Gov. Inslee Signs SSB 5195 into law, extending State Need Grant to WGU Washington students

OLYMPIA, Wash., May 15, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Governor Jay Inslee signed SSB 5195 into law today allowing WGU Washington students with financial need access to the State Need Grant Program. Previously, the state-endorsed, online university was unable to participate due to technicalities in the original language of the law, enacted long before online education was so pervasive.

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"This bill will give our students the same financial help that's available to other low-income Washingtonians who attend public universities, colleges, and commercial and trade schools in the state," said WGU Washington Chancellor Jean Floten. "Our students are mostly mid-career adults, trying to make ends meet while they work, raise families, and go to school. To some students, the State Need Grant will give them the help they need to pay the rent and feed their families, and not have to choose between the two. Our students are very grateful to the Washington Legislature and Governor Inslee. The bill will play an important role in educating future generations of Washingtonians who seek the flexibility online learning provides."

Current students and people considering returning to school from all over the state will benefit from this new law. That includes Tricia Elsner of Federal Way. She's a single mother of triplets, each with varying degrees of behavioral challenges; two of the 17-year-old boys have autism. Another is Jay Castro of Seattle. He's dealing with several, chronic health issues while working two jobs and going to school fulltime. For Tricia, Jay, and so many others, State Need Grant assistance would ease significant financial strain and help them on their path toward achieving their dreams of a college education.

WGU Washington's innovative model of higher education is producing graduates with the skills to meet the advanced demands of today's market. A recent Harris Interactive study shows that nearly 100 percent of employers who have hired a WGU graduate would not hesitate to hire another, 98 percent agree that WGU grads meet or exceed their expectations, and 98 percent consider WGU graduates equal to or better prepared than graduates of other universities.

Saturday, May 18, a record number of students – 543 – will graduate from WGU Washington in its second annual commencement ceremony at 3:00 pm at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. WGU Washington was created by the Washington State Legislature in 2011 and currently has 4,425 enrolled students from all over the state.

If you'd like more information about the bill's passage, or would like to speak with a student from your area or WGU Washington Chancellor Floten, please contact Jake Riddell at 206-512-0025, jake.riddell@wgu.edu , or Lee Keller at 206-799-3805, Lee@thekellergroup.com .

About WGU Washington

WGU Washington was established by the Washington State Legislature on April 22, 2011. WGU Washington is state-endorsed and offers degree programs that are accredited through Western Governors University.

WGU Washington offers more than 50 bachelor's and master's degree programs in Business, Information Technology, Teacher Education, and Health Professions, including Nursing. The university's online, competency-based learning model is designed to meet the needs of working adults by providing an affordable, flexible option for earning an accredited, respected college degree. It's non-profit and receives no money from the state.

Degrees are granted under the accreditation of Western Governors University, which is accredited through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). Teachers College programs are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and Nursing programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE*).

The university has earned the support of more than 20 leading corporations and foundations. They include institutions such as AT&T, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, HCA, Hewlett-Packard, the Lumina Foundation, Microsoft, Oracle, SunGard Higher Education, and Zions Bank.

*Western Governors University offers nursing programs that are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (One Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 5380, Washington DC 20036, 202-877-6791).

Follow WGU:
http://www.facebook.com/wgu.edu
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/western-governors-university  
http://twitter.com/wgu
http://www.youtube.com/WesternGovernorsUniv  
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Contact for media inquiries:
Jake Riddell – Public Relations Manager
(206) 512-0025
jake.riddell@wgu.edu

Contact for enrollment information: 
877.214.7004
washington.wgu.edu

SOURCE WGU Washington

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Professor Hannibal Travis: United Nations Reaction Muted to Warning Signs of Genocide in Middle East

Turkey not a Credible Model for "Arab Spring" Countries

ZURICH, May 4, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Warning signs are present for a genocide of indigenous Christians in the Middle East, stated Professor Hannibal Travis in a speech delivered on Thursday as a part of CSI's lecture series on the Future of Religious Minorities in Middle East. He furthermore argued that the policies of Turkey and its allies obstruct the advance of universal human rights norms in a region still grappling with the genocide of Turkey's Christians during World War I. 

Travis, Associate Professor of Law at Florida International University, noted a "pattern of reprisals against religious and ethnic groups believed to be friendly with the regime" in the Arab revolutions and civil wars which began in 2011.  He cited many instances of anti-minority violence in these countries, including the attack on St. Mark's Cathedral in Egypt in April 2013, the ethnic cleansing of black Africans in Libya, and attacks on Christians in Syria.

Travis pointed to serious warning signs for genocide in countries like Egypt and Syria, including civil war, demonization of groups, and institutionalized inequality between religious groups.

Explaining the United Nations' apparent apathy towards this crisis, Travis claimed that the UN often displays "inaction, double standards and incongruity" in its dealings with human rights issues, since those nations supported by voting blocs based on ethnic or religious proximity at the UN tend to escape scrutiny.  He argued that Turkey's leadership within the largest of these blocs, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, has resulted in the "neglect of human rights violations against the indigenous populations of Turkey, Iraq and Syria."

Mr. Travis also argued that, despite claims that Turkey is a force for stability and can be seen as a "model" for democratic governance and tolerance, Turkey remains economically underdeveloped and deeply hostile towards religious minorities.  Travis claimed that Turkey plays a negative role in the region by protecting human rights violators such as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and supporting violent movements in former Ottoman territories like Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria, creating more conflict "as veterans of civil and international wars migrate from country to country."

Travis concluded that legal reforms in the United Nations system were required to "promote a universal application of human rights norms and genocide prevention." Travis suggested several possible reforms, including decoupling the International Criminal Court from UN Security Council referrals, introducing greater transparency and participation at the UN, exploring alternatives to regime change as a remedy for human rights violations, and protecting the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples.

Prof. Travis' presentation, "Preventing Genocide in the Middle East: The Continuing Relevance of the Ottoman Experience and the Problem of Bias within the United Nations," can be viewed at middle-east-minorities.com. 

Hannibal Travis is an associate professor of law at Florida International University, and the author of the first comprehensive history of physical and cultural genocide in the Middle East and North Africa, entitled Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq, and Sudan. 

In response to increasing violence and displacement of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, Christian Solidarity International has issued an Alert for the Prevention of Genocide: www.csi-usa.org.

Contact: Joel Veldkamp, joel@csi-usa.org, 515-421-7258

SOURCE Christian Solidarity International

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Rhode Island lawmakers pass gay marriage bill; governor signs it

By Edith Honan

(Reuters) - Rhode Island lawmakers gave final approval to a bill to legalize gay marriage on Thursday, making it the 10th U.S. state to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples and the last of the six New England states to do so.

Governor Lincoln Chafee, an independent, signed the bill into law almost immediately after the vote on Thursday. The new law will take effect on August 1.

"We would not be where we are today without the Rhode Islanders who for decades have fought for tolerance and freedom over discrimination and division," Chafee said. "I am proud to say that now, at long last, you are free to marry the person you love."

The governor later joined the state's main gay rights organization, Rhode Islanders United for Marriage, at a victory party in the state capital Providence.

Last week, the Democratic-led state Senate approved the measure with the support of the entire Republican caucus. The state House had approved a similar bill in January and on Thursday approved the Senate's amended bill.

Despite the victory, some in the state continued to voice strong opposition.

In an open letter, Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence said he was "profoundly disappointed" by the vote and encouraged Catholics to "examine their consciences very carefully before deciding whether or not to endorse same-sex relationships or attend same-sex ceremonies."

The vote marks the latest in a string of victories for gay marriage advocates. Last November, voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington state approved same-sex marriage, while in Minnesota, voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Before that point, advocates of same-sex marriage had never been successful at the ballot box, and voters in more than two dozen states had approved constitutional amendments defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Lawmakers in Illinois, Delaware and Minnesota have joined Rhode Island in taking up same-sex marriage legislation this year. In Delaware, the bill has passed the state's lower house and is scheduled for a vote in the upper house on May 7.

New Jersey Democrats, meanwhile, have until next January to attempt to override Governor Chris Christie's veto of a same-sex marriage bill in that state.

The other six states that have legalized same-sex marriage are Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa. The District of Columbia also has legalized same-sex marriage.

(Reporting by Edith Honan; Editing by Daniel Trotta, Richard Chang and Paul Simao)

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North Dakota governor signs 'fetal pain' measure

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed into law a measure that outlaws abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the disputed premise that at that point a fetus can feel pain.

The law signed Tuesday is the latest among a raft of measures passed in North Dakota this session that are meant to challenge the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion up until viability, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.

Abortion-rights advocates have called the laws blatantly unconstitutional and have promised a long legal fight that they say the state can't win.

Dalrymple last month signed a law that bans abortion as early as six weeks, or when a fetal heartbeat is detected, making North Dakota the most restrictive state in the nation in which to get the procedure.

Dalrymple also signed into law last month other measures that make the state the first to ban abortions based on genetic defects such as Down syndrome and require a doctor who performs abortions to be a physician with hospital-admitting privileges. The measures also ban abortion based on genetic selection.

Abortion-rights activists say the signed measures, which take effect Aug. 1, are aimed at closing North Dakota's sole abortion clinic, the Red River Women's Clinic in downtown Fargo.

At least 10 states have passed bills banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy on the premise that a fetus can feel pain at that stage, but research is split on the theory.

North Dakota lawmakers also moved last month to seek a referendum measure defining life as starting at conception, essentially banning abortion in the state. The measure is likely to come before voters in November 2014.

The Center for Reproductive Rights has said it is committed to challenging the fetal heartbeat bill on behalf of the clinic.

The New York-based group is representing the clinic for free in a trail that started Tuesday over a 2011 law banning the widely accepted use of a medication that induces abortion. A judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of that law.

___

Follow James MacPherson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/macphersonja

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Positive signs lost to latest boat

IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.

Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.

An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.

There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.

It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".

The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".

The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".

For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.

Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.

China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.

"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.

And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.

In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.

Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.

Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.

But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.

Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."

I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)

Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.

WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.

"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."

The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.

But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.

The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.

It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.

Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.

Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."

But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.

In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want

an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."

Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.

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Positive signs lost to latest boat

IT WAS a rare moment for Julia Gillard. At the end of her five-day visit to China, praise was being heaped upon her from all sides.

Her talks went so well that Chinese President Xi Jinping predicted a "new level" in economic and strategic ties.

An agreement was signed providing for annual meetings between Australian and Chinese leaders.

There will also be formal dialogues every year between economic and foreign ministers from the two countries.

It was dubbed a "historic pact" and a new "strategic partnership".

The Australian newspaper, often highly critical of the Prime Minister, called Gillard's achievement "a foreign policy coup" and "one of the most significant breakthroughs in the Australia-China relationship since Gough Whitlam recognised the communist state more than 40 years ago".

The Fairfax press described it as "a triumph" that will give Australia "greater access than the superpower has granted virtually any other western nation".

For a while, the PM and her advisers, far more used to brickbats than bouquets, were feeling pretty chuffed.

Then a rickety fishing boat carrying 66 Sri Lankans chugged into Geraldton harbour, and everything was back to normal.

China was largely forgotten as the asylum-seeker issue revved up again and talkback jocks were back in familiar territory.

"Border protection trumps foreign policy," said a Liberal strategist, happily.

And the Gillard government handled the situation with its usual lack of finesse.

In political terms, the boat's arrival was clearly a major embarrassment for the Gillard government.

Instead of heading for Christmas Island, or being intercepted in waters to our north, this one made its way undetected to the Australian mainland just 430km from Perth. When federal Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare, responsible for border security, blundered in with a statement that he would review "whether there need to be changes in the way we patrol seas in the northwest", an exasperated West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, had to put him right.

Barnett pointed out that Geraldton is in the southern half of WA, not the northwest. It is 2000km from Christmas Island. He suggested the feds buy an atlas.

But it was Gillard's immigration minister, Brendan O'Connor, who had annoyed Barnett initially by accusing him of using language "bordering on hysteria" in his comments about the latest boat's arrival.

Barnett had said: "This is a serious, unprecedented and unacceptable breach of Australia's border security. That a boat, laden with people, can sail into a busy regional port in broad daylight is shocking."

I'd bet most Western Australians agreed with their premier, even taking the view that he was merely stating the bleeding obvious. (Except, perhaps, for the use of the word "unprecedented". Asylum seeker boats have reached the mainland before, though not for a very long time.)

Certainly O'Connor's bagging of Barnett did not go down well in the West, where it is common knowledge that state authorities, not federal agencies, had to deal with the situation after the boat was spotted 500m from shore.

WA police took charge. About 20 of them were assigned to it -- a lot of bodies to divert from other duties for 24 hours or more in a town like Geraldton. State health officials and child protection people were quickly involved. I understand that, until reinforcements could be flown or driven in from Perth, the only feds on the spot were a customs officer and a quarantine official. According to a well-placed source: "The WA police were getting instructions from Customs in Fremantle. It was clear the feds were absolutely floundering.

"The state people needed information, but at the federal level they were buck-passing all over the place."

The Gillard government thinks about asylum seekers primarily in the context of endangered Labor electorates in western Sydney where the policy failure resonates loudly.

But it should not forget that voters a lot further west, on the other side of the continent, will also have a say in the September 14 election and they don't need any more reasons to feel aggrieved about Canberra.

The other major political issue of the week -- the unveiling of Malcolm Turnbull's broadband policy -- was also bad news for Gillard, in that it seriously blunted one of the few advantages Labor had over the Coalition.

It would result in an inferior National Broadband Network, relying heavily on Telstra's old copper wire connections to homes rather than "fibre to the premises" as provided for in the government's plan.

Because the Turnbull NBN would be cheaper, but with download speeds a lot slower than those Labor is rolling out, there was much derision on social network sites and not just from tech-heads.

Russell Crowe, for example, tweeted: "Coalition NBN plan, half the cost to be as efficient? Obviously somebody needs to explain to them the point of the NBN."

But the Coalition used to be against an NBN. Turnbull has dragged Tony Abbott and co. to a point where they accept the need for such a network, even if only the economy-class version.

In the words of that Liberal strategist I quoted earlier: "Now Gillard can't go to the election saying, 'If you want

an NBN you have to vote Labor'. She was able to do that last time."

Gillard can hardly be blamed for basking in that brief period of foreign policy glory in Beijing. There is very little prospect of anything similar on the home front.

Laurie Oakes is political editor for the Nine Network. His column appears every Saturday in The Daily Telegraph.

View the original article here

Connecticut governor signs strict gun law after Newtown shooting

(Reuters) - Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is expected on Thursday to sign a tough new gun law that restricts sales of the sort of high-capacity ammunition clips that a gunman used to massacre 26 people in minutes in a December attack on a school.

Lawmakers in the state's Democratic-controlled House approved the measure, which supporters described as one of the toughest such laws in the United States, early on Thursday morning. The Senate approved the measure hours earlier.

The House debate stretched past midnight, with opponents of the law arguing that it infringed on the rights to gun ownership protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that efforts to prevent attacks such as the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting should focus on providing better mental-health services.

Connecticut's law passed hours after Maryland's House of Delegates on Wednesday approved their own gun law, which also limits magazine size and requires that gun buyers be fingerprinted.

Connecticut's Malloy, who had advocated for the law, is expected to sign it at midday on Thursday.

The Connecticut law also requires background checks for private gun sales, expands the number of guns covered by the state's assault-weapons ban and establishes a $15 million fund to help schools improve security infrastructure.

It bans the sale of ammunition clips that hold 10 bullets or more and requires owners of such clips to register them by January 1. After that date, owning an unregistered high-capacity clip will become a felony offense.

A poll released on Thursday found that 91 percent of voters support regulations requiring all gun buyers to undergo background checks. However, 48 percent of all respondents and 53 percent of those owning guns said those checks could lead to the government's confiscating legally owned weapons.

That Quinnipiac University poll of 1,711 registered voters was conducted from March 26 to April 1 and had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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Ex-Im Bank Signs City/State Partnership With California Trade Association, Supporting Thousands of Jobs

WASHINGTON, March 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) announced a new marketing partnership for the Monterey Bay International Trade Association (MBITA), a non-profit organization in northern California.  The City/State Partners program contract will accelerate export business by connecting Bank products and services to MBITA's network of entrepreneurs and financial institutions in the counties around San Francisco and its ports.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110414/MM83673LOGO )

Members of MBITA represent small and mid-sized businesses throughout the tri-county region of the Monterey Bay and Silicon Valley.  This association helped start the BAYTRADE program in 1995, which generated more than six thousand new jobs during its first five years.  MBITA also manages the TradePort Collaborator, an intranet of more than 140 trade promotion service professionals who represent more than 60,000 exporters, importers, trade promotion service providers, and private investors.

"By entering this partnership with MBITA, Ex-Im Bank joins forces with thousands of experienced businesses that share our aim of expanding U.S. exports and creating jobs," said Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg.  "For eighteen years, MBITA has linked business resources with clients throughout the world.  Now through our partnership, the Bank adds expanded access to its services and products to help accelerate export sales and job growth."

Tony Livoti, president of MBITA, explained why Ex-Im Bank's City/State Partnership is a boon to high-tech exporters:  "MBITA's and TradePort's clients and members tend to be on the cutting edge of technologies," he said.  "Sometimes they feel an export-financed transaction into a new foreign marketplace gives them a better footing to grow their companies, as opposed to using their own financing to break into our very competitive domestic markets."

The Monterey Bay trade association started in 1984 as a volunteer-run business, and upgraded to a 501 C-6 corporation in 1995 when it became a founding member of a public-private sector export promotion program called BAYTRADE.  The U.S. Department of Commerce helped to support the program, which researched the international trade needs of employers across sixteen Congressional districts.  BAYTRADE consolidated its large service and knowledge network into an established global trade website managed by MBITA as TradePort.org for the past six years.  MBITA now is a self-sustaining organization funded by memberships, corporate sponsorship, events, and fee-based trade promotion services.  It is developing new services such as the California Industrial Cluster Tour and MBITA Strategic Alliance Service.

The purpose of the City/State Partners program is to ensure that the Bank's export finance programs are more accessible to small and medium-sized business through the help of local, state, and regional economic development and business support organizations.

Ex-Im Bank offers to Bay-area enterprises expanded access to products such as its Global Credit Express, which helps exporters acquire low-cost working capital up to $500,000, as well as Express Insurance, which simplifies small business access to export credit risk insurance on their foreign accounts receivable.  The Bank has designed an array of low-cost loans, guarantees, export credit insurance, and supply-chain financing structures to enable both small and large businesses to export globally without fear of nonpayment.

ABOUT EX-IM BANK:

Ex-Im Bank is an independent federal agency that helps to create and maintain U.S. jobs by filling gaps in private export financing at no cost to American taxpayers. In the past five years (from Fiscal Year 2008), Ex-Im Bank has earned for U.S. taxpayers nearly $1.6 billion above the cost of operations. The Bank provides a variety of financing mechanisms, including working capital guarantees, export-credit insurance and financing to help foreign buyers purchase U.S. goods and services.

Ex-Im Bank approved a total of $35.8 billion in authorizations in FY 2012 – an all-time Ex-Im record. This total includes more than $6.1 billion directly supporting small-business export sales – also an Ex-Im record. The Bank's authorizations in FY 2012 are supporting an estimated $50 billion in U.S. export sales and about 255,000 American jobs in communities across the country.  For more information, visit www.exim.gov.

SOURCE Export-Import Bank of the United States

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