NATIONAL BRIEFS

WASHINGTON: Grants for health workers

The administration will announce Monday as much as $1 billion in funding to hire, train and deploy health-care workers, part of the White House's broader "We Can't Wait" agenda to bolster the economy after President Barack Obama's jobs bill stalled in Congress. Doctors, community groups, local government and other organizations that work with patients in federal health-care programs such as Medicare and Medicaid can get grants. The funds are for experimenting with different ways to expand the health-care workforce while reducing the cost of delivering care.

WISCONSIN: Recall effort to begin

The effort to recall the controversial Republican governor is expected to begin although opponents have yet to come up with a candidate to replace him. The recall effort is in response to a state law passed earlier this year that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers. Gov. Scott Walker's law sparked weeks of protests. Two Republican state senators who supported it were ousted in recalls last summer. Walker, elected last fall, isn't eligible for recall until he has been in office a year. Democrats, working with union leaders, need 540,000 signatures by Jan. 17 to force a recall election.

UTAH: WWII vet's boxful of medals

More than six decades after being freed from a Japanese prisoner of war camp, a Utah veteran was compelled to relive the horrors and triumphs of his World War II experience this month when he received a mysterious package containing seven military medals, including the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star. The medals have become a source of pride for retired Army Capt. Tom Harrison, 93, since they arrived in a box with nothing more than a packing slip from a logistics center in Philadelphia on Nov. 4, which happened to be his 65th wedding anniversary. But they have also refreshed painful memories of the Bataan Death March, POW camps and the comrades he lost during the war.