plus 4, Driving ban fuels protest at beach - St. Augustine Record

Driving ban fuels protest at beach - St. Augustine Record
Ashok Leyland to launch trucks on new platform by April - Marketwatch
Our View: Uninsured drivers the real problem in Louisiana - Alexandria Daily Town Talk
Bases lend hand to PCSing family hit by thieves - Air Force Times
Army wife’s blog logs her survival - Omaha World-Herald

Driving ban fuels protest at beach - St. Augustine Record

Posted: 02 Jan 2010 08:52 AM PST

A line in the sand was drawn on the beach north of Matanzas Inlet on Friday.

On one side there was a group of fishermen and other locals upset that they could no longer cross that line -- at least in their vehicles.

On the other were park rangers, on hand to enforce the driving ban on a 1-mile stretch of beach around the Fort Matanzas National Monument that went into effect with the start of the new year.

"The government's out of control, from the top down to the bottom," said Adriane Miles, carrying a sign that read, "The Lord giveth and the National Park Service taketh away."

"It's another infringement of people's rights, and it's not right," Miles said.

The several dozen protesters feel they have a right to drive up and down this particular stretch of beach as some have for decades.

But the National Park Service recently determined that, under a federal law in place since 1972, it could not allow driving on its beaches -- at least not this one.

Gordie Wilson, the superintendent of the Castillo de San Marcos and the Fort Matanzas national monuments, was at the beach to observe the rally and answer questions from the hostile crowd.

"You've never had a problem with it before," one protester said.

"I don't have the authority to break the law," Wilson replied.

Jim McCartney, a fisherman who goes by the nickname "Matanzas Jim," said he had been fishing at the inlet for decades.

But, without being able to drive down, he won't be able to get his gear there.

"I can't hoof that anymore at 70 years old," McCartney said. "It's a sad, sad day."

One fisherman with one leg and another on crutches showed up to prove that they, too, won't be able to fish there anymore.

Miles' sister-in-law, Karen Miles, who owns the nearby Devil's Elbow Fishing Resort, said the St. Johns County Commission should step up to the federal government to protect the pastime.

On Dec. 15, the commission passed a resolution declaring its support for beach driving and urging the park service to expedite the process to reinstate it.

But Miles, who fears the ban will cost her some business, believes the commissioners should do more.

"They have the power," she said. "They don't have the backbone."

For now, though, the issue is a federal one.

Wilson said National Park Service attorneys determined several months ago that beach driving on the Fort Matanzas property was a violation of an order, signed by President Richard Nixon, to prohibit vehicles from driving off roadways at national monuments.

"We always thought that, historically, our boundary was a little closer to the dune," Wilson said.

But after the attorneys examined the boundaries and the law, they decided to close the beach to vehicle traffic.

"It's a very polarizing issue," he said. "It is a part of the culture here, and it's not something we did lightly."

He said that the order was put in place to help carry out one of the park service's mission: to protect the country's natural resources.

His explanations did little, if anything, to appease the crowd.

One protester, who said he was a local Baptist preacher and would only identify himself as "Ben Franklin," got within a foot of Wilson and called him a "coward."

He held a sign that read, "N Park Serv Hitler's Soldiers" and compared the ban to the Holocaust.

At several times, he accused a female park ranger of taking a job away from a man.

He was outcast by others at the rally as extreme, but all seemed to have at least some animosity toward Wilson and the government in general.

One woman held a sign depicting Uncle Sam's foot stomping on a truck on the beach under the words "You're next."

Jack Davis, a professor of Florida and environmental history at the University of Florida, said beach driving has a "long cultural tradition in Florida, dating back to the first cars and an early form of auto racing."

"But polluting Florida's rivers and draining its wetlands has an equally long tradition. None of these practices make ecological sense," Davis said. "If one truly wishes to commune with nature, the place to do it is not behind a windshield."

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Ashok Leyland to launch trucks on new platform by April - Marketwatch

Posted: 02 Jan 2010 07:33 AM PST

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By Nikhil Gulati

(Updates with additional details on new trucks, comments by executive)

NEW DELHI (MarketWatch) -- Ashok Leyland Ltd. said Saturday that it will replace its existing trucks with a new U-Truck range by the fiscal year ended March 31, 2013, to take on bigger rival Tata Motors Ltd. (TTM, 500570.BY) in this potential growth market.

"We'll launch two products on the platform by April and 25 in total in 18 months from then," R. Seshasayee, the company's managing director, said at a news conference.

The construction of cross-country highways and the federal government's push to develop infrastructure are expected to boost demand for medium and heavy trucks in India over the long term. This has prompted global auto makers such as Daimler AG (DAI, DAI.XE) and Volvo A.B. (VOLVY, VOLV-B.SK) to either form alliances or sell trucks directly in the country. Local automobile companies such as Tata Motors, the country's biggest truck maker by sales, and Ashok Leyland also are revamping their product range to compete in the market. Tata Motors has developed a new range of trucks called the World Truck Series.

Ashok Leyland will initially manufacture its U-Trucks at its new factory in Pantnagar in the northern state of Uttarakhand. The factory will begin production by March. At a later date, the company plans to produce U-Trucks at its Hosur factory near Chennai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The two plants will have a combined capacity of 150,000 trucks and buses a year, Seshasayee said.

"A part of this capacity will also be used to make light trucks with Nissan Motor," he said.

Ashok Leyland, India's second-largest truck maker by sales volume, expects to start selling light trucks via a joint venture with Japan's Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY, 7201.TO) by mid-2011. The company has three joint ventures with Nissan to codevelop, manufacture and market light trucks and engines for the local and international markets.

The two companies previously had planned to build a $500 million factory at Chennai but deferred the project because of a delay in acquiring land.

Ashok Leyland expects truck sales to make up as much as 80% of its total sales by 2013. The remaining 20% of sales will come from buses, Seshasayee said.

The company also expects to sell up to 68,000 trucks and buses in the current financial year through March 31, Rajive Saharia, executive director of marketing at the company said. However, he didn't provide sales figures for the fiscal year ended March 2009.

Saharia also said that Ashok Leyland plans to raise product prices by 1.5% in January because of an increase in input costs.

Local truck and bus sales were hard hit by a slowdown in the Indian economy in the last financial year as infrastructure development projects stalled. Sales started to recover in July last year after falling for nine straight months, helped by a gradual recovery of the Indian economy, an easier availability of loans and renewed purchases by fleet operators.

Ashok Leyland's local truck and bus sales in the eight months through November fell 23% from the same period the year before to 28,567 vehicles. That compares with a 12% rise in total local truck and bus sales to 303,961 vehicles.

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Our View: Uninsured drivers the real problem in Louisiana - Alexandria Daily Town Talk

Posted: 02 Jan 2010 07:33 AM PST

Don't let the sun go down on you today before you get to Marksville to pick up free tickets to "The Music of Elton John," as performed by the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra. Tickets will be available at the box office at Paragon Resort's Mari Center starting at 3 p.m. Doors will open at 7 p.m. and the show will start at 8. Featured artists include vocalist Jean Meilleur, pianist John Regan and conductor Mariusz Smolij. For fans of Elton, Saturday night's all right.

Elsewhere in the news, Louisiana drivers are paying more for insurance, and someone thinks we're all addicted to reality TV. Our views follow:

AUTO INSURANCE RATES jumped Friday for more than 1 million Louisiana motorists as a law increasing the required minimum liability coverage took effect. Regulators defend the increase, saying it's needed to bring the nearly 30-year-old minimum liability requirement in line with costs associated with crashes, medical care, repairs and replacement vehicles. Previously, car and truck owners had to carry at least "10-20-10" liability coverage: $10,000 for injury or death to one person in a crash, $20,000 for injury or death to more than one person, and $10,000 for damage of other people's property. The new law changes the levels to "15-30-25."

WE THINK: There's no question that the costs associated with vehicle crashes have increased. But that doesn't tell the entire story. Auto insurance costs more in Louisiana -- much more -- because so many drivers ride around uninsured and because local and state police allow them to do so. That means law-abiding drivers pay a disproportionate amount to compensate for the derelicts, drunks and delinquents who think they have a right to drive and that the road belongs to them and them alone. They don't, and it doesn't. Records show that 12 percent of automobiles registered in Louisiana are not covered by insurance. Ask any insurance agent, and you'll learn that the number is likely much higher. Insurance professionals routinely cite figures as high as 35 percent -- that's one in three drivers cruising around uninsured.

IN AN OVERVIEW of the past 10 years, The Associated Press reports the following: As a nation, we became addicted to reality TV, from the feuding Gosselins of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" to "American Idol."

WE THINK: No, we didn't.

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Bases lend hand to PCSing family hit by thieves - Air Force Times

Posted: 02 Jan 2010 07:41 AM PST

Bases lend hand to PCSing family hit by thieves

When airmen at Fairchild and McChord Air Force bases learned that one of their own had been robbed of his most valuable possessions in Spokane, Wash., they didn't hesitate.

Within two days, Tech. Sgt. Dewey Brown and his wife, Sharon, were inundated with gifts of cash, clothing, food, lodging and Christmas presents for their 7-year-old daughter, Cami.

The gesture turned a holiday heartbreak into a life-affirming story.

"There are no words to express our gratitude and appreciation," Brown said. "What a humbling experience."

Brown and his family were on the last leg of a move from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to McChord when they stopped at a motel for the night. On the morning of Dec. 21, Brown awoke to find that their truck and moving trailer had been stolen from the parking lot. Police recovered the vehicles that afternoon, but valuables including laptops, jewelry, firearms, clothing and Christmas gifts had been taken.

Brown didn't think to contact Fairchild, but his father, a retired airman who belongs to a veterans motorcycle association, was able to get word to a master sergeant at the base who is also a member. As news of Brown's situation spread throughout the base, donations began to pour in.

Fairchild airmen collected more than $2,200 in cash, $100 in vouchers at the commissary and Army and Air Force Exchange Service, and Christmas gifts for Cami. The Spokane VA Medical Center also collected nearly $1,000. A local auto body shop repaired the family's vehicle for free, and the motel where the break-in occurred gave them free lodging for the holidays.

"You could just tell they were really surprised, they were very grateful," said Eddie Steetle, a community readiness consultant at the Fairchild Airman Family Readiness Center. "It was just a really good feeling to see this family get this kind of support during this terrible circumstance."

More assistance was waiting when the Browns finally made it to McChord.

On Dec. 29, they walked into their temporary lodging at the base to find a full complement of towels, soaps and shower curtains, a refrigerator full of food and still more gifts for Cami.

Brown, who in February will start a one-year tour at Kunsan Air Base, Korea, was touched by the reception.

"I'm so happy to be here and so looking forward to being part of Team McChord," he said. "We love that the military takes care of their own."

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Army wife’s blog logs her survival - Omaha World-Herald

Posted: 02 Jan 2010 06:00 AM PST

LINCOLN — Two days after she learned that a roadside bomb had blown up her husband's Humvee in Afghanistan, Dena Yllescas began typing her first blog post for family in Nebraska.

Her daughters — ages 7 years and 9 months — were asleep. Friends, who had rushed over with casseroles and cigarettes, had gone home.

The 29-year-old Army wife sat at a laptop computer in her kitchen in Texas and described how her hands had shaken as she listened to an Army captain catalog her husband's injuries over the phone. "I just wanted him to quit talking," she wrote in the predawn hours of Oct. 31, 2008.

A few paragraphs later, she described how she had struggled to tell her elder daughter, Julia, what had happened to her father.

"Did Daddy's legs get chopped off?" the 7-year-old asked bluntly.

"Yes, baby. Daddy lost his legs but he is still daddy, and he loves you very very much," she replied.

She wrote a new entry every day for the next 32 days, opening a stoic and unusually eloquent record of what a military family endures after a soldier is badly wounded.

Fourteen months later, more than 165,000 people — the vast majority of them strangers — have visited the site, yllescasfamily.blogspot.com. Many of them are drawn by a desire to connect with a war whose burdens are borne mainly by the tiny percentage of the population that is part of the military.

Begun as a way to inform friends and family of Capt. Rob Yllescas' condition, the blog became a chronicle of Dena's own survival.

Nov. 1, 2008: "I looked under his sheets and his poor abdomen was so bruised it was almost black and he looked like he was 9 months pregnant."

In the weeks that followed the bombing, Dena Yllescas blogged from the waiting room at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where Rob was being treated; from his hospital bed; and from the small hotel suite where she was staying with her mother-in-law and mother. When there was bad news, she moved through it quickly and asked for prayers.

On better days, she lingered over the small signs of improvement: the first time Rob squeezed her hand, the first time he shrugged his shoulders, the first time he seemed to meet her gaze. "He actually LOOKED INTO MY EYES!!!!" Dena wrote two weeks after her husband's injury. "I could feel that he was actually THERE." She described holding up a picture of their two children for her husband, a broad-shouldered, intense Army officer, and wondering how close to hold it to his eyes. "I'm not sure if he was able to see it well," she conceded in her blog.

Someday her husband would read the posts, she told herself. He would take solace in how far he had come.

In the meantime, many of the 921 residents of Osceola, Neb., where the Yllescases had met, graduated from high school and married, began reading her posts religiously.

Every morning, Dena's father, Alan Gissling, ate breakfast at the town's only restaurant and talked with friends about the latest entry — on Rob's falling bilirubin levels, which suggested that his liver was recovering, or on Dena's dream that her husband had rolled over and spoken to her. President George W. Bush visited the hospital to pin a Purple Heart on her husband. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stopped by as well.

"Don't call me unless it's good news," Dena's father told her. "I'll read the blog."

At the huge Fort Hood, Texas, Army post where Rob was based, the blog became a daily ritual for thousands, said Paige Tyler, a close friend of Dena's whose husband was in Rob's battalion. "It was unreal," she said. "I had family and friends — people who had no idea who Rob Yllescas was — asking me about Rob and Dena."

Nov. 29, 2008: "Pray, Pray, Pray, PRAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A little while ago I had to make the toughest decision of my life. They found a huge blood clot in the main part of Rob's brain. I could either let it be and let him die a peaceful death or I could choose to do an emergency craniotomy on him."

Dena opted for the surgery. To reach the clot, which was obscured by swelling, Rob's doctors had to remove a small portion of his brain. At 11:16 p.m., Dena wrote that her husband had made it off the operating table. But the doctors put his odds of surviving at less than 10 percent.

Rob made it through the night of Nov. 30 but the next morning suffered a massive stroke. A scan of his brain showed no hope for recovery, and on Dec. 1 Dena pulled her husband off life support. He was 31 years old.

Dena's blog entry that day was only nine sentences long. She didn't write about how panicky she felt as she watched Rob die. She also didn't include his time of death on the blog. "Putting the time down made it feel too final," she recalled.

On the evening of Rob's funeral, she and a half-dozen other wives from her husband's battalion met at Dena's childhood home in Nebraska. It was cold and snowy. The wife of the battalion executive officer, whom Dena had always considered a bit prim, flopped onto her back and made a snow angel. Soon the wives — all of whom had husbands still serving in Afghanistan — were pelting each other with snowballs. "I swear, only military wives can lift each other up after the day we had," Dena wrote the next day.

Dena sold the home she and her husband had built outside Fort Hood and bought a new house in Lincoln, about an hour from the farming community where she was raised.

Her father, who had retired from running an auto parts store, tended Rob's grave, which lay at the back of the Osceola town cemetery, just a few steps from a 1,000-acre cornfield. He planted grass on the freshly dug dirt mound, carting water from his house in buckets, and decorated it with a dozen American flags.

Dec. 13, 2008: "My world as I know it has turned upside down. My whole adult life I've only known the military."

For the first five months after Rob's death, Dena talked to her old friends at Fort Hood on an almost daily basis. "It was definitely a rough ride for her," said Paige Tyler, Dena's friend from Fort Hood.

Before bed, Dena would often catch herself setting her cell phone on her nightstand in case Rob called from Afghanistan while she was sleeping. The deployment to Afghanistan had followed two yearlong Iraq deployments, and Dena had become accustomed to waiting for her husband.

In early May, she was digging through her daughter's pink backpack when she found a family portrait Julia had drawn in school earlier that day. Rob wore a camouflage uniform of green polka dots. Across the top of the drawing, Julia had written in blue crayon: "To Daddy: I miss you. I love you."

A few days later, Dena wrote on her blog, "It is so hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that he is never coming home to us."

Her blog entries increasingly focused on the mundane details of her new life. In the fall, she finally sold her husband's F-250 King Ranch diesel truck. She cleaned out his gloves, sunglasses, fishing license and credit card receipts.

"His presence was all around that truck," Dena wrote on Oct. 7, Rob's birthday. Before the new owner drove it away, Julia kissed it.

Dena avoided some subjects on her blog. In September, she visited Fort Hood with her new boyfriend, whom she began dating in July. A few military friends refused to see her.

"We weren't ready for it, which is kind of funny because she is the one who lost her husband," Tyler said.

Dena's boyfriend drives a snowplow part time, works construction jobs in the summer and is working to be a golf pro.

"He's the total opposite of Rob, who was a hard-core Army officer," Tyler said. "But Dena is the one who lost her husband. It is her reality, and we have to respect it."

On the morning of Oct. 28 — the one-year anniversary of the call informing her that Rob had been hurt — Dena packed off her children to school and day care and updated her blog. She had spent the previous day struggling to recall her husband's last call from Afghanistan.

"I always said, 'I love you. Be safe,'" she recalled in an interview. If she said those words during that final call, she couldn't remember.

"I think I've decided that one year later is worse than when it actually happened," she typed just before 8 a.m. "All day yesterday, I kept counting down the hours until 'doom day.'"

She was certain that the next 34 days, spanning the date of Rob's injury to the anniversary of his death on Dec. 1, would be the hardest of her life. Every room in her home contains at least one picture of her deceased husband.

Dena had some rough days in the month leading up to the anniversary of Rob's death. But the month passed more quickly and with less heartache than she had expected.

Dec. 1, 2009: "Yesterday we came back to Osceola and Julia didn't go to school today. This morning I went to the gravesite. What a difference one year makes. It's full of grass. ... I decided to try to make a sad day into a happy one. I surprised Julia with a new puppy. He is havanese, black and white, and absolutely ADORABLE!"

On her blog that day, she posted a picture of Rob's grave, surrounded by American flags and framed from behind by the brown stalks of fall's corn crop. Below the photo from the grave site is a snapshot of Julia holding her new puppy.

"I know my heart will never be 100 percent whole. I will never be 100 percent happy," Dena said in the interview, just before Christmas. "But the anniversary of Rob's injury and death helped me see that are bright spots in my future."

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