Corinthian College Inc. (CCI), one of the largest for-profit college and technical training schools in the US, has cut a deal with the Obama administration to sell 85 of its campuses and shut down 12 others. The publicly-traded company has 72,000 students and 12,000 employees in more than 25 states and Canada which will be affected.

The forced sell-off amounts to the largest collapse in the for-profit education industry to date. Reports indicate the following campuses are slated to close: Bensalem PA, Chelsea MA, St. Louis MO, McLean VA, Silver Springs MD, Salt Lake City UT (Main Campus), Fort Worth TX, Cross Lanes WV (Main Campus), Eagan MN, Grand Rapids MI (Main Campus), Kalamazoo MI and Merrillville IN.

The immediate cause of the selloff was the Department of Education’s (DOE) demand for CCI documents regarding job placement among graduates. When the school failed to produce their statistics, the DOE imposed a 21-day waiting period for the company to draw on federal student aid funds.

The DOE action, together with the reintroduction of “gainful employment” regulations, are largely pre-Congressional midterm election public relations moves designed to camouflage the administration’s abandonment of its election promises to clean up the palpable exploitation and illegality rampant among for-profit colleges. (...)

The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement being drafted in secret was published by WikiLeaks on Thursday as the transparency group’s editor commemorated his two-year anniversary confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. Despite vast international ties, however, details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors and largely ignored by the press.

In a statement published by the group alongside the leaked draft this week, WikiLeaks said “proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets,” and have participated in “a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre” by working secretly on a deal that covers more than 68 percent of world trade in services, according to the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research. (...)

(...) Demonstrations erupted in Geneva in April as diplomats met in secret for the sixth round of negotiations over TISA, which would cover international trade in a wide range of service industries ranging from finance and telecommunications to transportation and even local utilities such as water. Protesters demanded that the draft text be released, but it has remained secret until now. (...)

Bloomberg Best (and Worst)

Most Underfunded Pension Plans: States

On Monday, June 9, the Democratic governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, signed into law a bill cutting retirement benefits for an estimated 57,000 Chicago municipal workers and laborers in the greater Chicago area.

The law, championed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, imposes severe cuts on workers participating in two city worker pension funds. This is part of the nation-wide drive by the financial elite and its representatives in both big business parties to rob the pensions of public sector workers and channel even more money into the hands of the super-rich.

As in Detroit, California and other locales in the US and around the world, the political establishment claims the slashing of pension benefits is the only way to deal with bad fiscal situations and the only alternative to junking pensions altogether. The last six years of austerity policies have been premised on the lie that “there is no money.” In 2014, the dramatic polarization of wealth in the US coincided with a historic peak in total national net worth of $81.8 trillion—up $1.5 trillion in the first half of 2014 alone. The gains since 2008 are primarily concentrated in the financial and real estate markets. (...)

Revealed: Protesters at the Maules Creek coal mine construction site discovered an undercover operative among them, after years of suspicion.

Burly and bearded, Tony Groves arrived at the camp at Maules Creek in northern NSW, declaring a passion for the environment and an exotic, hidden past.

The former military intelligence officer and Harley Davidson enthusiast called himself Tony Allen, and fitted in at first with the ragtag community of greenies and landowners who had been protesting for three years against the dramatic expansion of coal mining in the area by Japanese mining giant Idemitsu and Whitehaven Coal.

It soon became apparent that something was odd. He would disappear suddenly and frequently and suggest protest actions that were highly risky and potentially damaging to the cause. Somewhat implausibly, Tony had explained he was facing weapons charges, a fugitive from a bikie gang which he had left amid threats of retribution.

''He was just completely neurotic about being in a photograph,'' says Ben Solity, one of the protest leaders.

A Fairfax Media investigation this week uncovered the fact Groves was part of an extraordinary undercover operation against the activists who are known as the Leard Forest Alliance or Front Line Action Against Coal.

For five months, former military and intelligence personnel took on assumed identities with elaborate backstories and rotated through the camp, taking notes, reporting back on any planned actions, profiling the leadership and trying to uncover whether the protesters themselves had spies inside the mines.

It failed. Several agents were identified, and at least one directly confronted.

Groves was a senior figure. His company - the Centre of Intelligence and Risk Management (CIRM) - wrangled the spies for the clandestine operation. He reported to Tyrone Clark, a former Australian Federal Police officer, whose company C5 Management Solutions received the intelligence, distilling it and passed it on to the mining companies via their security arms.

Following Fairfax's first report on the espionage on Monday, Idemitsu admitted it had contracted C5 Management Solutions and another firm understood to be involved, the mysterious Strongs Security Services. After years of suspicions among activists, it is the first time that such an operation has been verified.

These kinds of ''black ops'' may seem like something from a modern spy novel or a Hollywood blockbuster but have been long documented overseas and speculated about here.

And the exposure of the clandestine project raises important and uncomfortable questions about corporate power, privacy and the right to protest. (...)

Royal Dutch Shell has dismissed the possibility that its proven oil or gas reserves will become unusable as a result of climate change regulation, saying fossil fuels will play a key role in global energy to 2050 and beyond.

Environmental campaigners, activist investor groups and some lawmakers have warned that financial markets could be overvaluing companies with large fossil fuel assets, such as Shell, thereby creating a "carbon bubble" and putting at risk trillions of dollars in pension funds.

Shell, however, played down such claims last week in a letter it said was in response to shareholder inquiries on the issue of "stranded" assets, referring to large investments in fossil fuel reserves that could become unprofitable if governments pass laws to curb runaway growth in greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to reduce the impact of climate change.

"While the 'stranded asset' notion may appear to be a strong and thought-through case, it does have some fundamental flaws," JJ Traynor, Shell's executive vice president of investor relations, said in the letter posted on the company's website, dated May 16.

Traynor maintained that the world will need oil and gas for many decades to come, supporting both demand and prices.

"As such, we do not believe that any of our proven reserves will become 'stranded'," he wrote.

"There is a risk that focusing on 'stranded assets' or the concept of the 'carbon bubble' distracts attention away from the reality of a growing population, increasing prosperity and growing energy demand."

DEMAND GROWTH

Shell said it believes that climate change will continue to rise up the public and political agenda, but it estimated that energy demand growth would allow fossil fuels to continue play a major role and account for 40-60 percent of global energy supply through to 2050 and beyond.

Shell also pushed carbon capture and storage - a technology that critics say has not yet been proven - as a key tool to help to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold deemed dangerous by scientists. (...)