Military news from Biloxi and Gulfport, MS

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Mississippi setting aside $2 million to combat military base closures

COURTESY KEESLER MEDICAL CENTERThe addition of Keesler Medical Center to a possible-closure list by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005 came as a surprise, according to Bill Crawford, former deputy director at the Mississippi Development Authority.

JACKSON -- Mississippi's officials can tell you -- defending the state's military bases from closures can get expensive. The state spent a reported $60 million to $65 million in the 2005 round of base closings, an effort that helped save such Mississippi...

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Archive by category ''Military

MILITARY

Military update: Hagel says it was furloughs or deepen readiness crisis

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the furlough of 680,000 civilian employees for one day a week, from early July through September, to avoid taking deeper cuts in training and maintenance, which could have degraded readiness to the point of threatening "core missions," he said.
MILITARY

Betrayed? Citizen-soldiers lose jobs; U.S. government biggest offender

LOS ANGELES -- The jobs of the nation's citizen soldiers are supposed to be safe while they are serving their country. Federal law does not allow employers to penalize service members because of their military duties.
MILITARY

Commissaries feel hiring freeze, fear new budget squeeze

Base commissaries face turbulent times as staff vacancies swell under a federal hiring freeze, employee furloughs remain a worry and the Defense Commissary Agency digests budget guidance for fiscal 2015 that will force new efficiencies on stores and possibly deeper cuts to store operations.
MILITARY

Surgeon: Stonewall Jackson death likely pneumonia

Historians and doctors have debated for decades what medical complications caused the death of legendary Confederate fighter Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, felled by friendly fire from his troops during the Civil War.
MILITARY

Long Beach native nominated for deputy chief of Naval Operations

Long Beach native Ted N. Branch has been nominated for promotion to vice admiral so he can be assigned as deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance, the U.S. Navy announced Wednesday.
MILITARY

Navy officer's roots ran deep in Leflore county

SIDON -- Though Capt. Viola Brown Sanders rose to the highest rank a woman could attain in the U.S. Navy in the mid-1960s, she always considered Leflore County home.
MILITARY

DoD health office loses control of e-record project

After five years and an estimated $1 billion spent trying to build a single integrated electronic health record system with the Department of Veterans Affairs, defense health officials have been taken off the project, sources confirm.
MILITARY

US path to Mars and beyond coming through Mississippi

STENNIS SPACE CENTER -- After of decade of inactivity, the B-2 test stand, part of the largest propulsion-testing facility in the world, is being reconfigured in preparation for the rockets that will take astronauts farther into space than ever before.
MILITARY

Punishments don't fit sex crimes in military, advocate says

BILOXI -- At a time when the U.S. Air Force is scaling back its personnel, Sun Herald readers have asked why a former U.S. Air Force basic training sergeant -- convicted last week of assault, cruelty and abusive sexual contact -- is still in the military.
MILITARY

'Pros' make case against pay caps, higher Tricare fees

Military folks upset by Obama administration proposals to cap pay raises, to phase in sharply higher co-pays on prescriptions filled off base and to raise Tricare costs on working-age retirees also tend to rail against such changes with arguments politicians can shrug off as stale or in error.