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8A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY,OCTOBER 22.2009
POLITICS
Obama announces credit initiatives for small businesses
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LANDOVER, Md. — President Barack Obama unveiled plans Wednesday to refocus spending of the government's $700 billion financial bailout away from Wall Street's big financial institutions and toward small businesses on Main Street.
Speaking in a small business near Washington, Obama said the initiatives would make it easier for smaller community banks to provide credit to small businesses, which have been hard-hit by the financial crisis. The president's plan also includes a request that Congress increase caps for existing Small
Business Administration loans.
"Over the past decade and a half, America's small businesses have created 65 percent of all new jobs in the country," Obama told about 150 employees at a storage business's warehouse on the eastern outskirts of Washington.
"These companies are the engine of job growth in America," he said. "They fuel our prosperity. And that's why they have to be at the forefront of our recovery."
The shift in focus comes amid outrage over record payouts to financial executives, some of whom work at firms that needed Washington to bail them out with billions of taxpayer dollars last year. Obama officials called the bonuses
"offensive" and instead sought to convince the country that Obama's administration was interested in everyday Americans' struggles, not just the problems of those on Wall Street.
On Wednesday, Obama pitched his plan as a way to create jobs and change day-to-day life.
"These entrepreneurial pioneers embody the spirit of possibility, the tireless work ethic, and the simple hope for something better that lies at the heart of the American ideal. And they have always formed the backbone of the American economy" he said.
"They're the ones who've opened the mom-and-pop stores and started the computer tinkering that has
led to some of the biggest innovations and corporations in the world. After all, Hewlett Packard began in a garage. Google began as a research project. And McDonald's started with just one restaurant."
The president called on lawmakers on Capitol Hill to increase the maximum size of loans small businesses can receive. The administration's plan would also provide infusions of money to small banks at low rates, provided they agree to increase lending to small businesses. Financial institutions, including credit unions and banks, that serve low income areas would also get help at even lower rates to help small businesses in the hardest-hit rural and urban areas.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Barack Obama speaks at Metropolitan Archives facility in Landover, Md., Wednesday. He announced a package of initiatives that will increase credit to small businesses.
irina Zayky Gorovets, a Russian immigrant and widow of U.S. citizen Emil Gorovets, holds a picture of her late husband March 19. He died in 2001, a year after they were married but not long enough to quarantine her American citizenship.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Congress ends the 'Widow's Penalty'
IMMIGRATION
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - A legal provision criticized for making personal tragedies worse by triggering the automatic deportation of a small group of widows and widowers of U.S. citizens will not be in effect for much longer.
Congress gave final approval Tuesday to legislation that would effectively abolish a provision known as the "Widow's Penalty." The measure is part of a bigger Homeland Security bill that President Barack Obama is expected to sign.
Existing U.S. law triggers the deportation of surviving immigrant spouses of American citizens who die before they have been married two years. The new law would allow the widows to submit petitions seeking residency even when the spouse dies before two years of marriage.
"It's definitely a big relief, it doesn't feel like prison any more" said Agnieszka Bernstein, whose husband Bryan died of a heart attack in 2006, just short of their first anniversary.
first anniversary, at the age of 32
Bernstein came to the U.S. in 1998 from Glwiice, Poland, and lives in Spring Valley, about 30 miles north of New York City. She works part time as a dental assistant and
tal assistant and
mess," Bernstein said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Those affected come from all corners of the world and span all economic backgrounds; They include a woman from Kosovo whose contractor husband was killed in Iraq, a woman from Ecuador whose husband was a U.S. Border Patrol agent killed in the line of duty, a Jamaican whose husband was killed in New York City's Staten Island ferry accident, and a Briton and former head chef for Prince Charles and Princess Diana whose actor husband died of pancreatic cancer.
"I've got hundreds of messages (from widows), and it's really great," said Brent Renison, a lawyer in Portland, Oregon, who created a support network for widows and widowers, and has taken the lead in the widows' class action suit. At least 200 people are affected by the widow penalty, he estimates.
cleaning houses, unable to visit her family in Poland for fear she would be denied re-entry.
AGNIESZKA BERNSTEIN
Widow
"Until yesterday, it just felt like a beautiful prison. I could leave but I could never come back."
"I'm not religious, but I just think that if there are souls of the deceased out there they're finally at rest," Renison said.
"Until yesterday it just felt like a beautiful prison. I could leave but I could never come back. I felt trapped in this immigration
Ohio and Texas.
Congress' action comes as the requirement is under legal attack all over the country, including a class action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles and individual litigation in Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts.
It also had led Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this summer to suspend it for two years. The agency said at the time that legislation would be needed to permanently fix the law.
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until Obama signs the bill before making any moves in the court cases, though they expect to either withdraw the lawsuits or settle the cases.
The Congressional vote ends years of uncertainly for people like Irina Gorovets of Moscow, who married Emil Gorovets, a composer and singer, in February 2000. He had emigrated from Russia in 1972 and become a U.S. citizen.
FREE DELIVERY
The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services referred calls to the Department of Homeland Security, which released a statement late Wednesday praising Congress "for supporting the widows and widowers of U.S. citizens who otherwise would have been denied the right to remain in the United States."
At the root of the problem was a 1970 court ruling that stated that a husband's death stripped the wife of her position as spouse, meaning she no longer qualified for a green card. A 1990 law then narrowed that ruling's scope, saying a widow married to a U.S. citizen for at least two years can file a petition for a residency permit on her own behalf.
Two months after they were married he became sick for the first time, and was diagnosed with diabetes and kidney failure. She was tested to see if she could donate a kidney, but was told she was not compatible. He died at home Aug. 17, 2001.
The new law, championed by Rep. Jim McGovern and Sen. Bill Nelson, removes the two-year marriage requirement.
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Since then, she spends her time in the tiny New York apartment they shared together, working to keep her husband's legacy alive, cataloguing his music and transferring his songs from records to CDs.
Lawyers representing some of the widows said they would wait
The City of Lawrence invites residents and small businesses to recycle old, unwanted electronic equipment.
Lawrence Electronic Recycling Event
Saturday, October 31, 2009 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Free State High School north parking lot 4700 Overland Drive
Electronic recycling will be provided by Extreme Recycling, Inc. A recycling fee applies for computer monitors ($5) and televisions ($10). Cash or checks only. There is no charge for other electronics, items accepted for recycling: Computer Monitors, Desktops, Laptops, Keyboards, Other Peripherals, Printers, Copiers, Scanners, Telephones, Cell Phones, Pagers, Fax Machines, Televisions, VHS/DV Drives and Hand Held Devices.
City of Lawrence
PUBLIC WORKS
WASTE REDUCTION & RECYCLING
www.LawrenceRecycles.org
832-3030
TOLEDO, Ohio — Two of three Ohio men convicted of plotting to recruit and train terrorists to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq were sentenced in federal court Wednesday to more than a decade in prison.
TERRORISM
Two sentenced in plot to recruit new terrorists
All Students Welcome
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mohanimad Amawi received a 20-year term, with credit for three
years he has already spent in custody. He will remain under lifetime supervision upon his release, U.S. District lodge James
Amawi
Carr said. Marwan El-Hindi, 46, described by prosecutors as the leader, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and given an 18-month consecutive term on an unrelated fraud conviction.
Both men had faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
"This isn't a capital "T' terrorism case," Carr said.
But the judge said he hoped the sentences send a message to anyone who is tempted to even talk about harming American soldiers.
Amawi, El-Hindi and Wassim Mazloum, all of Middle Eastern descent, met in Toledo about five years ago and began plotting and training to help insurgents in Iraq, the FBI said during their trial last year.
But defense lawyers argued that their clients were set up by an undercover FBI informant.
Wednesday, the judge said that while the informant played a huge role in the case, his actions did not amount to entrapment. Carr
said Amawi could have backed out, but instead talked about plans to help the insurgency in Iraq and watched jihadist videos.
Talk of killing troops isn't protected by free speech, the judge
said, and is not just "idle chatter or fantasy."
Prosecutors described El-Hindi as the leader among the three.
"I became American by choice. I love this country more than any country in the world."
"His role was to recruit, encourage and facilitate his proteges," federal prosecutor Thomas Getz said.
An attorney for El-Hindi, who has lived in the United States for 25 years, said his client never took any action toward harming U.S. soldiers.
And El-Hindi said his only mistake was speaking with a man who turned out to be a government informant.
"I became American by choice. I love this country more than any country in the world," El-Hindi said. "If I disagree with the government, that does not mean I want any harm to this country."
The judge determined that El-Hindi tried to recruit two Chicago-area cousins into the group's plot.
Mazloum was to be sentenced Wednesday night.
MARWAN EL-HINDI Convicted terrorist
Lawyers for all three defendants say their clients were manipulated by the prosecution's star witness, Darren Griffin.
After the judge first sentenced Amawi, defense attorney Edward Bryan said Carr was courageous given that the government wanted the maximum punishment for his client. Bryan said Amawi's interest in learning how to shoot guns and defend himself was based on a desire to protect himself and his family. He said the case against Amawi was conceived, contrived and concocted by the government.
Defense attorneys noted that Griffin was involved in all the recorded conversations presented to the jury, and said the government provided no evidence of telephone conversations or e-mails dealing with the alleged plot among only the defendants.
Griffin said most people at the mosque shunned him and no one raised any threats until El-Hindi began talking about kidnapping
Israeli soldiers.
Amiwa, Griffin said, asked him to help train two recruits from Chicago for holy war.
Griffin testified that he twice traveled to Jordan with Amawi and also
taught Amawi and Mazloum how to shoot guns.
Amaiw, El-Hindi and Mazloum were convicted of conspiring to kill or maim people outside the United States, including military personnel.
Aawai and El-Hindi were convicted of distributing information regarding explosives to terrorists.
Amawi and El-Hindi are U.S. citizens. Mazloum came to the U.S. legally from Lebanon. El-Hindi was born in Jordan.