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Stocks got slammed for the second day in a row on Wednesday after weak payroll numbers stoked fears that President Trump’s trade wars were slowing down the US economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by nearly 600 points, to a low of 25,974.12, after data from ADP showed that private US employers had hired fewer workers than expected. The Dow ended the day down 494.42 points, or 1.9 percent, to 26,078.62. The report, a precursor to the Labor Department’s more comprehensive jobs report due Friday, followed dismal numbers on US manufacturing Tuesday that showed activity was at its lowest...

Florida Congressman Carlos Curbelo is getting ready to introduce a bill repealing the gas tax in exchange for a carbon tax. It seems rather odd the Miami Republican wants to chart this path, especially after the House GOP overwhelmingly denounced the notion of a carbon tax last week, but Curbelo isn’t backing down from his proposal. He told Miami Herald his proposal is just a “first step” in the discussion. When you ask this question in a vacuum, is any tax detrimental to economic growth? It’s usually going to be yes…But when you put it in context and you...

A Texas mother said she didn’t think twice about shooting a would-be carjacker when the man jumped into her vehicle at a Dallas gas station while her two sons were in the backseat. Michelle Booker-Hicks was at the Shell station along Interstate 35 around 10 p.m. Wednesday when Ricky Wright, 36, attempted to steal her vehicle while she was paying her gas bill, police said. Booker-Hicks told FOX4 Dallas her two sons, ages 2 and 4, were sitting in the backseat at the time. “I proceeded to jump in my backseat and told the gentleman to stop, to get out...

As upset teachers across Kentucky Tuesday tried to flex their political muscle, Rockcastle County High School math teacher R. Travis Brenda narrowly defeated House Majority Floor Leader Jonathan Shell of Garrard County in one of the most-watched races for the state House, according to unofficial results. Brenda tried in the Republican primary election for the 71st House District seat to capitalize on teacher anger against legislators who backed a controversial pension bill in this year's law-making session. It was Brenda's first bid for public office. ... Brenda, 43, was not a member of the Kentucky Education Association, which tends to...

First they tried suing the utility companies. Then they tried suing the automakers. They even tried suing oil companies on behalf of an Alaskan village in danger of being inundated by oil-fueled rising sea levels. Each approach ended when courts said that the judiciary branch wasn’t the right place to address human-induced global warming, a problem so big it requires a coordinated international response that only legislators can implement. Now private plaintiff lawyers and their allies in government are trying a new strategy: Suing under state-law theories of public nuisance. San Francisco and several other California cities and counties have...

WASHINGTON - Exxon Mobil Corp. and other large oil companies are backing a carbon tax proposal put forward earlier this year by a group of former Republican leaders including James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state and a Houston attorney. The Climate Leadership Coalition, a group that includes Baker, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and former Secretary of State George Shultz, announced a list of "founding members" Tuesday that includes Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Total, General Motors and Johnson & Johnson. "We support @TheCLCouncil as a founding member and are working to support its policy development process," Exxon...

American NBC media executive Jeff Shell has been denied entry into Russia, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Shell arrived in the country on a business trip but was detained by officers at the airport for several hours. He was then escorted onto a flight to Amsterdam after being forced to sign a document stating he was barred from entering Russia. As well as heading NBC Universal's motion picture unit, Shell also serves as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an American governmental agency which supervises the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe media outlets. Shell told...

Royal Dutch Shell will build the multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant it proposed more than four years ago on the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County. The decision announced early Tuesday ends years of anticipation and debate that swirled as Shell prepared the massive site in Potter and Center while a global collapse in oil and natural gas prices prompted the company to lay off thousands and halt other projects. “Shell Chemicals has recently announced final investment decisions to expand alpha olefins production at our Geismar site in Louisiana and, with our partner CNOOC in China, to add a world-scale...

Shell has said it has begun work to repair a fault in a flowline that has resulted in around 2,000 barrels worth of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. More than 88,000 gallons of oily-water mixture has been released from the Glider Field, a group of four underwater oil wells located around 97 miles south of Port Fourchon in Louisiana. The company said it suspects a line connecting these wells to a Shell platform leaked oil on Thursday, creating a 13 mile-wide slick on the surface of the water. Shell said the oil is not expected to reach the shoreline and...

Shell has evacuated nearly 100 essential oil personnel from a major production facility in the Niger Delta, following a series of attacks from a newly formed militant group that has vowed to renew the fight abandoned after a 2009 amnesty deal. Some 98 Shell personnel were airlifted from the Shell-operated Eja Oml 79 oil production facility in the Niger Delta over the weekend, bringing into question the facility’s 90,000 barrel-per-day production capacity. The facility is run by Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development Corporation). The evacuations come after militants of the Niger Delta Avengers attacked an offline oil platform...

Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco appear to be getting a divorce, breaking up their joint venture in U.S.-based refining assets. The two companies joined together to create Motiva Enterprises LLC in 1998, a 50-50 joint venture that operated three refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. But Shell and Saudi Aramco have seen their interests head in different directions. "It is now time for the partners to pursue their independent downstream goals," said Abdulrahman Al-Wuhaib, a senior vice president of Saudi Aramco’s downstream unit. Reuters reported that the relationship started to fray after Motiva announced a $10 billion expansion of...

It has been a brutal few weeks for Royal Dutch Shell. On October 27, the Anglo-Dutch oil major announced that it was pulling the plug on its Carmon Creek oil sands project in Alberta, Canada. The project was expected to yield 80,000 barrels per day in oil sands production, which was originally greenlighted in 2013. However, the markets have turned against Shell. In March, the company said that it would alter the design of the project to “take advantage of the market downturn to optimize design and retender certain contracts.” The logic was that low oil prices are forcing cost...

Citing "low industry interest," the Interior Department announced a freeze Friday on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska until at least 2017.

TEHRAN - Iran has left the development of two oilfields to the energy giant British Petroleum (BP), an informed source told the Tasnim News Agency on the condition of anonymity. The announcement is a follow-up to the September meeting between Iranian Oil Ministry officials and BP top managers, where the Iranian side headed by Amir Hossein Zamani Nia, the deputy oil minister for international affairs and trade, agreed to transfer the development of two oilfields to BP based on the new model of Iranian oil contracts, known as Integrated Petroleum Contract (IPC), which is due to be unveiled soon. ---snip---...

At the beginning of this week, oil major Shell announced that it will indefinitely postpone (read: completely abandon) its Arctic drilling operations in the Chukchi Sea offshore Alaska. The company stated: "Shell will now cease further exploration activity in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future. This decision reflects both the Burger J well result, the high costs associated with the project and the challenging and unpredictable federal regulatory environment in offshore Alaska." This retreat will result in Shell losing its $7 billion investment, a bitter pill to swallow for the oil major. While Shell and many others have given up...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Royal Dutch Shell's dry hole in the Chukchi Sea may be disappointing to shareholders, but it's potentially devastating to Alaska. The company's decision to end oil exploration in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future means the state must find another source to fill the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline and solve its economic woes, Gov. Bill Walker said.

Royal Dutch Shell will cease exploration in Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast following disappointing results from an exploratory well backed by billions in investment and years of work. The announcement was a huge blow to Shell, which was counting on offshore drilling in Alaska to help it drive future revenue. Environmentalists, however, had tried repeatedly to block the project, and welcome the news.Shell found indications of the oil and gas in the well in the Chukchi Sea about 80 miles off Alaska’s northwest coast, the company said Monday in a release from The Hague, Netherlands. However, the petroleum was not...

**SNIP** The Obama administration's green light for the Anglo-Dutch oil giant angered environmental groups which have decried the "hypocrisy" of the president, who in recent months has stressed the need for aggressive actions against climate change. **SNIP** "I know there are Americans who are concerned about oil companies drilling in environmentally sensitive waters," Obama said in his weekly address, noting that the drilling leases had been purchased before he took office. "I share people's concerns about offshore drilling," he added. "I remember the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico all too well. That's precisely why my administration has worked...

HOUSTON -- A Texas oilman who's accused of defrauding the Nigerian government by illegally pumping and exporting 10 million barrels of oil is a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Kase Lawal of Houston is at least the fourth person accused or convicted of criminal wrongdoing to help finance Clinton's political ambitions since 2000 and the second in her quest for the White House. The list also includes Chinese and Pakistani fugitives and a former Miami lawyer, Peter Paul, who was convicted of defrauding Cuba. There's no indication that Clinton's campaign was aware of Lawal's legal problems when it...

The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton's growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family's finances. Because the company, WJC, LLC, has no financial assets, Hillary Clinton's campaign was not obligated to report its existence in her recent financial disclosure report, officials with Bill Clinton's private office and the Clinton campaign said. They were responding to questions by The Associated Press, which reviewed corporate documents. The officials, who spoke on condition of...