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AUDIO: ExxonMobil: A 'Private Empire' On The World Stage 

ExxonMobil And Climate Change

Until 2005, ExxonMobil was run by Lee "Iron Ass" Raymond, a close friend of Vice President Dick Cheney and a skeptic of climate change. During Raymond's tenure, Exxon funded campaigns to challenge the validity of emerging science about climate change -- specifically the findings that a global warming trend existed.

"This not only borrowed from some of the tactics that the tobacco industry had used to delay public understanding of the dangers of smoking; in some cases there were even overlaps of individuals and groups that were engaged in this communications campaign," Coll tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "A lot of corporate America opposed the Kyoto Accords. But only a small set of companies did what Exxon did, which was to really go after the science as aggressively as they did."

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ENGEL: Where there's smoke ... 

Teen Drug Use: More Teenagers Smoking Marijuana 

More teens are smoking dope, with nearly 1 in 10 lighting up at least 20 or more times a month, according to a new survey of young people.

The report by The Partnership at Drugfree.org, being released Wednesday, also said abuse of prescription medicine may be easing a bit among young people in grades 9 through 12, but still remains high.

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MMPRC confirms appointment of Ruder Finn for international PR  

State Specific Benefits: KENTUCKY 

The state's largest merchandise export category is transportation equipment, which accounted for $6.6 billion of Kentucky's total merchandise exports in 2010. Other top merchandise exports are chemicals manufactures ($4.1 billion), machinery manufactures ($1.8 billion), computers and electronic products ($1.4 billion), and primary metals manufactures ($737 million).

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State Specific Benefits: VIRGINIA 

The state's largest merchandise export category is chemicals manufactures, which accounted for $2.8 billion of Virginia's total merchandise exports in 2010. Other top merchandise exports are computers and electronic products ($2.5 billion), transportation equipment ($1.9 billion), machinery manufactures ($1.7 billion), and mining ($1.0 billion).

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State Specific Benefits: NORTH CAROLINA 

The state's largest market was Canada. North Carolina posted merchandise exports of $5.4 billion to Canada in 2010, 22 percent of the state’s total merchandise exports. Canada was followed by China ($2.2 billion), Mexico ($1.8 billion), Japan ($1.7 billion), and France ($1.1 billion).

The state's largest merchandise export category is chemicals manufactures, which accounted for $4.9 billion of North Carolina's total merchandise exports in 2010. Other top merchandise exports are machinery manufactures ($3.1 billion), computers and electronic products ($2.7 billion), transportation equipment ($2.6 billion), and textiles manufactures ($1.5 billion).

North Carolina's Metropolitan Exports

In 2009, the metropolitan area of Greensboro-High Point exported $3.2 billion in merchandise, 14.5 percent of North Carolina's total merchandise exports. Other major metropolitan areas in North Carolina that exported in 2009 included Durham ($2.7 billion), Raleigh-Cary ($1.8 billion), Winston-Salem ($1.7 billion), and Wilmington ($1.1 billion).

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Mission of the USTR 

United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk  

Ambassador Ron Kirk is the United States Trade Representative (USTR). He is a member of President Obama’s Cabinet and serves as the President's principal trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade issues.

Since Ambassador Kirk was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March 2009, he has led USTR in developing trade policies that are proactive, responsible, and more responsive to our interests – recognizing that trade can be a job-creating pillar of economic recovery here and abroad.

Ambassador Kirk has directed USTR’s market-opening agenda through negotiations and dialogue with trading partners around the world. These initiatives include working to conclude and advance bilateral free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia, and Panama, advancing the ambitious regional Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, and sustaining serious U.S. engagement in the Doha round of multilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization. Ambassador Kirk has also simultaneously pursued robust enforcement of America’s trade rights in support of U.S. businesses and workers, and he has focused efforts to better assist American small businesses seeking opportunities in international markets.

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Air Pollution Sickens Seniors  

Academic Journals and Corporate Interests: Reed Elsevier and ALEC 

What do prestigious scientific journals like Cell and The Lancet have to do with union-busting, cutting corporate taxes, or denial of global warming?

The publishing company that owns these journals, Reed Elsevier, has supported all of these goals through its contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC is a corporate-funded, politically conservative “bill mill,” which develops legislative templates for state-level laws that serve its political goals. The group holds networking conferences for politically sympathetic state legislators – such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, when he was a State Assembly member – where ideas are shared and its model bills are circulated (see "How ALEC Operates").

Reed Elsevier is a leading member of ALEC – and also the parent company of Elsevier, one of the largest academic publishing companies in the world. It owns about 2,000 academic journals, primarily scientific and medical, and a diverse array of other information-related businesses, including LexisNexis.

. . .

[Editor's note: On April 12, Reed Elsevier announced its resignation from ALEC.

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Koch v. Cato — A View from Cato 

Billionaire Koch Brothers File Lawsuit to Wrest Control of Cato Institute 

Jack Broadbent: Bad air days in Bay Area send emergency room admissions skyrocketing  

It's the end of another Winter Spare the Air season, one that taught us some important lessons about wood-smoke pollution.

It was a tough winter for air quality and public health. Dry, cold weather and high pollution levels led the Air District to call 15 Winter Spare the Air Alerts, the most since our wood burning rule was passed. We ended up exceeding the federal air pollution standard on 10 days, and came dangerously close on nine other days.

As the other secondhand smoke, wood smoke causes respiratory problems and exposes residents to many of the same cancer-causing substances that are found in cigarette smoke. In December, asthma-related emergency room admissions skyrocketed. It's a sad fact that 1 million Bay Area residents have a respiratory condition, and it's a distressing holiday tradition to be forced to make a visit to the ER when air pollution becomes unhealthy.

Our No. 1 priority is to safeguard public health, based on the best and most current scientific information available.

The latest scientific research shows that fine-particle pollution is the most serious air quality threat in the Bay Area. Its health effects are widely acknowledged to include asthma, heart disease, stroke and increased overall mortality. It accounts for more than 90 percent of the premature deaths related to air pollution. To put it bluntly, people die faster in areas where fine-particle pollution is high.

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Lights, Action, Drinking: Movie Scenes Tempt Teens To Binge 

The researchers asked more than 6,500 10- to 14-year-olds about 532 movies, including box office hits in 2003, when the survey began. Those movies had been measured by trained coders who logged the number of seconds of on-screen alcohol use. Based on the movies the children reported seeing, they saw an average of 4.5 hours of alcohol use.

Over the two years of the survey, the number of teenagers who had started drinking rose from 11 percent to 25 percent. The number of teens who began binge drinking tripled from 4 percent to 13 percent.

Depictions of drinking and product placements were both to blame, according to the researchers, who published their results in the online journal BMJOpen. . . .

"Like influenza, images in Hollywood movies begin in one region of the world then spread globally," the authors write. (NPR recently reported on the rise of binge drinking among French teenagers, despite the long-held belief there that letting children drink wine with the family teaches responsible drinking.)

Tobacco companies have been barred for paying for product placements in movies, but alcohol companies have not. As a result, drinking scenes have proliferated regardless of a movie's rating. "It's really not incorporated into the ratings at all," Sargent says. "There's just as much in PG-13 movies as there is in R movies."

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