Stars and Stripes Daily Headlines

 

Special pays would be first casualty of delayed defense bill Combat pay? Could be gone. Hazardous duty pay? Could be gone, too. Foreign Language Proficiency Pay? Same. Congress may not be speaking your language.   For Kabul cooks preparing feast for US troops, Thanksgiving is ‘Super Bowl’ Months before Thanksgiving, all through Afghanistan, helicopters, cargo planes and mine-resistant vehicles have been hauling turkeys, pies and stuffing between major camps and tiny desert-bound forward operating bases.   PHOTOS: From Kuwait to Okinawa, servicemembers get a taste of home on Thanksgiving With turkey, pies, stuffing, biscuits, and of course, thanks, servicemembers from around the globe sat down to celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday. Here's a gallery troops marking the occassion from downrange to the Pacific.   A happy ending to Army couple’s infertility struggles Even before Marc and Sallie Bailey started their ninth fertility treatment, they knew it would be their last.   Policy spares servicemembers' families from deportation Spouses, children and parents of U.S. military service members and veterans could be eligible for a reprieve from deportation under a new policy memo the Obama administration quietly issued this month.   A woman’s word on sexual assault meets military code As Washington argues over how sexual assault should be handled in the military, a Whiteman Air Force Base court-martial offers a rare glimpse into the military’s unusual and decades-old code of justice, particularly Article 120 — “Rape, sexual assault, and other sexual misconduct.”   Air Force slashing reenlistment bonuses, cutting retraining in some specialties The Air Force is eliminating selective reenlistment bonuses for 46 career fields and cutting retraining opportunities for hundreds of airmen in over-manned specialties as the service prepares to trim the force by as many as 25,000 airmen over the next several years.   Karzai not only at odds with US, but his countrymen, too Afghan President Hamid Karzai has never been shy about picking fights with the United States, but in his latest game of political chicken, he has inadvertently taken on many of his Afghan allies, and the backlash has been swift. It’s also left many wondering what exactly he is trying to achieve.   Loss of VA grant imperils skiers’ paralympic hopes The Aspen Valley Ski/Snowboard Club’s adaptive program — one of the country’s pre-eminent programs for wounded veterans and a feeder for almost half of the U.S. Paralympic Ski Team — faces a $300,000 shortfall and might have to shut its doors Friday if funding isn’t secured for this year’s competitive season.   Philippine-born USS Cowpens sailors focus on making a difference Petty Officer 3rd Class Jireh Pait stood watch on the bridge the day the USS Cowpens sailed into the Leyte Gulf. Among the thousands of servicemembers working to provide aid to the Philippines are at least hundreds in the U.S. 7th Fleet who were born there or have family in the country.   From the archives: Thanksgiving in Vietnam, 1967 In spite of hundreds of childhood admonitions not to play with their food, some American servicemembers in Vietnam found it hard to resist when their still-gobbling Thanksgiving main course arrived in November, 1967.