In brief: VA may discipline 1,000+ employees
WASHINGTON – The Veterans Affairs Department is considering disciplinary action against more than 1,000 employees as it struggles to correct systemic problems that led to long wait times for veterans seeking health care and falsification of records to cover up delays, VA Secretary Robert McDonald said.
In an interview with the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” McDonald said the VA is taking “aggressive, expeditious disciplinary action, consistent with the law” against more than 1,000 of its 315,000 employees.
McDonald said the disciplinary report given to the Veterans Affairs committees in the House and the Senate “has about 35 names on it. I’ve got another report that has over 1,000” names, McDonald said.
The interview with “60 Minutes” will be broadcast Sunday. An excerpt aired Friday on the “CBS Evening News.”
The VA has been under intense scrutiny since a whistleblower reported that dozens of veterans may have died while awaiting treatment at the Phoenix VA hospital, and that appointment records were falsified. Since then, problems have been revealed at VA health care sites across the country.
Obama taps Blinken for No. 2 job at State
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has nominated a longtime White House foreign policy adviser to the No. 2 post at the State Department.
Tony Blinken joined the White House in 2009 as a top aide to Vice President Joe Biden. He later became Obama’s deputy national security adviser and a key player on a range of foreign policy issues, including the fight against the Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
If confirmed by the Senate, Blinken would replace William Burns, who retired earlier this year.
Ex-Trader Joe’s CEO Shields, 82, dies
LOS ANGELES – John V. Shields Jr., a former CEO of Trader Joe’s who made the quintessentially California grocery chain a national powerhouse by breaking out of the Golden State and building stores throughout the U.S., has died. He was 82.
Shields, who lived in Thousand Oaks, died Oct. 31 after a lengthy illness, his family announced.
During Shields’ tenure, from 1988 to 2001, sales surged from $132 million annually to more than $2 billion. Despite questions about whether frostbitten customers would cotton to TJ’s laid-back style and genial, aloha shirt-clad “crews,” Shields charted a course relentlessly eastward and expanded the chain from 27 stores to 174.
Dallas clears last Ebola suspects
DALLAS – Dallas calmly marked the end of its Ebola crisis Friday when the last of the 177 people who were being monitored for symptoms of the deadly virus were to be cleared at midnight.
Thirty-eight days after Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola in a local hospital, officials expressed relief and resolve that they were prepared if anything similar ever happened again.
Monitoring for the last person who came in contact with Duncan or the two nurses who contracted the virus will end at midnight Friday. About 50 people who returned to Texas from West African countries where the virus has killed thousands will remain under monitoring.