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For decades, Koreans have been pushing to preserve the legacy of women forced to provide sex to Japanese army soldiers during World War II. Glendale, Calif., will dedicate a statue memorializing the victims, known as "comfort women," on Tuesday. But the statue has spurred controversy in this Southern California city, where some area residents say it is a divisive reminder of the horrors of war.

The sculpture is a bronze statue of a young girl. She looks about 14 — around the same age as many comfort women when they were forced into military brothels run by Japan's imperial army.

Ok-seon Lee, 86, was one of them. She's in California, visiting with Korean-American activists. These activists don't say "comfort women" when she's around. Instead, they call her halmoni, Korean for "grandmother."

As she tells her story, Lee stares out at no one through her red-tinted glasses. She's back inside her darkest days, decades ago. Lee says she was taken to a facility in Yanji, China, at age 15, where she was abused for three years until the end of the war.

"The comfort station where we were taken was not a place for human beings to live," Lee says through an interpreter. "It was a slaughterhouse. I'm telling you, it was killing people."

The Picture Show

Comfort Women: Untold Stories Of Wartime Abuse

It's going to be a party in Minneapolis.

With gay marriages becoming legal in Minnesota on Thursday, courthouses in major cities across the state will be open after midnight to accommodate dozens of same-sex couples eager to tie the knot.

"It's good for our business," says Ron Stein, a jeweler in Minneapolis, where the mayor plans to conduct weddings for approximately 40 couples. "We've had orders already."

In recent days, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has published articles about the coming "boon" to the state's wedding industry, as well as the phenomenon of same-sex couples facing the same sort of pre-wedding "jitters" long known to straights.

But many people in the state are still shocked by the whole idea. When a gay marriage ban was on the ballot last fall, only a dozen among Minnesota's 87 counties opposed it.

Most rural counties supported the idea of banning gay marriage by margins of 3-to-2, or even 3-to-1. They were outvoted statewide by the urban centers.

In May, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton signed a bill allowing gay weddings to go forward. Some parts of the state aren't ready for it.

"Away from the cities, you're going to see a lot of legislators voted out," says Dean Walters, a teacher in Owatonna. "People in rural areas are unhappy."

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The U.S. economy grew by an annualized rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter of 2013, according to Gross Domestic Product data released Wednesday morning. The Commerce Department says the rise stems from business investments, particularly in buildings, and an upturn in exports and the civilian aircraft industry.

The data represents the agency's first estimate of the value of all goods and services produced in the United States. The growth exceeds economists' expectations, which had called for a 1 percent rate of expansion, as Bloomberg News reports.

The new data shows a modest increase over the results for this year's first quarter, which were revised downward to 1.1 percent, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. It also reported gains in Americans' income.

"Real disposable personal income—personal income adjusted for taxes and inflation—rose 3.4 percent in the second quarter after falling 8.2 percent in the first quarter," the Bureau of Economic Analysis says.

Purchases of goods and services by U.S. residents rose by 2.4 percent in the second quarter, from 1.4 percent growth in the first.

Personal saving also rose by half a percentage point, from 4 to 4.5 percent. Rises in prices for goods and services were slight, at 0.3 percent, compared to a 1.2 percent rise in the first quarter of 2013.

In other economic data released today, the payroll firm ADP says U.S. companies added 200,000 new jobs from June to July. That means American businesses "hired in July at the fastest pace since December," according to the AP.

The payroll company also revised its June figures upward, from 188,000 to 198,000.

By industry, the biggest job gains were in professional and business services, as well as in trade, transportation, and utilities, ADP says. The construction sector added 22,000 jobs in the month, while manufacturing lost 5,000 jobs.

A year ago, Montana opened the nation's first clinic for free primary healthcare services to its state government employees. The Helena, Mont., clinic was pitched as a way to improve overall employee health, but the idea has faced its fair share of political opposition.

A year later, the state says the clinic is already saving money.

Pamela Weitz, a 61-year-old state library technician, was skeptical about the place at first.

"I thought it was just the goofiest idea, but you know, it's really good," she says. In the last year, she's been there for checkups, blood tests and flu shots. She doesn't have to go; she still has her normal health insurance provided by the state. But at the clinic, she has no co-pays, no deductibles. It's free.

That's the case for the Helena area's 11,000 state workers and their dependents. With an appointment, patients wait just a couple minutes to see a doctor. Visitation is more than 75 percent higher than initial estimates.

"For goodness sakes, of course the employees and the retirees like it, it's free," says Republican State Sen. Dave Lewis.

He wonders what that free price tag is actually costing the state government as well as the wider Helena community.

"If they're taking money out of the hospital's pocket, the hospital's raising the price on other things to offset that," Lewis says.

He and others faulted then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer for moving ahead with the clinic last year without approval of the state legislature, although it was not needed.

Now, Lewis is a retired state employee himself. He says, personally, he does like going there, too.

"They're wonderful people, they do a great job, but as a legislator, I wonder how in the heck we can pay for it very long," Lewis says.

Lower Costs For Employees And Montana

The state contracts with a private company to run the facility and pays for everything — wages of the staff, total costs of all the visits. Those are all new expenses, and they all come from the budget for state employee healthcare.

Even so, division manager Russ Hill says it's actually costing the state $1,500,000 less for healthcare than before the clinic opened.

"Because there's no markup, our cost per visit is lower than in a private fee-for-service environment," Hill says.

Physicians are paid by the hour, not by the number of procedures they prescribe like many in the private sector. The state is able to buy supplies at lower prices.

“ Because there's no markup, our cost per visit is lower than in a private fee-for-service environment.