A Brazilian federal judge on Aug. 23 ruled that permits for more than 120 proposed hydro-electric dams in the Upper Paraguay River Basin cannot be issued without first conducting environmental impact assessments, dealing a blow to a major thrust of development planned for the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. The ruling comes in response to a request from state and federal prosecutors in Mato Grosso do Sul, who petitioned the 1st Federal Court in Coxim for an injunction suspending construction of 126 new dams in the Pantanal, a vast region of wetlands in the basin. The ruling also impacts 20 already operating hydro plants, which will be able to continue running under their current licenses, but must submit to an impact study before seeking license renewals. Utilities must seek approval for the studies from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources (IBAMA) as well as state authorities before the projects can move ahead.

Brazil's Supreme Court on Aug. 22 ordered the release of Amazon rancher Regivaldo Galvão, convicted in the 2005 killing of US nun and rainforest activist Dorothy Stang. In 2010, Galvão was convicted by a court in Belém, Pará state, of ordering Stang's death, and sentenced to 30 years. The following year, the Pará court ordered that he start serving his term immediately, even while pursuing an appeal of his conviction. But the Supreme Court ruled that Galvão had the right to remain free pending the outcome of his appeal.

Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Aug. 24 signed a resolution describing South Korea's control of islands in the Sea of Japan as an "illegal occupation." The resolution also calls for South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to apologize and renounce comments he made during an Aug. 15 surprise visit to the disputed island territory. These comments included a request for Japan's Emperor Akihito to apologize for the nation's occupation of the Korean penninsula during World War II. The disputed islands, known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea, are believed to contain valuable natural gas deposits. Noda has threatened to refuse to meet with Myung-Bak at the of the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vladivostok set for September.

Egypt President Mohammed Morsi issued a new law on Aug. 23 that bans pre-trial detentions of journalists for speaking out against the government. The new law, the first decree Morsi has issued since he granted himself executive and legislative powers last week, ends the Mubarak-era practice of jailing journalists who commit so-called "publication offenses" which include "offending the president of the republic." Morsi announced this new law in the wake of the arrest and detention of opposition newspaper editor Islam Afifi on charges of publishing false information about Morsi. Egyptian security officials confirmed that Afifi has been released from detention. Afifi, the editor of the newspaper El Dustour has been criticized by Islamists for allegedly making inflammatory statements against the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi issued the law just hours after a court in Cairo convicted Afifi, sparking outrage amongst activists calling for freedom of the press.

We reported back in February that Sufis held a parade in Tripoli to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed—in defiance of threats from Salafists, who had just razed a Sufi school and revered tombs of Islamic saints in Benghazi. Now comes this extremely bad news from Reuters, Aug. 25:

Attackers bulldozed a mosque containing Sufi Muslim graves in the center of Tripoli in broad daylight on Saturday, in what appeared to be the boldest sectarian attack in Libya since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi...

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Aug. 24 upheld the life sentence imposed on a former Osama bin Laden aide after he stabbed a prison guard in the eye in 2000. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, 54, is a Sudanese-born Iraqi who at the time of the stabbing was awaiting trial in a conspiracy case that included the 1998 attack on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In 2002 Salim pleaded guilty to attempted murder of and conspiracy to murder a federal official after he stabbed Louis Pepe, a guard at the federal jail in lower Manhattan, with a plastic comb in November 2000. Salim appealed his sentence primarily on the ground that his right to be physically present at the sentencing hearing was violated when he attended by videoconference. The court ruled that the US District Court for the Southern District of New York erred in finding that the government had met its burden of proving that Salim had waived his right to be present at the hearing, but under plain error review found that Salim was not prejudiced by the error. The court also rejected Salim's arguments that the life sentence was unreasonable.

We don't doubt that Big Oil has its money on the Republicans and Mitt Romney when push comes to shove. But we noted back in 2008 that the reigning petro-oligarchs were deftly playing both sides in the presidential race. The nature of the game is that no matter who gets in, the petro-oligarchs win. But a part of the game is that Romney gets to bait Obama as a Green Stalin for suggesting that some remnants of federal oversight over the oil industry be retained—which only causes Obama to capitulate yet further. In terms of actual policy on oil and energy, the difference between the two parties has been narrowing almost from the moment Obama took office, until today it is vanishingly small. From AP, Aug. 23:

British Petroleum (BP) announced Aug. 24 that it expects to move ahead next year with deep-sea drilling work off the coast of Libya—resuming its $2 billion exploration program halted by the revolution against Moammar Qaddafi's regime last year. The oil major, which in May lifted a freeze on its activities in the North African country, will shortly resume preliminary work on the project, with drilling itself set to start some time in 2013. BP is currently choosing contractors for underwater geological surveying, a tender invitation posted on the Libyan National Oil Company website indicates. Under the deal signed with the Qaddafi government in 2007, BP will explore in the Sirt basin, more than ten times the size of its deep-water blocks off Angola. Under the 2007 contract, BP acquired 31,000 square kilometers of three-dimensional seismic data both offshore and onshore, with explorations in the Ghadames basin of Libya's western desert. (MarketWatch, Aug. 24)