Newswire

On the 1oth of December, the Bureau of Land Management had planned to hold an auction near the Navy Yard to sell oil and gase leases on public land. Two parcels in Arkansas and 7 in Michigan were on the block, with fracking as their possible fate. Climate activists had been planning some rather confrontational actions against this. With Obama"s involvement in the Paris climate talks, any news coverage of the protests could have been a major political embarassment. On the other hand, a publiclty-avoiding refusal to arrest protesters no matter what would give activists a free hand to shut the proceedings down entirely. As a result, the BLM has postponed the auction until March 17, 2016.

LUSBY, Maryland — A police investigator and the State’s Attorney in southern Maryland have turned the tables on two activists involved with SEED (Stopping Extraction and Exports Destruction) after they filed complaints about unsafe and reprehensible police behavior. In an internal investigation of the complaints, members of the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office lied to cover up the actions of three officers during their response to a protest at a Dominion construction area tied to its liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project at Cove Point.