EPA Denies Historic MTR Permit

Word is just coming down that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has vetoed the largest single mountaintop removal permit in West Virginia history. The move is part of an Obama administration crackdown aimed at reducing the effects of mountaintop removal coal-mining on the environment and on coalfield communities in Appalachia — impacts that scientists are increasingly finding to be pervasive and irreversible. click here for more.

Riots in Greece Over Landfill

Fierce battles between riot police and locals resisting the construction of a waste burial site have continued for a third consecutive day in the area of Keratea, Attica (around 10 miles south of Athens International Airport). This morning, a court ordered a temporary halt to the works. A small victory, which could however very easily be a smokescreen to calm down the insurgent locals and to allow the police to concentrate on the General Strike in central Athens on Wednesday. click here for more.

Hundreds Protest in Ohio

Thirty-six hours before Republican and former Fox News contributor John Kasich was sworn in as Ohio’s governor, hundreds of people from across the state rallied voicing strong objections to his anti-labor, anti-environment and anti-student agenda. click here for more.

Another Undercover Cop Found in UK

The controversy over a police surveillance network embedded in the environmental protest movement has deepened dramatically after the Guardian identified a second undercover officer who spent years living a double life as an activist. Click here for more.

Indian Town Closes Schools to Protest Nuclear Power Plant

Schools in and around Madban village, where the Jaitapur nuclear power plant is coming up, remained shut for the second day on Tuesday as a mark of protest against the project. click here

UK Snitch Talks About More Snitches

An investigation by the Guardian revealed Mark Kennedy used a fake passport to travel to 22 different countries, gleaning information about left-wing activists and relaying sensitive details back to his police handlers since around 2003. Kennedy was then asked about other individuals in the protest movement about whom activists had suspicions. One was a campaigner who lived in Leeds and was closely involved in planning a major protest intended to close down the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire. There were already suspicions over the woman, who was in her 30s, after she disappeared suddenly around 2008 claiming to have fallen in love with a man in Coventry. The woman has not been seen since. The six friends present when Kennedy broke down and admitted he was a spy then asked him directly if the woman was also a police officer. “He [Kennedy] nodded and said: ‘Yeah, but you know about that already,” said Craig Logan, 37, who was present. Kennedy is then said to have indicated that there were several other police officers living undercover in the protest movement. click here for more.

Environmentalists Protest Solar in Southwest, Nukes in Taiwan, Morocco Arrests

In the Southwest, Native tribes are joining with environmental activists to protest solar projects in the desert. Their sacred sites compromised, Natives insist that environmental damage done by the solar complexes will destroy the biodiversity of the fragile desert ecosystems. click here for more.

Environmental groups staged a protest in front of the Legislative Yuan Tuesday, urging lawmakers not to increase the budget for the construction of Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant. click here for more.

Amazigh (Berber) movements across Morocco are mobilizing their activists to protest in front of the Libyan embassy in Rabat against the Kidnapping in Libya of two prominent Moroccan Amazigh researchers and the arrest of two Libyan activists. click here for more.

South Korea Kills 1 Million Pigs

Since the first case of the disease was confirmed in November the country has embarked on a mass cull. The South Korean government has so far refused to vaccinate pigs against the disease and is now slaughtering them in record numbers despite appeals to stop. click here for more.

Environmental Groups Sell Out to Mines in Arizona

The Arizona Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy seem to have agreed not to publicly criticize the proposed mine by Rio Tinto and HP Billiton, or oppose a controversial so-called “land swap” by which the two groups will have access to other desirable land. However, the Maricopa County Audubon chapter has already been quite vocal in its criticism of the state chapter’s stance.
In reality this deal is a “land for mine exchange”, threatening an absolute loss of some irreplaceable resources – at least during the period of the mining operation. click here for more.

No Jailtime for UK Activists

Environmental activists who planned to shut down a coal-fired power station near Nottingham were spared jail today after a judge declared they acted with “the highest possible motives”. Handing down sentences to 18 activists ranging from 18 months’ conditional discharge to 90 hours’ unpaid work, judge Jonathan Teare conceded the public may consider his sentencing “impossibly lenient”. But he said he had been put in a highly unique position given the moral standing of the campaigners. click here

Activists are now calling for an investigation into the role of undercover agent, Mark Kennedy, as an entrapper and agent-provocateur. Kennedy has since quit the police force and moved abroad, claiming that he regrets his actions as an informant. Click here for more.