KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18. 2010 / NEWS
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STUDENT SENATE
Resolution supports elementary schools
Student Senate passed a resolution Wednesday in support of keeping neighborhood schools open in Lawrence, particularly near the University. The Lawrence School Board is discussing closing elementary schools near campus, including Hildreth and Cordley, as a result of budget cuts.
Student body president Mason Heilman said protecting the schools is important to the University because the location and quality of education is an advantage to students and University employees who have children.
The Library Gallery Commission will unveil a World War I exhibit tonight at Watson Library.
He said Hillcrest is especially helpful for international students' children because it has programs for students who speak English as a second language.
"I think it's incredibly important because having strong neighborhoods makes our university community stronger inherently," Heilman said.
The exhibit will feature letters, photographs of local military units, recruitment posters and propaganda used during World War I. The University, Haskell Indian Nations University and the National World War I Museum provided the content.
Heilman said he wanted to move the resolution along because the school board is moving quickly on its decision.
Sarah Thiel, chairman of the Library Gallery Committee, said the exhibit was designed to specifically show the involvement of local African Americans, Native Americans and University alumni in World War I. The opening of the exhibit will be tonight from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on the third floor of Watson Library. The exhibit will run through April 2.
-Garrett Griffin
WWI artifacts on display at Watson
— Annie Vangsnes
EXHIBIT
Preview the exhibit before it opens at kansan.com/videos.
CRIME
Officer's badge stops bullet in gunfight
LAS VEGAS — A police officer's badge may have saved his life when it stopped a bullet during an exchange of gunfire in North Las Vegas.
Police continued to search Sunday for the suspect, who might also be injured.
The love boat
Associated Press
ASSOCIATED PRESS/The Herald, Dan Bates
a rainbow seen in the background, seagulls fly by the USS Abraham Lincoln at Naval Station Everett in Everett, Wash., on Tuesday morning. The Lincoln arrived Monday after exercises off the California coast to re-certify its flight deck as part of operations for its next deployment.
NATIONAL
Military will finally pay extra work
Staff Sgt. Katie Blackwell shows the medals she was awarded, including the Purple Heart and Bronze Star, while she and her husband were deployed in at her home in Champlin, Minn. Blackwell, who spent 16 months in Iraq as part of a nearly two-year deployment with the Minnesota Red Bulls from 2005 to 2007, estimates she and her husband were $8,000.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST.PAUL, Minn. — Thousands of National Guard soldiers who served extra-long deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan and other conflicts were supposed to get paid time off when they came home three years ago.
Now,they may finally be about to get their money after years of frustration.
An Army spokesman said Wednesday that 6,800 Army National Guard soldiers are in line to receive the tardy checks. Among those still waiting: About 2,500 of Minnesota's Red Bulls with the 34th Infantry Division, who served the longest tour of any military unit in Iraq as part of the 2007 troop surge. A Minnesota Guard spokesman said that group should get $10 million.
Staff Sgt. Katie Blackwell of Champlin, Minn., who spent 16 months in Iraq as part of a nearly two-year deployment with the Minnesota Red Bulls from 2005 to 2007, estimates she and her husband, also a Guard soldier, together are owed $8,000.
"We've been overseas to fight for our country. When I came home, I didn't expect to have to fight on the home front," she said.
The Pentagon's fix comes after intense pressure from members of Congress and as Minnesota legislators were considering appropriating state money to make up for
the unpaid federal dollars. The Pentagon didn't announce when the soldiers would be paid, but U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., said Defense Secretary Robert Gates' office told him the checks will go out by March 19.
A spokeswoman in Gates' office declined to confirm the date.
Since the Iraq war started in 2003, the military has relied heavily on National Guard and Reserve troops, sending them into combat more frequently and
for longer tours than ever before.
Maj. Tim Beninato said Army National Guard soldiers earned the leave at a rate of $200 a day.
The soldiers were promised the paid leave — called Post Deployment Mobilization Respite Absence — for deployments that lasted more than a year. The program also recognized frequent deployments. Army spokesman
Initially, the benefit was easy to give to active-duty troops, but there was no policy created to pay Guard and Reserve members until August 2007.
NATIONAL
Man tells police he threw girl into river
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WOODBRIDGE, N.J. — A man who satched his infant daughter from the arms of her maternal grandmother while the child's mother was in court getting a restraining order against him told police he threw the baby off a bridge and into a frigid New Jersey river Tuesday, prompting a massive search beneath a busy parkway.
Authorities say the father of 3-month-old Zara Malini-lin Abdur, 21-year-old Shamsiddi Abdur Raheem of Galloway Township, allegedly forced his way into her grandmother's East Orange apartment around 4 p.m. Tuesday, striking her in the face, choking her, and forcibly taking the baby, wrapped in a blanket and a pink and gray onesie, before fleeing in his vehicle. Search teams were still scouring the area for any signs of the girl.