A California teenager spent Monday Flag Day decorating graves at the Iowa Veterans Cemetery in Adel.
Preston Sharp, 15, of Redding, California, started the Veterans Flags and Flowers project in 2015 after a Veterans Day visit to the grave of his grandfather, a Navy veteran. Upset at the sight of undecorated markers surrounding his grandfather s, Sharp set out to honor as many veterans as he could by placing flags and carnations on graves across the country.
Then 10, Sharp initially used the money he earned by doing chores around his house to buy supplies. That effort quickly grew into larger fundraising efforts and public speaking engagements, which helped raise awareness and money for the Veterans Flags and Flowers nonprofit organization he founded.
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Vermont Governor Phil Scott and his administration say the state is getting closer to the goal of reopening when 80 percent of residents get at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Agency of Human Services Secretary Mike Smith began Tuesday’s briefing noting that when the governor challenged residents to reach the 80-percent vaccination goal to reopen the state CDC data showed that 74.9 percent of the state’s eligible population had been vaccinated. Smith says over the weekend that number reached 78.9%. State officials doubted the accuracy and requested a review of the data.
“This review in collaboration with the CDC did find duplicate reporting in one batch of Veteran Affairs’ numbers reported late last week and in a limited number of independent pharmacies reported from April 6th through May 22nd, Smith said. We confirmed this late yesterday. We have corrected our reporting and asked the CDC to remove the duplicates. We have also updated our tracking and with
REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Insider surveyed 63 federal agencies to see which were monitoring officers social-media accounts.
Only five agencies that responded said they had the ability to check officers online activity.
The Department of Veteran Affairs police force doesn t have a policy to address the issue.
The Biden administration has no uniform national strategy for how federal law-enforcement agencies monitor their employees social-media accounts to root out any extremists with ties to white supremacist groups, Insider has learned.
That s one of the biggest takeaways from an Insider investigation that surveyed 63 federal departments with personnel who routinely carry firearms.
Justice Department leaders including Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray have repeatedly said the US government is working overtime to prevent further domestic attacks like the pro-Trump insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6.
VA History Office
NCA Monuments Dedicated on Memorial Day
Since Memorial Day was instituted in 1868 (initially as Decoration Day), this event at the end of May became an opportunity to dedicate new monuments in national cemeteries.
[i] The installation of figurative or symbolic memorial objects on hallowed ground fulfills a goal articulated the following year by Army Superintendent of National Cemeteries Brevet Major Edmund Whitman: burial grounds were selected with an eye toward “favorable conditions for ornamentation, so that surviving comrades, loving friends, and grateful states, might be encouraged to expend liberally of their means for such purposes.”[ii] The placement of monuments (not to be confused with individual grave markers) began to arrive in the 1870s.