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Latino Chamber of Boulder opens first office

After 13 years serving Latino-owned and operated businesses in Boulder County, the Latino Chamber of Commerce of Boulder County opens it’s first dedicated office space in downtown Longmont on Saturday, May 16.

The new building, located at 332 Main St., is 650 square feet, and was made possible through a membership drive over the past two years, as well as support from the cities of Boulder County and the county itself.

Jose Beteta, president of Boulder’s Latino Chamber, says the facility will be able to host up to 30-35 people for classes or meetings.

“But it’s also going to be a dynamic work space, meeting space and a place of resource for the whole community,” says Beteta. “We’re happy because we’re going to be hosting not only our events there, but opening space to other organizations to host events, and especially nonprofits that could use a hand.”

Beteta says that during the first week of June, the Chamber will be part of Longmont Startup Week.

“So that whole week we are going to be hosting at least eight workshops for the community dealing with different business themes, entrepreneurial themes, success stories from underrepresented business persons and women,” Beteta says. “We’re going to touch on different topics At least one of those workshops is going to be informative on who we are and what and how we can help current or prospective business move forward.”

The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 16 with a ribbon cutting ceremony followed by a presentation by the Chamber on its history. Food, music and networking will follow until 8 p.m.

Obama approves Shell to drill in the Arctic

After years of fighting for the right to drill in the Arctic — and a record of bungled operations — Shell got a nod of approval from the Obama administration to start drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic Ocean this summer.

Shell’s green light to drill seemed immanent last month when the Department of the Interior approved selling offshore drilling leases in the Arctic — an approval that came despite a court-ordered reanalysis showing the environmental impacts could be significantly worse than previously thought.

“Instead of holding Shell accountable and moving the country towards a sustainable future, our federal regulators are catering to an ill-prepared company in a region that does not tolerate cutting corners,” said Tim Donaghy, Greenpeace senior research specialist, to EcoWatch. “Shell has a history of dangerous malfunctioning in the Arctic while global scientists agree that Arctic oil must stay in the ground if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

This isn’t the first time Shell has been given the go-ahead. In the summer of 2012, the Obama administration gave the company a permit to begin offshore Arctic drilling, but safety and operational issues halted operations. In 2013, the Department of the Interior said the company could not resume drilling until all safety issues were addressed.

In a review of Shell’s 2012 Arctic operations, the Department of the Interior concluded that Shell had failed in a wide range of basic operational tasks, such as testing critical systems.

According to the report, “Likewise, additional problems encountered by Shell — including significant violations identified during United States Coast Guard’s (USCG) inspection of the Noble Discoverer drilling rig in Seward last November, the lost tow and grounding of the Kulluk rig near Kodiak Island in late December, and violations of air emission permits issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — also indicate serious deficiencies in Shell’s management of contractors, as well as its oversight and execution of operations in the extreme and unpredictable conditions offshore of Alaska.”