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José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 144
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 Florida Institute of Technology
photo
The flat top of this massive Porites colony off the island of Palau,shown here at high tide, reflects the low-water spring tide line that limits its vertical growth. During low tide, the water level would be at the top of the colony. Study says
coral can keep up with sea level
By the Florida Institute of Technology news
staff
The coral reefs that have protected Pacific Islanders from storm waves for thousands of years could grow rapidly enough to keep up with escalating sea levels if ocean temperatures do not rise too quickly, according to a new study from Florida Institute of Technology. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, provides the first evidence that well-managed reefs will be able to keep up with sea-level rise through vertical growth. But that can happen only if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere stay below 670 parts-per million, said researchers. Carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas responsible for most of global warming, which in turn increases ocean temperatures, they said. Today, the level of carbon dioxide is nearly 400 parts per million. Beyond 670 parts per million which could be reached within the next 100 years even healthy reefs will not be able keep up, they said. “Reefs will continue to keep up with sea-level rise if we reduce our emission of greenhouse gases,” said Florida Tech’s Rob van Woesik, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. “If reefs lose their capacity to keep up with sea-level rise they will drown.” Van Woesik was joined by researchers from the University of Queensland and the Palau International Coral Reef Center in the study, which took place in Palau in the western Pacific Ocean. Coral reefs are an intricate part of island culture, and they are considered a precious resource in the Pacific Ocean. If global temperatures continue to rise and thus retard the growth of these natural storm barriers, the homelands of millions of people on lands throughout the Pacific Ocean will be in jeopardy. Milanes is late again for his trial By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
If there were such an award, Luis Milanes would be a shoo-in for best actor in a judicial soap opera. The casino owner showed up late again and in pajamas for his fraud trial Wednesday. But Wednesday he was just an hour later. Monday he was two hours late. His lawyer said the man had been treated at Hospital San Juan de Dios earlier in the morning, according to those following the trial. The three-judge panel received a report from Medicatura Forense that the 64-year-old casino owner is fit to stand trial. Observers are expecting other legal maneuvers. Although 500 persons are reported to have lost money when the Milanes Savings Unlimited high interest operation collapsed in 2002, only a few were in the courtroom Wednesday. The activities of Milanes overshadow co-defendants, his brother José and Michael Gonzales, who was the public face for the high-interest scheme. Some observers believe that Milanes will avoid a trial and accept the charges in order to settle with a financial penalty rather than prison. He already has allocated money in a conciliation agreement that failed. Motorcycle crash kills man in Jacó By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
An early morning motorcycle crash in the center of Jacó took the life of a 20-year-old man, said the Judicial Investigating Organization. The dead man was identified by the last name of Sandoval. The drivers of the motorcycle, a 21 year old, also was hurt, said judicial agents. Missing couple headed for the hills By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Two 15 year olds, girl and boyfriend, took off Monday for the wilds. They finally were found early Wednesday after parents received a tip. They had set up a camp on Pico Blanco in Escazú over looking the Central Valley. They had been reported missing. They were not well prepared. The Fuerza Pública said they had only some candy and green bananas. The pair left notes for their families, but the notes were ambiguous. Obama ready to close Guantanamo prison By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The White House confirmed Wednesday that the administration was in the final stages of drafting a plan to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Barack Obama made the closure of the controversial offshore prison a priority when he took office in 2009, but the plan has faced numerous setbacks, including congressional efforts to block the transfer of detainees to U.S. prisons. But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that closing Guantanamo remained a priority. Inmates have slowly been transferred out, and 116 inmates now remain at the facility. Established by the former George W. Bush administration after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Guantanamo Bay once held nearly 800 enemy combatants captured in the war on terrorism. Obama has long maintained the facility does more harm than good by staining America’s reputation on the world stage and serving as a recruiting tool for terrorist groups. Republican backers of Guantanamo Bay say it is an indispensable tool for holding and interrogating America’s enemies, and they note that some detainees released from the camp have again taken up arms against the United States. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called for the return of the Guantanamo Bay territory to Cuba while he was in Washington this week.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 144 | |
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| Pilot program will let moms chase deadbeat dads via Internet |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A mother who does not get her monthly child support payment from an absent father on the day it is due will be be able to use the Internet to send police officers after him under a new pilot project in Cartago. The Poder Judicial said Wednesday that the system is being set up via its Web page. If successful, the system will be extended to the rest of the country. The new development comes at the same time that the courts have entered into an agreement with local banks to process child support (pensión alimentaria) automatically via electronic transfer. Failing to pay child support is treated harshly in Costa Rica. Police officers have been known to show up at workplaces with the perrera, the paddy wagon, handcuff a delinquent father and then lead him off to jail. Many individuals now in |
custody are
there for failing to pay child support. Zarela Villanueva Monge, president of the Corte Suprema de Justicia, said this was an important tool for heads of households. The goal is to expedite the handling of these complaints rather than have the mother show up at a judicial office. The mother has to sign up and receive access. Nearly all the recipients of child support are women, but men can be awarded these monthly payments if they have child custody and the non-custodial mother has income. The child support is awarded in divorce cases and in cases where the child is born out of wedlock to a father who may not longer be involved with the mother. The child support payments require an initial judicial hearing. Expats sometimes find themselves involved in such case, and they learn that they must post substantial sums of money before being allowed to leave the country. |
 Minisnerio de Seguridad Pública photo
Workers
at a Puerto Viejo rescue center check the turtles. |
Turtles . . . It's not
what's for dinner
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some people still do not get the message that turtles are more valuable for tourism than for the stew pot. Fuerza Pública officers said that they came across what looked like a turtle roundup Tuesday night in Moín. Five breeding-age green turtles were tied up and ready for slaughter, they said. Officers did not capture the responsible parties, but poaching turtles is a continual problem on the Caribbean coast. The security ministry said that the turtles were returned safe and sound to the sea after getting a health check at the Centro de Rescate Jaguar de Puerto Viejo. Members of the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas trucked the turtles there. There have been several incidents in the past weeks where officers found butchered turtles in vehicles or boats. In addition to Costa Rican laws, green turtles (Chelonia mydas) are listed as endangered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 144 | |||||
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| Percolator found to be a good way to remove arsenic from rice |
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By the Queen's University news staff
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have made a breakthrough in discovering how to lower worrying levels of arsenic in rice that is eaten all over the world. After many laboratory experiments, they have discovered that a simple, shop-bought coffee percolator is the best method for removing the carcinogen, inorganic arsenic, from all types of rice, including white and whole grain. The results are published in the PLOS ONE journal. Rice is the only major crop grown under flooded conditions. It is this flooding that releases inorganic arsenic, normally locked up in soil minerals, which is then absorbed by the plant. Too much arsenic is associated with a range of health problems including, at worst, bladder and lung cancer. (Ground water in Costa Rica has naturally occurring arsenic in many areas.) Rice has, typically, 10 times more inorganic arsenic than other foods and, according to the European Food Standards Authority, people who eat a lot of rice, as is the case in many parts of the developing world, are exposed to worrying concentrations. Children and infants are of particular concern as they eat, relatively, three times more rice than adults – baby rice being a popular food for weaning – and their organs are still developing. In this new study, researchers at Queen’s tested two methods of percolating technology, one where the cooking water was |
recycled
through condensing boiling-water steam and passing the
freshly distilled hot water through the grain in a lab
setting, and one where tap water was used to cook the rice held in an
off-the-shelf coffee percolator in a domestic setting. Both approaches proved highly effective, with up to 85 percent of arsenic removed from a variety of different rice types and brands, including whole grain and white. Andy Meharg, professor of plant and soil sciences at Queen's Institute for Global Food Security said: “This is a very significant breakthrough as this offers an immediate solution to decreasing inorganic arsenic in the diet. “In our research we rethought the method of rice cooking to optimize the removal of inorganic arsenic, and we discovered that by using percolating technology, where cooking water is continually passed through rice in a constant flow, we could maximize removal of arsenic. “Chronic exposure to inorganic arsenic can cause a range of health problems including developmental problems, heart disease, diabetes and nervous system damage. However, most worrying are lung and bladder cancers. This new breakthrough is the latest example of the commitment of researchers at Queen’s to changing lives and advancing knowledge that will have a lasting impact around the globe.” Queen’s is at the patent stage for the development of a rice cooker based on a percolation system which means consumers could soon have this technology in their own kitchen. |
Here's reasonable medical care
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 144 | |||||||
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| Stash of personnel secrets are open to online sales By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Anyone working for the U.S. government who had a secret, financial, sexual, criminal or otherwise . . . well, it’s no longer secret. The latest cyber data breaches of the Office of Personnel Management included the background investigation records of almost 20 million people. That stolen information is now in the hands of someone else. “Some people are calling it one of the biggest intelligence failures ever,” said Richard Stiennon, author of "There Will be Cyberwar." Also recently stolen is all the personal information of some 20 million people who signed up for the Canadian-based online dating service for people who are married or in a committed relationship but want to have an affair. And so is all the health information of millions of Americans who had signed up for care through Premera Blue Cross, UCLA Health, and Anthem, Inc., the second largest U.S. health insurer. Not only is the background information of millions of people available, so are their social security numbers, credit card numbers, and email accounts. And if they were engaging in any illicit behavior, that information is out there too. Analysts say that all that data together is a treasure trove of secret information that can be cross-checked, data-mined, and potentially used to blackmail people and undermine U.S. national security. Washington has not directly accused any one state, person or organization of the massive data breaches, and it is not clear if they are all the same actor. In the case of independent hackers, stolen data is often put up for sale to the highest bidder. If a state like China was behind the Personnel Management breach, as many analysts believe, it will most likely hold onto the information and exploit it. “An adversary like China, who knows a person’s weaknesses, can use that to intimidate or influence that person, and start them on a path to recruit them as a spy,” said Bob Gourley, publisher of ThreatBrief.com and co-founder of the cyber security consultancy Cognitio. Whoever has the information also has a critical understanding of the structure of the U.S. federal government. “They have a complete database of all the people with security clearances. There have also been previous breaches of military and police organizations, so they’ve identified all of those people as well, So just from the data alone, you know who has got access to what critical information,” explained Stiennon. That, in turn, opens the door to spear phishing, sending an email that appears to be from a known individual or business. When the recipient opens the email, the hacker gains access to that person's computer. “So, say you know somebody who is cleared at the top secret level, and their job is with Lockheed Martin and they are actively working in the radar systems, they could be targets,” said Stiennon, who is also the co-founder of IT-Harvest, an independent analyst firm. Once inside someone’s computer, a hacker can remotely turn on the computer microphone or camera, as well as navigate through documents and emails and go on to attack other people or data banks which might be connected to the original target. “Unfortunately, the U.S. government is a poorly defended organization corporate-wide,” Gourley said. “There are pockets of very strong security in places like the FBI, the Secret Service, and most parts of the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. Other than that, the government is very poorly defended.” Brandon Valeriano, a professor at Glasgow University who writes on cyber conflict, agreed that the U.S. government security infrastructure was a mess. But he said that fears about the latest data breaches were overblown. “We have this sort of James Bond-esque perspective of security, with this idea that we can turn agents and get information about their affairs and make them do things for the government. That is kind of an antiquated notion of how things work,” Valeriano said. “We see this information as sortable and usable, and it’s really not. This is terabytes of information. This is hundreds of thousands of millions of pages of information that is not readily usable, especially when you’re talking about cross language skills,” he said. But Brett Williams, a retired Air Force general who was director of operations, U.S. Cyber Command from 2012 to 2014, says information, even if gathered by agents of a government like that of China, can still be sold on the market. And one of the newer players on that market is the Islamic State extremist group. “We have to understand that things only two or three years ago were available to the most sophisticated actors or nation-states are routinely available to anybody that wants to go purchase them and knows where to purchase them,” Williams said. Cyber analysts agree that both private industry and government agencies were aware of all the threats and working to counter them. But the latest breaches show that a lot more had to be done. Unpaid internships given new a new standard in U.S. By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The issue of unpaid internships is growing in the U.S., where an appeals court recently ruled that the practice is legal as long as the work is linked to the intern's education. Some see such internships as mutually beneficial for aspiring young people seeking job experience and for employers looking for help with work. But others insist they should be forbidden because they feel young interns are being exploited when they work for nothing. In 2011, Eric Glatt, who interned for the Fox Searchlight Pictures’ movie "Black Swan," sued the company in a class-action lawsuit, alleging the company violated minimum wage and overtime laws. In an interview, Glatt said his duties were all the normal job responsibilities of an accounting clerk at the company, including managing personnel files, reviewing and tracking purchase orders and running errands to and from the set related to the accounting department. Although interns were told in advance that they would not be paid, Glatt said he noticed the violations after he started working for the company. Anybody who is “doing meaningful work that helps their employer should be paid at least minimum wage,” he said. “It shouldn't matter if the person is in school, or is young, or is relatively inexperienced. What matters is if you help an employer’s operation, you are entitled to this minimal amount of money.” The Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled in the interns’ favor in 2013, stating that they should be treated as employees using the six criteria established by the Department of Labor. The Labor Department says that an internship must be similar to training that would be given in an educational environment, and it must benefit interns rather than employers. Judge John Walker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit noted that “the purpose of a bona fide internship is to integrate classroom learning with practical skill development in a real-world setting.” However, the Second Circuit Court reversed the lower court’s ruling this month, applying a new standard: the so-called primary beneficiary test, which says an intern can be only considered an employee if the employer benefits more from the internship than the intern. In other words, if the intern receives more benefits than the employer, the employer can use the intern without pay. The case Eric Glatt and his friends brought to the federal court has now been sent back to the lower court for retrial using the new standard. In an email statement, a spokesperson for Fox Searchlight Pictures, Scott Grogin, expressed satisfaction with the court’s ruling. He said the real winners are students. “Fox has always been very proud of its internship programs and continues to believe they offer tremendous benefits to those who participate in them,” he said. But critics said such a ruling will make it easier for employers to use interns without compensation. Glatt’s attorney, Rachel Bien, believes once the case is sent back down to lower court, the Federal District Court will rule in her clients’ favor because there was no link between the internship and their education as required by law. “Because none of the lead plaintiffs were enrolled in school or . . . school -sponsored programs when they did the internship, and they had all graduated from school, so there was no link there,” she said. In each case, the record supported the conclusion that their work replaced the work of a paid employee, and the primary benefit of their work went to the company and not to them, Ms. Bien added. Ms. Bien said unpaid internships are very hard for interns, as many students have come out of college with a lot of debt, and they cannot pay off that debt until they start earning a living and making money. She said in the last 10 to 15 years, more and more unpaid interns are replacing entry-level employees, who find it difficult to get a job. GOP congressman promotes idea of Syrian intervention By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee has urged President Barack Obama to form a multinational coalition to build a ground force that can destroy the Islamic State terrorist sanctuary in Syria. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, called for a strategy overhaul that places a combined air-and-ground campaign in Syria composed of vetted opposition forces, Western trainers and advisers, special operations forces and regional military partners. The United States is training moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State forces but have graduated only about 60 fighters so far. “Our policy with regards to Syria remains to continue to do the training mission for the moderate Syrian opposition who are specifically being called upon to fight ISIL,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters Wednesday, referring to the Islamic State group by one of its acronyms. However, McCaul said the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also must be part of the plan if the coalition truly wants to deny a terrorist safe haven in Syria. “With Assad out of the way, they stand a far better chance,” McCaul said. He added that officials from Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia had told him that they were willing to put forward the resources and combat troops in Syria, but that they didn't want to put any resources forward that could one day be used to bolster the Assad regime. A U.S. defense official said that although Assad’s rule is a challenging factor in the fight against Islamic State, the U.S. military will not interfere in Syrian politics. “We can’t just go and force a regime change because we think Assad’s a bad guy and a bozo we’d like to see leave,” the official said. “That’s not how we operate.” McCaul said a multinational ground force in Syria is needed to help prevent terror plots in the United States by people he said are “captivated by an evil and twisted ideology that drives vulnerable minds into unconscionable acts of violence and hate.” U.S. being pressured to give Philippines ocean protection By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
More prominent security experts are joining the call for the U.S. to extend its security treaty with the Philippines to the defense of shoals and islands currently controlled by the Philippines in the disputed area of the South China Sea. Seth Cropsey, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, said that the issue should be treated the same way as the defense of Senkaku Islands, currently controlled by Japan but also claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu Islands. “The object is the same, to honor the treaty obligation with the Philippines, also to defend the area from the increasingly aggressive and ambitious China that is using military force and threat of it to achieve its ends,” Cropsey said. Walter Lohman, director of the Center for Asia Studies at the Heritage Foundation, another Washington based think tank, told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives recently that it's time for the U.S. to provide security assurance to its staunch ally in Asia. "I think we should change our position on the application of the U.S.-Philippine security treaty to cover features in the South China Sea that are currently occupied by the Philippines and under its jurisdiction," Lohman said. "Currently, we're ambiguous in that regard." China claims most of the South China Sea and is actively pursuing a rapid program of artificial island construction in the region. China is also building military facilities on these shoals, posing new threats to islands in the area controlled by the Philippines. Following a stand-off between Chinese ships and the Philippine navy three years ago, China took control of Scarborough Shoal, a rich fishing ground that the Philippines says is within its exclusive economic zone. Cropsye, now a senior fellow and director of Center for American Seapower at Hudson Institute, a Washington think-tank, believes the only risk the United States would run in declaring its security treaty with the Philippines is “by saying something and then not backing it up with deeds.” “If the U.S. were to say ‘we would include the islands and reefs that are administered and controlled by the Philippines as part of the defense agreement we have with our ally,’ and then not put ships in the area, not send patrol there over those islands and reefs … that would be a signal to China that we are not serious about our obligation,” Cropsey said. However, Cropsey added, it’s impossible to read the Administration’s mind. “The Administration has blown hot and cold on China - sometimes, it takes a more forward leaning stance … and sometimes, it sort of leans back,” he said. “I hope more people talking about the subject openly will encourage the administration to reconsider it and think about the Philippines in the same way as the administration thinks about Japan, which is, it is a long-time friend and ally and extremely important politically, geographically and strategically for that part of the world.” Popular singer is forced to create clothes for China By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
American pop star Taylor Swift is launching her own branded clothing line to be sold by China's two biggest online retailers, in an effort to fight rampant counterfeiting in the country. The singer, 25, is partnering with JD.com and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to sell Taylor Swift-branded clothing items directly to consumers in China. The Wall Street Journal said the move is a response to China's "huge market of unauthorized Taylor Swift products, with e-commerce peddlers selling everything from fake perfume to pirated autographed guitars." The report said each clothing item from the official Taylor Swift line will include a special tag that allows customers to track the authenticity online. Western companies have long complained of intellectual property theft and illegal merchandising in China. Earlier this year, the American Apparel and Footwear Association, a trade group representing clothing makers, wrote a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman complaining about the prevalence of counterfeit goods sold on Alibaba's websites, particularly its Taobao retail site. "Alibaba’s TaoBao platform is notorious as one of the biggest platforms for counterfeit goods worldwide. Our members encounter innumerable counterfeits on TaoBao every day, which result in millions of dollars of lost sales, damage to reputation, legal costs, and exhaustion of internal resources," the letter said. The cost of a fake pair of Taylor Swift sneakers on Taobao is about $10, according to The Wall Street Journal. Alibaba has said it was taking the issue seriously. Next month, JD.com and Alibaba's Tmall marketplace are to carry Swift-branded T-shirts, at a cost of $60. The singer is also launching a women's collection exclusively on JD.com with "high-quality dresses, sweatshirts and tops" ranging from $100 to $120. "The line was designed exclusively for the Chinese market with local consumers in mind, and will only be available for sale in China," JD.com said in a statement. "The styles were created by Taylor Swift in partnership with Heritage66 Co., which represents American artists seeking to expand their reach in China." The moves by Swift, a seven-time Grammy award winner, come ahead of concert dates in November in Shanghai. Her latest album “1989,” has sold more than five million albums in the U.S. alone. It achieved the feat in only its 36th week of release, the fastest rise to five million in more than 10 years, according to Billboard. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 144 | |||||||||
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By the United Nations news staff
Following last week’s unprecedented visit by President Barack Obama to a prison in Oklahoma, United Nations independent human rights experts heave called on the U.S. government to facilitate their requests to carry out an official visit to the country to advance criminal justice reform. Making the call, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture Juan E. Méndez, and Seong-Phil Hong, the chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, also cited President Obama’s speech on criminal justice reform to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in which he addressed unacceptably high rates of incarceration, the disparate impact of such policy on racial minorities, overcrowding and the extensive use of solitary confinement. “I look forward to working with the U.S. Department of Justice on the special study commissioned by the President on the need to regulate solitary confinement, which affects 80,000 inmates in the United States, in most cases for periods of months and years,” Méndez said in a press release issued by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. “The practice of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement inflicts pain and suffering of a psychological nature, which is strictly prohibited by the Convention against Torture,” he continued. “Reform along such lines will have considerable impact not only in the United States but in many countries around the world.” The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has asked the U.S. government for an opportunity to visit federal and state institutions where persons are deprived of their liberty. “A visit to the United States will be an excellent opportunity to discuss with authorities the basic principles and guidelines on the right to anyone deprived of their liberty to bring proceedings before a court, and to promote its use by the civil society,” said Hong. The expert noted that the freshly drafted principles and guidelines, which will be considered by the U.N. Human Rights Council in September, “will help to establish effective mechanisms to ensure Judicial oversight over all situations of deprivation of liberty.” “We hope the president’s recent actions will ensure concrete steps are taken to facilitate these visits to U.S. detention facilities, including private interviews with detainees, take place as soon as possible,” the experts stated. “We stand ready to provide any additional expertise to ensure that prison reforms are implemented in accordance with international human rights standards.” The two U.N. human rights experts recalled that in March 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa, the review process of the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners produced a document called the Mandela Rules, expected to be approved by late 2015, to strengthen procedural safeguards and improve conditions of detention. The proposed rules include the prohibition of indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement, determined as exceeding 15 days, as well as a complete ban on isolation for children, pregnant or breast-feeding women and any person with a mental disability. Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not U.N. staff, nor are they paid for their work. |
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| From Page 7: Obama defends U.S. Export-Import Bank By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that Congress was hurting American exporters by allowing the U.S. Export-Import Bank's charter to expire. Obama spoke after meeting with executives of 10 small and medium-size businesses that use the bank's help to export goods. The Export-Import Bank is a government agency that sells companies a kind of insurance that protects U.S. companies if a foreign customer does not pay for an order. It also provides financing in some cases. Conservative Republicans in Congress blocked efforts to renew the charter, and they are now working to block parliamentary maneuvers intended to revive the agency. Republicans say the vast majority of U.S. exports are made without help from the bank, and they call its efforts crony capitalism because the bank helps large, politically connected companies who don't need assistance. Administration officials say the bank certainly helps major exporters, but they also pointed to many small firms that get assistance. Obama told journalists that closing the 81-year-old government agency amounted to unilateral disarmament because "every other advanced country on Earth has a program like this." He said leaving American companies high and dry made absolutely no sense. At the meeting with Obama, an official of a company called Air Tractor said that without the Export-Import Bank's help, it could drop a quarter of its 265 jobs making crop dusters in the West Texas town of Olney. "We're a small business in a small town," David Ickert, Air Tractor's vice president of finance, told reporters. "We don't really understand why we're in this position." |
