mr Biden has not yet used the full extent of sanction power available to him – further measures could include an export ban that would deny American technology for Russia’s industries and military, and other bans that could severely limit Russia’s ability to do business with the world.

Read more: Who are the key players in the Ukraine crisis?

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Mr Putin has laid out three conditions to end the crisis. He called for international recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, an end to Ukraine’s NATO membership bid and a halt to weapons shipments to the country.

The West condemned Crimea’s 2014 annexation as a violation of international law and has rejected permanently barring Ukraine from joining NATO.

March is National Nutrition Month. Are you up for the challenge?

Maybe there was a New Year’s resolution to eat better, but then came too much snacking while watching the big game or too many sweets for Valentine’s Day. It’s easy for the resolve to make healthier choices fade. But every day is a new opportunity to build healthier habits, and Your Commissary is here to help.

March is when spring begins, a time of new beginnings. It’s also National Nutrition Month, which makes it a great time to have a fresh start and become familiar with the Healthy Living resources offered by Your Commissary. Use these resources to help build healthy habits for 30 days and see how simple and effective these changes can be by taking the 30-Day Challenge.

Healthy living resources

DeCA’s Dietitian and Health & Wellness Program Manager Deborah Harris MPH, RDN, CDCES has designed these resources as a toolkit for the 30-day challenge, and in daily life to build healthy habits as simply as possible.

These resources are adaptable, because any or all of them can be used in whatever combination works best, while saving money on the meals themselves by shopping at Your Commissary. They’re effective because they’re dietitian-approved, based on scientifically-credible principles of nutrition and expert guidance from official government sources, like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA). And they’re easy to use because even simple changes, like cooking more meals at home or swapping out some recipe ingredients, can make a big impact.

“Nutrition doesn’t have to be scary and it doesn’t have to be ‘perfect,’” Harris said. “Any efforts you make to improve the nutritional quality of your diet are steps in the right direction, and this challenge is designed to encourage and support you in taking those steps in ways that work for you. Our resources are designed to be flexible, easy and economical.”

Thinking outside the box meal solutions

Try Thinking Outside the Box with meal solutions that pair quick, healthy, budget-friendly recipes with scientifically-credible, dietitian-approved guidance on how these meals can improve the nutritional quality of anyone’s diet. The meal solutions make it convenient to implement this, while also delivering the knowledge needed in order to put this into practice by making simple changes to other recipes.

National Nutrition Month dietitian-approved meal plan

Your Commissary’s Dietitian-Approved Dinner Meal Plan makes it easy to plan meals for the month – and it’s printable. It includes a calendar of dietitian-approved recipes that can be used for dinner throughout the month, as well as weekly shopping lists with space to fill in meal planning each day and what’s needed from the store each week.

Shop for meal ingredients in a few simple clicks

Use Commissary CLICK2GO, Your Commissary’s online ordering service, to instantly add the ingredients of those favorite dietitian-approved recipes to the virtual grocery cart. When users are ready to place an order, they can sign in to Commissary CLICK2GO, click on the recipe banner and select the recipe they would like to add to a meal plan for the week. Users can click the “Add to Cart” button beside each of the ingredients to select the specific products needed to purchase to prepare the meal.

Users can also click the printer icon in the upper right-hand corner of the recipe to get a printable version of it for easy reference while cooking. Preparing nutritious food at home has never been easier.

Dietitian Approved Thumb (DAT)

The Dietitian Approved Thumb (DAT) makes it easy to build a basket with Your Commissary by identifying healthy foods that are dense in nutrition from attributes such as lean proteins, healthy fats and whole grains.

The DAT is a resource that was built exclusively for commissary customers to help them improve their overall health by putting “Thumbs Up” tags on food items that are dietitian-approved. This makes it easier for users to identify products that can supplement wellness needs while shopping.

Dietitian approved fueling stations

Visit Your Commissary’s “grab & go” Dietitian Approved Fueling Stations near the registers at participating locations to find a variety of nutritious and high-performance foods. Visiting one of these fueling stations is a great way to stock up on quick snacks and meals to enjoy while on the go, which makes it an excellent alternative to fast food drive-thrus. Users can find a list of participating locations on Your Commissary’s website.

Your Commissary also encourages users to visit the Deli Fueling Stations page to find a list of dietitian-approved salads, sandwiches and wraps that may be available in the deli department.

Connect with DeCA’s dietitian

The great news is that customers don’t have to go through the 30-Day Challenge alone. To help along the way, DeCA’s dietitian will provide tips and engage with customers who comment on weekly Facebook posts to share their progress.

Your Commissary will be making these posts each Tuesday night all month long, in preparation for #WellnessWednesday. DeCA’s dietitian will also host a special Facebook Live on the page to interact with customers participating in the 30-Day Challenge on March 8 at 2 PM Eastern.

If customers decide to share updates on their own feed, as well, whether on Facebook or another social channel, DeCA invites them to use #DeCA30DayChallenge and #NationalNutritionMonth as hashtags on social media posts.

Keeping the gains

When the 30-Day Challenge is over, March 31 can be a day to reflect on progress. Was it easier or harder than expected? What could be done better? And, most importantly, now that these healthy habits have been built, can those gains be kept and continued? Your Commissary encourages customers to visit the Healthy Living page regularly to stay up-to-date on the latest information. And, customers can use the Weekly Meal Plan Worksheet to continue planning meals and preparing shopping lists.

Anyone up for the 30-Day Challenge? Let Your Commissary know in the comments below.

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote next week on landmark legislation that would expedite health care and disability payments to millions of veterans exposed to burn pits and other military environmental exposures.

The $282 billion Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics, or PACT, Act would designate 23 illnesses as likely linked to battlefield pollutants, paving the way for veterans diagnosed with these diseases to receive Department of Veterans Affairs benefits.

If it became law, the bill would be the most comprehensive legislation to address combat environmental exposures since the Agent Orange Act of 1991, which declared that defoliants used during the Vietnam War likely caused at least a dozen types of illnesses in veterans.

Read Next: Washington Asks the Defense Department to Send in the National Guard Ahead of Trucker Protest

Currently, the VA decides post-9/11 exposure claims on a case-by-case basis, with the exception of those filed for asthma, rhinitis or sinusitis. Affected veterans must prove a connection between their illnesses and their military service, either demonstrating exposure or bringing in experts to support their claims.

Kate Hendricks Thomas, a Marine Corps veteran diagnosed at age 38 with stage 4 breast cancer, had her claim approved after many years of fighting, but not before she spent thousands to treat the cancer she said has spread from “her skull to her toes.”

“I was exposed to burn pits in Baghdad, in Fallujah, all over the country,” Thomas said on a Tuesday call in which several lawmakers and veterans spoke with reporters. “I remember seeing [them] as I was out running. We would clean our air conditioning units, and there would be black particulate matter in the filter. I knew that I was exposed to that, but I didn’t really understand it.”

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., expressed confidence that the PACT bill would pass the House with bipartisan support.

Takano, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation would fulfill a promise made to U.S. service members when they deployed.

“For too long, America’s message to toxic-exposed service members and veterans has been simple: We thank you for your service, but the price tag for addressing your exposure is just too high,” Takano said.

He described a $1 billion bill passed in the Senate last week that would expand health benefits to nearly 1 million more post-9/11 deployed veterans as a “legislative half measure that narrows benefits for some veterans and excludes others altogether.”

That bill, sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., would give all post-9/11 combat veterans up to 10 years to enroll in VA health care after they transitioned from military service and create a one-year enrollment period for those not already receiving VA health care.

It does not include a list of diseases that would automatically qualify veterans for expedited benefits or award compensation to survivors of veterans who have died from those illnesses.

Tester and Moran have pledged, however, that their proposal, considered more palatable to fiscal conservatives than Takano’s bill or a different $233 billion proposal from Tester known as the Comprehensive and Overdue Support for Troops, or COST of War, Act, would be the first of three burn pit-related bills that eventually would designate diseases as linked to deployment exposures.

The Senate’s proposed phased approach has infuriated advocacy groups and activists, including Burn Pits 360 and comedian-turned-advocate Jon Stewart.

“The reality is the PACT Act and [Tester’s original COST of War bill] are the acts that actually deal with toxic exposure,” Stewart said during the call. “The bastards are sneaky. They are going to try and sneak around and go, ‘Hey man, for a billion dollars, you can get away with this and maybe everybody will leave us alone.'”

Afghanistan veteran Jen Burch said that, after she arrived home from deployment, she went straight to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis and pneumonia.

Her health problems — and the lack of support she received — deteriorated to a point in 2013 when she attempted suicide, she said.

“You have a veteran who has medical problems from toxic exposures getting denied benefits in health care from the VA, and they might not be able to work because of their medical problems,” Burch said. “Now they’re financially hurting, they can’t get the health care, they can’t support their family. … The next thing you know, they’re another statistic because they took their life because they couldn’t handle it.”

Since 2007, with some modifications and exceptions, bills in the House are required to include a way to cover their cost so they have little to no impact on the federal deficit or a surplus when one exists.

The PACT act, which would cost $85 billion in the first five years after passing and $282 billion over 10 years, doesn’t currently include a way to cover its cost.

Takano said, however, that he has been talking with legislators who hold the congressional purse strings and would request a waiver to the rules if a solution isn’t found.

“I think the American people would go along with the idea that we have a debt we need to reckon with our veterans,” he said.

The Senate bill and Takano’s proposal both have broad support from veterans service organizations, including the Military Officers Association of America, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Wounded Warrior Project, and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Takano expressed hope that his bill would receive a strong vote in the House, paving the way for the Senate to consider it in lieu of Tester and Moran’s phased plan.

“I can’t emphasize enough about the importance of these presumptions,” Takano said. “Agreeing to a strong list of presumptions is at the heart of removing the burden of proof from the veterans to the benefit of the doubt being extended to them.”

— Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on twitter @patriciakime

Related: Law Aimed at Helping Millions Exposed to Burn Pits and Toxins Would Cost at Least $282 Billion

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The road is set to be completed in September, just prior to Costco opening in October. Dan Wheeler with one of the developers Henjur LLC, said construction on the Costco building is scheduled to start in May and open in five months. Agreements for another retail user are pending.

“Costco is the anchor, I’ve actually got three retail users but I can only put two of them in because we don’t have enough room,” Wheeler said. “We’re trying to decide which two are going to get the nod. All three are good credit, all three are users that people will be interested in.”

He said they are talking to two potential hotel users, they have a 25,000-square-foot medical use building and an 18,000-square foot retail strip “that we’ve got several tenants lined up for, but we haven’t mapped out the final design of the building yet.”

Governments routinely use TIF dollars to support economic development. Money is built up in the TIF as developments within the district come online and property values increase. County Administrator Judi Boyko said the commissioners agreed to use funds from the University Point TIF for a variety of reasons.

“The board of commissioners uses the proceeds from the University Pointe TIF sparingly to incentivize economic development projects,” Boyko said. “Freedom Pointe is proposing $140 million in value in commercial development and coupled with Costco, and prospectively a couple other first-to-market retailors, and the connection of Veterans Boulevard from Cox to Liberty Way does contribute a transportation value. The commissioners determined that incentivizing this project would be in the best interest of economic development and transportation improvements.”

Boyko said the TIF agreement provides if the project values aren’t enough to cover the debt payments, the developer is responsible for the shortfall. Of the $6.6 million about $3 million is to cover the debt payments until TIF dollars start rolling in.

Veterans Boulevard will have two roundabouts, one at one of the entrances to Costco and another farther north toward the Ohio 129 roundabout at Cox Road. The Liberty Way interchange improvement is underway and Wilkens secured $11.6 million in federal money to help pay for the $24 million project. The total project, that includes the Veterans Boulevard work and widening Liberty Way is $32.5 million.

The county also helped pay for infrastructure for the $350 million Liberty Center project up the road. Taxpayer dollars funded $49 million in bonds including a $12 million Ohio Water Development Authority loan. Liberty Twp. contributed about $6 million of that amount.

Liberty Twp. Trustee Tom Farrell said the Freedom Pointe developers didn’t ask the township to contribute anything to their project, but the use of TIF dollars for new developments is a good “compromise.”

“Obviously we would love for the developer to pay for every bit of the infrastructure and our taxpayers pay for none of it, and they want us to pay for all of it,” Farrell said. “This is a compromise that we work on in developments that allows us to use the money that’s going to be coming in from their developments to pay for the infrastructure.”