Salon.com > Kristin M. Hall

Army tests body armor tailored for female soldiers

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:30:00 +0000

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — Female soldiers from Fort Campbell deploying to Afghanistan will field the first Army body armor that is shorter and better tailored specifically to fit women's physiques.

Members of a female engagement team from the 101st Airborne Division, who will be directly interacting with Afghan women during the upcoming deployment, have been equipped with the female prototypes of the newest generation of Army tactical vests.

On Tuesday at the Army installation on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line, the female soldiers showed the new features of the vests during qualification trials with their M4A1 rifles.

The 101st Airborne Division first suggested the idea of a better fitting vest for women in 2009 after female soldiers said that they often had trouble bending over, getting in and out of tight spaces like military vehicles, or positioning their rifles against their shoulders, said Maj. Joel Dillon, the Army's assistant product manager for the vests.

Dillon said the long plates inside the vests would rub against their hips and cut into their thighs when they sit down.

101st Airborne starts coming home after deadly tour

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:41:00 +0000

About 275 soldiers have returned to cheering and crying family and friends at Fort Campbell after a deadly year in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of families marked the soldiers' return Friday. They filled a plane hangar with homemade signs, balloons and music.

The 101st Airborne Division lost 105 soldiers in 2010.

Maj. Gen. Frank Wiercinski, senior commander at Fort Campbell during the division's deployment, says this flight of troops from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team marks the beginning of the return of about 17,000 division soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan.

Law murky for mom who returned adopted Russian boy

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:18:00 +0000

A Tennessee woman has stirred international outrage by sending a Russian boy she adopted back to Moscow on a flight by himself, yet local authorities said it's not clear if she broke any laws.

The 7-year-old boy, Artyom Savelyev, was put on a plane with a note saying his adoptive mother no longer wanted to parent him because he was violent and had severe psychological problems. While her actions were condemned by Russia's president and U.S. diplomats, the sheriff investigating the case said it's not clear if anyone can be charged.

"You know, you look at it and it's hard to say exactly if a law has been broken here," Bedford County Sheriff Randall Boyce said. "This is extremely unusual. I don't think anyone has seen something like this before."

Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families over the treatment of the boy, who was called Justin Hansen by the Tennessee family.

The boy's adoptive grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville, said the boy was violent and angry with her daughter. She said she flew with the boy to Washington and then put him on a plane to Moscow.

Top Russian official demands freeze on U.S. adoptions

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:31:56 +0000

A top Russian official demanded that all child adoptions by U.S. families be frozen Friday after a woman from Tennessee shipped her 7-year-old adopted Russian grandson on a one-way flight back to Moscow all alone.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the actions by the grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville, "the last straw" in a string of U.S. adoptions gone wrong, including three in which Russian children had died in the United States. The cases have prompted outrage in Russia, where foreign adoption failures are reported with gusto.

The Russian education ministry immediately suspended the license of the group involved in the adoption -- the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton, Washington-based agency -- for the duration of an investigation. In Tennessee, authorities were investigating the adoptive mother, Torry Hansen.

Any possible freeze could affect hundreds of American families. Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States.

The boy, Artyom Savelyev, arrived unaccompanied in Moscow on a United Airlines flight on Thursday from Washington. Social workers sent him to a Moscow hospital on Friday for a health checkup and criticized his adoptive mother for abandoning him.