At War Blog: How to Help Veterans Succeed in College

In 2004, I returned from a year in Iraq to finish my undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island. Since I took more than a year’s leave of absence to deploy, I was forced to reapply to the university. While writing another entrance essay to explain how I spent my “year off,” I wondered why my school didn’t have a peer support system for its students who are veterans.

In just a few years, the narrative for veterans on my campus and many others has changed dramatically because of the hard work of student-led veterans’ groups like the ones I met at the recent Student Veterans of America national conference in Orlando.

The conference showed me how student veterans continue to look out for the best interests of their comrades on campus, much like they did in the military. Plus, as college veterans’ groups grow in size and influence, they manage to affect positive change in their communities. In January, veterans at Clemson University commissioned a volunteer-led veterans’ resource center where veterans can receive transitional assistance, career guidance, and peer support. Meanwhile, veterans at Florida State University continue to push the state legislature to change archaic in-state tuition policies.

Over a few beers, veterans opened up about some of the challenges they faced when coming back to college, like immature classmates or closed-minded professors, but they also readily shared ways they worked to build understanding on campus through their organized veterans’ groups.

Unfortunately, the conference also reinforced a lingering concern that many of today’s student veterans must still choose their schools and navigate the complexities of college life on the fly when they arrive on campus.

As an article in the Education Life section of The New York Times details, many colleges have stepped up to offer in-depth counseling to incoming student veterans, with some going so far as to offer orientation programs and learning communities specifically for veteran undergraduates. The one flaw to this system, however, is that at this point, the veteran has already chosen an institution. What if he or she just isn’t academically or financially ready for college?

In 2010’s National Survey of Veterans, more than 40 percent of post-9/11 veterans reported that they were not aware of and did not understand their education benefits. Veterans should be armed with quality information before they start the application process. Once a veteran is on campus, it may be too late. Is this lack of up-front information perhaps driving misconceptions that veterans won’t succeed when they arrive on campus?

When I started college more than a decade ago, I missed orientation because of basic training. I then struggled to find good information on using my benefits from the G.I. Bill of Rights and had to write a personal check just to get my grades. As a 19-year-old student who lived in a dormitory with few financial obligations, I had the time and the leftover Army income to foot the bill and sort out the G.I. Bill later. Many veterans don’t have this luxury.

So who should be responsible for informing veterans about the nuances of higher education? Federal law dictates that some of the responsibility falls on the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Separating service members have access to the military transition assistance program, or TAP, and those who have left active duty are entitled to free educational counseling from the veterans department. The department offers the 1-888-GIBILL-1 hotline and the eBenefits online portal, but neither is equipped to answer in-depth questions on higher education, nor can they be used to register for counseling.

I recently participated in both the Department of Veterans Affairs counseling and T.A.P. To apply for counseling, I had to find a form online, print it and mail it to my closest veterans affairs office. Two months later, I received a letter from a department contractor, asking me to take aptitude and interest tests to determine my career goals. The bubble sheet exams confirmed that I worked in the right industry, so I was finally referred to a counselor who could meet one on one.

The counseling process helped answer my questions, but I found some of the steps unnecessary and confusing, which likely discourages other veterans from using it too. Nevertheless, it worked. Wouldn’t the department want to enroll more veterans?

The agency only has about $6 million each year to deliver G.I. Bill counseling. Last year the Congressional Budget Office analyzed a proposal to make it easier for veterans to apply for educational aid, but the cost would have been high. During the recent conference, I asked the audience if anyone knew that the department even offered educational counseling. Only a couple of veterans raised their hands.

T.A.P. is not particularly helpful for veterans looking for information about education benefits. When I attended the benefits briefing last spring, the instructor focused on other veterans programs, such as health care, home loans and disability compensation, fielding dozens of questions along the way. When education benefits finally came up, the instructor was fighting the clock and glossed over the material, apparently assuming that service members understood the nuances of the highly promoted benefit. But clearly they do not.

Some T.A.P. facilities do better than others, offering resources like guidance counselors for separating service members. But these innovations seem to be have been developed at the discretion of individual program facilitators, and service members must carve out personal time to use them.

Still, my outlook for current student veterans remains overwhelmingly positive. Not only are veterans and colleges stepping up to take care of their own, but policy makers in Washington have recognized deficiencies in programs and are finally taking steps to fix some of them.

Thanks to the Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011, the Pentagon is piloting new T.A.P. curricula geared toward college-bound veterans. Because of an April executive order, the Pentagon, Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal agencies are compiling student outcome information and developing ways to track student feedback from colleges that are eligible for GI Bill students. Finally, because of last month’s Improving Transparency of Education Opportunities for Veterans Act, Congress has required the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide more information on how veterans are faring at individual colleges, and department is looking to deliver more cost-effective counseling tools for student veterans.

With all of these changes afloat, the veterans community must keep the pressure on the Pentagon, Department of Veterans Affairs, Congress and schools to ensure that educational information is relevant and easy to access for student veterans.

The first four-year class of Post-9/11 G.I. Bill veterans will graduate this spring, and I look forward to following their successes after college. For those still serving who plan to use their benefits in the future, we have an opportunity to arm them with the best information to get the most out of their G.I. Bill.

We never send a new recruit to war without proper training and equipment. We should never send a veteran to college without reasonable guidance for what lies ahead.

Ryan Gallucci is the deputy legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington, where he focuses on economic opportunity policy for veterans and maintains the VFW’s Capitol Hill blog. He deployed to Iraq as an Army Civil Affairs specialist in 2003 and 2004 before completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Rhode Island in 2006.

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Stephen Fishbach Blogs: Show's Worst Players Will Make Survivor: Caramoan Great

TV Watch

Survivor

By Stephen Fishbach

02/13/2013 at 10:15 AM EST

Stephen Fishbach was the runner-up on Survivor: Tocantins and has been blogging about Survivor strategy for PEOPLE.com since 2009. Follow him on Twitter @stephenfishbach.

"Survivor's not meant to be a comedy routine."
– Cochran, Survivor: South Pacific

Here's a riddle for you: What do a zombie, a flip-flopper and two train wrecks have in common?

They're all part of a new cast of "favorites" on Survivor: Caramoan (Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET on CBS), the new season that matches 10 new competitors against some of the worst players in the show's history. Game on?

Survivor may be the only competitive event on earth where being awful makes you an all-star. Brandon Hantz and Erik Reichenbach share the distinction of literally making the worst moves ever when they both sacrificed individual immunity right at the endgame, and were immediately blindsided.

John Cochran ruined his own game – as well as his entire tribe's – with a horrendous flip. Francesca Hogi was first off. Corinne Kaplan would have lost a jury vote to Phillip Sheppard. Brenda Lowe's alliance betrayed her. Andrea Boehlke shambled along as part of Boston Rob's zombie army. Even Dawn Meehan – a paragon of normalcy in the lunatic asylum of the Favorites tribe – had an early-season breakdown.

How did Malcolm Freberg slip into this casting net that only dragged for bottom-feeders? Gazing around that island on day one, he must have wondered what he did so wrong. Remember – nobody had seen Malcolm's season, himself included. Even he made a catastrophic, head-slapping move when he didn't guarantee Denise a deal at the Philippines final four.

Where's Jim Rice? Where's Marty Piombo? For the love of God, where's Jane Bright? They were big characters ... and also big players. It's like this cast was specially selected to only include the very worst. You were disqualified from coming if your Survivor IQ was above a flatline.

The producers, of course, know exactly what they're doing. Even the show's promos are set to the tune of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." The more shouting matches there are, the more emotional cataclysms, the more cultural moments the show creates, the more people Tweet. And the greater the odds that a clip winds up on The Soup.

The cast of Survivor: Caramoan

Monty Brinton / CBS

Bad Means Good

Don't get me wrong – I'm not complaining. Survivor is a TV show, not a political convention. Bring on the crazy. It's unreasonable to compare this season to some idealized memory of what the show once was: 16 strangers who stop being polite and start getting malnourished. Let's get a cast full of Phillips out there communing with their ancient ancestors and misquoting the Bhagavadi Gita. Could you ask for better television?

Furthermore, lunatics can create big challenges for a strategist. It's easy to play a game against someone who's behaving rationally. How do you manipulate a person whose only allegiances are to camera time and the voices in their head? We could see the emergence of a Survivor super-genius.

And some players really need a second chance to mature. Parvati Shallow wasn't Parvati her first time out. I could see Brenda or Corinne or Dawn doing something ferocious. I've long argued it stunts new players to be cast on a tribe with returnees. How might Cochran or Francesca fare without Ozzy or Boston Rob overshadowing them?

Oh – and the fans? Does anybody really care about the fans? They're like the gladiators thrown into the lion pit: there to be eaten. As horrible as the favorites are, there's no comparison between watching a few seasons on television and in-game experience.

Of course, it's always possible for someone to pull a Running Man (the Schwarzenegger movie, not the dance move) and beat the favorites at their own game. If it's going to be anyone, my money's on Reynold Toepfer. He has a kind of Malcolm-ish vibe – strategic, athletic, and social. It didn't hurt that he gave me a shout-out in his "Survivor memorable moment." See below.

Pre-season Fishy for Reynold! Because it's gotta go to somebody!

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Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.

The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.

Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.

The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.

"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.

A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.

"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.

Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.

The report also concluded that:

—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.

—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.

__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.

The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.

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Wall Street rises, S&P hits highest since November '07

DEAR ABBY: My daughters are attractive young women, both doing well in their professional careers. "Melanie," who is 27, is married to "Sam," an extremely attractive and successful man.My 30-year-old daughter, "Alicia," has been divorced for a year. Her marriage failed two years ago because she and her husband had an appetite for sex outside their marriage. While I was disturbed about that, I was horrified to learn that Melanie allows her sister to occasionally have sex with Sam.Melanie's argument is that Sam is less likely to cheat given this situation. ...

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India Ink: In Kashmir, Clashes and Dwindling Supplies As Curfew Continues

The Kashmir Valley is on the fourth day of a government-imposed shutdown begun immediately after the hanging of the militant Muhammad Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, who comes from the town of Sopore in Baramulla district.

Many residents are running out of food and milk in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Meanwhile, dozens have been injured and at least one killed in protests against Mr. Afzal’s hanging, which happened secretly in Delhi on Saturday and was announced afterward.

Mr. Afzal, from the Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to death by a special court in 2002 for his role in planning an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001.

Schools, colleges and most shops in Kashmir are closed by government order, and people have been asked to stay inside their homes. Rows of shops and restaurants were shuttered.

Vehicles have been banned from the streets, cable news channels have gone dark, Internet service on cellphones has been blocked and newspapers were not being delivered. Hospitals, pharmacies and emergency services remain open.

In Srinagar, the only people in the deserted streets were security forces.

Officials in the area said they were taking preventive measures. During the past decade, many Kashmiris have opposed the death sentence for Mr. Afzal, saying he was being unfairly accused of the crime. His wife had requested a pardon from the Indian government, but her plea was denied.

Many Kashmiris were also outraged that the government letter carrying the news of execution reached Mr. Afzal’s widow in Sopore only after he died. The central government said Tuesday that Mr. Afzal’s family could visit his grave at te Tihar Jail in Delhi, but a date has yet to be decided, according to the Press Trust of India.

The ban on the movement of people and vehicles was imposed under Section 144 of India’s criminal procedure code, the same section invoked after protests over the recent Delhi gang rape, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people.

It was invoked by a district magistrate to prevent “a law and order problem,” Suresh Kumar, principal secretary in Jammu and Kashmir’s Department of Home Affairs, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. 

Mr. Afzal’s death was mourned across the valley through organized street protests that involved stone pelting, in defiance of the ban.

Three civilians have died and many have been injured over the last four days, officials said. Some news reports attributed all three deaths to protest-related activities, but Mr. Kumar said only one man died of injuries caused by the police. The other two drowned when their boat capsized, an incident unrelated to the violence, he said.

Obair Mushtaq, from the Baramulla district, died after he was shot, his relatives said. Farooq Ahmed, his uncle, said Obair was 13.

Mr. Ahmed said that on Sunday evening, a handful of children, including his nephew, were throwing stones at a passing military convoy. “It was not aggressive. We were laughing at them,” he said, crying over the phone. “We can’t understand why there is so much fighting. Why are our children dying?”

A Kashmir police official told India Ink that 60 people have been injured since Saturday in clashes between police and civilians. Forty of those were security officials and 20 were civilians, he said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his life.

Additionally, there were about 60 incidents of stone pelting across the valley. “Most of the violence erupted in Sopore and Baramulla,” he said.

“People are not allowed to step out of their homes,” he added.Many residents described the past four days as the longest curfew since 2010, when the valley was shaken by mass pro-independence demonstrations. 

Manzoor Ahmed, who drives an auto-rickshaw, said that he hasn’t earned any money since the curfew was imposed on Saturday. “I haven’t stepped out of the house so I cannot even make the little money I do,” he said during a telephone interview. “The children cannot go to school.”

Mr. Ahmed said that his family was surviving on dal, a stew made of lentils, because there are no fresh vegetables available. “We have a backup supply of dal because we know things like this can happen,” he said.

In some areas, for a few hours in the evening, residents said they were allowed out of their homes to shop. Vegetables and milk are generally shipped into Srinagar, which is nestled in the mountains, from villages and other states during the winter months.

Mr. Mohammed, a hotel manager near the Dal Lake, who requested his first name not be used to avoid any retaliatory action, said that his hotel was running out of vegetables like peas and cauliflower, and guests were only being served beans and potatoes from storage. “The situation is quite bad,” he said.

For around two hours in the evening, a few stores selling basic groceries were open. But these shops have limited resources because the supply chain had been disrupted because of the ban on vehicles.

One businessman, who requested not be named to avoid possible retaliatory action by the police, said he hasn’t opened his crockery shop in downtown Srinagar in the past four days. “What choice do I have? They won’t let us step out,” he said. He estimated he has lost 60,000 rupees ($1,000) since Saturday.

The hanging of Mr. Afzal came as Kashmiris were planning protests to mark the death of Maqbool Bhatt, a pro-Kashmir independence leader who was hanged on Feb. 11, 1984. His death is considered the spark for two decades of unrest. Both men are buried at Tihar Jail in Delhi.

“Maqbool Bhatt inspired the insurgency while Afzal Guru was the product of it,” said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a law professor at Kashmir University. 

He warned that Mr. Afazal’s hanging and the subsequent curfew would make the Kashmiri people’s “alienation with the government more deep rooted.”

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Westminster's Most Paw-some Moments - So Far!

People Pets

02/12/2013 at 11:00 AM EST

You snooze, you lose? Not when you're as adorable as this Bichon Frise

Frank Franklin II/AP

It may be Fat Tuesday, but as any dog lover knows, the real action is at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Dogs of every shape, size and color – including two new breeds who were admitted into competition this year – have taken over several New York City locations, including Madison Square Garden, and the contest is starting to get fur-rocious.

We know you'd rather be at home watching these pooches strut their stuff, but since you're probably otherwise occupied, here's a taste of all the canine pageantry taking place:

This Afghan Hound is 'hair' to stay

Monika Graff / Landov

Don't they know I need my beauty sleep? This Dogue de Bordeux, named Azlo, is ready to retire to his room at the Hotel Pennsylvania

Carlo Allegri / Landov

A kiss for good luck! There's no ill will between Boston terriers Gaga (left) and Spitzer

Keith Bedford / Landov

Last year's winner, Malachy, returns to the limelight to turn the Empire State Building purple and gold (with a little help from a furry friend) in honor of Westminster's kickoff

Bryan Smith / ZUMA

Check back tonight to see who takes home top prize!

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

__

Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Wall Street flat ahead of Obama speech

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Tuesday, hovering near multi-year highs as traders awaited President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

The economy will be one of the main topics of Obama's speech at 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Wednesday). Investors will listen for any clues on a deal with Republicans in Congress to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1.

The S&P 500 has risen in the past six weeks and is up more than 6 percent so far this year. Despite a dip in volume Monday and the sideways move this week the market is showing technical strength as it digests the recent gains.

"It's positive we haven't seen an urge to take profits after the run-up we had recently," said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments in Lisle, Illinois.

He said it was natural for the market to be pausing amid a lack of major economic data points and with earnings season winding down, and markets will be attentively watching Obama's speech in Washington.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 7.6 points or 0.05 percent, to 13,978.84, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 0.27 points or 0.02 percent, to 1,516.74 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 1.41 points or 0.04 percent, to 3,190.59.

Coca-Cola Co shares fell 1.5 percent to $38.04 after the world's largest soft drink maker reported quarterly earnings that were slightly better than expected as strength in emerging markets offset a decline in European business.

Avon Products shares jumped 13.4 percent to $19.59 after the beauty products company reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber shares fell 4.6 percent to $13.27 after it posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit but cut its 2013 forecast due to weakness in the European automotive market.

Michael Kors Holdings shares soared 12 percent to $63.82 after the fashion company handily beat Wall Street's estimates and raised its full-year outlook.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

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The Lede: Latest Updates on the Pope’s Resignation

The Lede is providing updates on Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement on Monday that he intends to resign on Feb. 28, less than eight years after he took office, the first pope to do so in six centuries.

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Record $1 Million Bounty Offered for Fugitive Cop

By Andrea Billups

02/11/2013 at 09:15 AM EST

Undated photo of Christopher Dorner

LAPD/AP

Authorities in Los Angeles upped the ante Sunday on a bounty for Christopher Dorner, the fugitive former Los Angeles police officer who remains at large after killing another officer and targeting police and their families over his 2008 firing from the force.

Police announced a record $1 million reward for information leading to the capture of Dorner, 33, who has eluded capture for five days and whose angry 15,000-word "manifesto" threatened the lives of at least 50 former colleagues and their relatives.

The record bounty, described by police as the largest for a criminal investigation in Southern California, was posted Sunday and comes from donations from police unions, businesses and private investors who want Dorner captured and off the streets.

Security was tightened at the Staples Center in downtown for Sunday's 55th annual Grammy Awards, as police continued the largest manhunt ever for the Los Angeles area. The search focused on the San Bernandino mountains where Dorner's burned out truck was found abandoned near Big Bear Lake, as police offered security to lawe enforcement families mentioned in Dorner's rambling writings.

Dorner, a former U.S. Navy reservist, engaged in a shooting with two officers on Thursday, grazing one, before ambushing two other police while they were sitting in their patrol car at a stoplight. One was killed and the other was seriously wounded. The revenge killings came after Dorner had posted rants on his Facebook page last week over what he claimed was his wrongful firing from the LAPD.

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