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The news from earlier this week that Ken Wiwa, the son of the Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, has died at the young age of forty seven, is a devastating shock to anyone who knew him.

Despite worldwide protests yesterday, Kelcy Warren, the billionaire owner of the company building the Dakota Access pipeline, has defiantly vowed to "complete construction" of what has rapidly become the most highly controversial fossil fuel project in the world.

Today is the day that the resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline spreads across the US and internationally.

There is good news and bad news for those fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. First the bad news. A week ago I wrote about the outrageous attacks by security personnel on those protesting against the pipeline by using dogs and pepper spray.

Later today the U.S. District Court in Columbia is expected to decide whether construction of the highly controversial North Dakota Access Pipeline can continue.

The contrast could not have been greater. Over the weekend, speaking on the eve of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, history was made as President Obama and Chinese President, Xi Jinping, announced that the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases would formally ratify the Paris agreement on climate change.

The growing protest against the highly controversial North Dakota Access pipeline will end up in court tomorrow in Washington DC, when the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s lawsuit against the US Army Corps of Engineers will be heard.

One of the most important battles against pipeline expansion in North America is happening right now in North Dakota.

The political and economic reverberations of last week’s Canadian court of appeal judgement against the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline are continuing.

Some twenty one years after the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni activists, there is some hope that finally, finally, the oil polluted Ogoniland in the Niger Delta will begin to be cleaned up from decades of exploitation.