December 15, 2014

Shell Warns Oil Industry May Join Big Coal’s War on EPA to Prevent ‘Precedent’ of Carbon Regulation

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Expect much of the fossil fuel industry to oppose the upcoming Environmental Protection Act rules governing carbon emissions from power plants, says a senior executive from Shell Oil. Though the agency’s new Clean Power Plan impacts existing coal-fire power plants, the Shell spokesperson suggested that the oil and gas industry may lobby to block the regulation to prevent
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December 11, 2014

Deniers’ Latest Attack on UN Summit: Poor Countries’ Delegates Show Up Just for the Per Diem

Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

LIMA, PERU — Climate science deniers have routinely appeared at international summits to address global warming, hoping to bog down the process with a litany of arguments and colorful publicity stunts. They’ve charged, for instance, that there is a global conspiracy of UN scientists working to “manufacture a global warming crisis.” At recent events, echoing
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December 10, 2014

At UN Summit, Businesses Back Climate Reforms While Quietly Financing Lobby to Kill Them

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LIMA, PERU — Several fossil fuel interests are here at the United Nations climate negotiations, putting on their best public face in support of reducing carbon emissions. Despite the lofty rhetoric, with some pledging to lead the way in reducing carbon pollution, the same corporate actors are also fueling efforts to block any substantive reforms. It’s been called
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December 10, 2014

30 years after Bhopal, Long Past Time To Make Chemical Plants Safer

Geismar LA

Thirty years ago this month, a gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, created a toxic cloud that eventually killed perhaps 20,000 people and injured 500,000 more. No chemical accident since then has approached the scale of the Bhopal disaster, but chemical plant tragedies continue every year, including in the United States — most
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December 4, 2014

Neutron CEO Tells Customers That Republic Report Stories Are False; Ex-Employees Disagree

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While one for-profit college in Miami, called FastTrain, has just been sued by law enforcement for, among other things, allegedly hiring scantily-clad women to lure men to its admissions office (an allegation noted by Republic Report back in May 2012), another group of operators in Salt Lake City has been using a different scam — phony bait-and-switch websites —
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November 24, 2014

For-Profit College Marketer Thrived By Posting Fake Ads To Popular Job Sites

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Neutron Interactive, a Salt Lake City-based business, regularly posted fake job listings on popular job websites including Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com for the purpose of tricking job-seekers into visiting its own websites, according to former Neutron employees. These Neutron Interactive websites, still operating today, also promise jobs, but in reality they usually offer none; their real purpose, say these former
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November 20, 2014

ECMC CEO Explains Deal To Buy Troubled Corinthian Campuses

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Confirming rumors that have swirled for weeks, today ECMC Group announced it has reached an agreement to acquire 56 of the 107 campuses now owned by the crumbling, discredited Corinthian Colleges for-profit chain.  A corporate filing from Corinthian says the purchase price is $24 million.  I spoke with ECMC’s CEO Dave Hawn this morning to discuss. ECMC, a
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November 19, 2014

Natural Gas Exports: Conclusion

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Republic Report and DeSmogBlog released this report about natural gas lobbying on November 20, 2014. Co-authored by Lee Fang and Steve Horn, the report is the result of ongoing investigations into natural gas industry lobbying for LNG exports. Click the title to read the full PDF version, or read the series indexed online below. Natural Gas
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