Author David Larter

Being president means having technology at your fingertips, something President Obama was eager to show off to comedian Jerry Seinfeld in a video posted this week. Seinfeld, who posts an occasional series online called “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” this week invited President Obama along for a ride in his 1963 Stingray Corvette. After the Secret Service stops them from leaving the White House grounds, Obama brings Seinfeld into his ride: the five-ton, bulletproof presidential vehicle known as “The Beast.” “I could call a nuclear submarine from this, right here,” Obama told the comedian, motioning to the phone console next…

ABOARD THE LITTORAL COMBAT SHIP MILWAUKEE, VIRGINIA CAPES – The littoral combat ship Milwaukee, the Navy’s newest ship, broke down Dec. 11 and had to be towed more than 40 nautical miles to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, Virginia. The ship suffered an engineering casualty while transiting from Halifax, Canada, to Mayport, Florida, and ultimately its home port of San Diego. The cause is being evaluated by ship’s crew and technical consultants. Initial indications are that fine metal debris collected in the lube oil filter caused the system to shut down, according to a Navy statement provided to Navy Times. The…

The hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985 at the hands of Hezbollah militants turned a routine flight from Greece to Italy into a Navy tragedy when Steelworker 2nd Class Robert “Bobby” Stethem was singled out, brutally beaten and murdered for being a service member. Divers in 1985 Lebanon hijacking receive POW medals Stethem, a Seabee diver, was identified by his Navy ID card along with shipmate Clint Suggs. There were several other sailors on board the flight, but most initially avoided being singled out by hiding their IDs. They were later discovered and taken into captivity in Beirut, Lebanon.…

Sept. 11, 2001 was a day when thousands of Americans — firefighters, police, troops and everyday people — became heroes. But one story of heroism got little attention until a short documentary was created for the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. Released by Eyepop Productions and narrated by famed actor and veterans advocate Tom Hanks, the 12-minute video tells the story of how the U.S. Coast Guard, supported by the people who worked on the New York and New Jersey waterfront, pulled off the greatest mass waterborne evacuation in history. (The half million evacuated makes it even bigger than the famed 1940 Allied evacuation of Dunkirk in…