Cuba’s Oil Drilling Plan Is A Great Reason To End U.S. Embargo

<p style="text-align: justify;">Apr. 6 2011 - 12:06 pm By CHRISTOPHER HELMAN. Cuba has announced plans to start drilling for oil off its shores, in the Gulf of Mexico, as early as this summer. The first well will likely be spudded by Spain’s Repsol, in partnership with Norway’s Statoil. They have reportedly contracted a drilling platform. Other companies lined up to drill include Russa’s Gazprom, India’s ONGC-Videsh, Malaysia’s Petronas, and Venezuela’s Pdvsa. All of these are state-controlled companies; none (except for Statoil) have much, if any, experience drilling deepwater wells anywhere, let alone in the Gulf of Mexico. Read More

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Cuba Advocates Elimination of Nuclear Weapons

<p style="text-align: justify;">2011.04.05 - 22:44:14 / [email protected]. Havana, Cuba.- Cuba’s representative to the United Nations said in New York nuclear weapons must be completely eliminated and that the international organization should give more priority to disarmament.Rodolfo Benitez stated the Cuban position when speaking in a session of the Disarmament Commission, Prensa Latina news agency reported. Read More

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New York Philharmonic Cancels Cuba Trip

<p style="text-align: justify;">By DANIEL J. WAKIN.April 5, 2011, 4:00 pm. The New York Philharmonic has yet again canceled a proposed trip to Cuba, and this time it may be for keeps. The orchestra was tentatively planning to go in June, but no charter planes big enough to take it were available, said the Philharmonic spokesman, Eric Latzky. In addition, the school year will have ended, making it too difficult to gather children for a planned youth concert, he said.“I think the Philharmonic may go to Cuba some day but certainly not in the foreseeable future,” Mr. Latzky said. Read More

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Cuba to allow small-scale mining by individuals

<p style="text-align: justify;">April 05, 2011. EFE. Havana –&nbsp; The Cuban government will grant mining permits to individuals for extracting small volumes of construction materials, the deputy minister of Basic Industry said.Ivan Martinez said that these new kinds of authorizations will soon be approved and will be granted for a maximum of one year."Permits will be granted for a period of no longer than one year for mining small volumes and it could be self-employed people who make use of them," Martinez said.The measure seeks to increase the production of materials like bricks, masonry, sand and gravel, conceivably in line with the Communist government's plans to build public housing on the island. Read More

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Repsol moving ahead with Cuba oil plans

<p style="text-align: justify;">Repsol says big oil fields possible offshore Cuba. By Jeff Franks. HAVANA, April 5 (Reuters) - Repsol YPF (REP.MC) expects to have a Chinese-built drilling rig in Cuban waters by the end of the summer and start drilling immediately into a prospective undersea oil field that looks like it could be a big one, a geologist for the Spanish oil company said on Monday.Repsol, in a consortium with Norway's Statoil (STL.OL) and a unit of India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC.BO), plans to drill one well with the high-tech Scarabeo 9 rig and another if the first is successful, said senior structural geologist Gonzalo Zamora at Cuba's Earth Sciences Summit in Havana. Read More

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US, Mexico Work to Raise Bar in Gulf

<p style="text-align: justify;">By&nbsp; Jennifer A. Dlouhy. Houston Chronicle. Tuesday, April 05, 2011. Offshore drilling regulators from the U.S. and Mexico met Monday in a bid to strengthen standards governing oil and gas exploration throughout the Gulf.U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the goal was a single "gold standard" for all Gulf of Mexico drilling, whether in U.S. or Mexican territorial waters. Read More

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Reuters rejects Cuba's spy claim

<p style="text-align: justify;">By PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Paul Haven, Associated Press – 44 mins ago. HAVANA – The Reuters news agency on Tuesday vehemently denied an accusation made on Cuban state television that one of its journalists helped arrange a meeting between an undercover Cuban agent and a U.S. diplomat who the program described as a CIA operative. Read More

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Cuba claims ex-Reuters boss helped CIA

<p style="text-align: justify;">By PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Paul Haven, Associated Press – Mon Apr 4, 11:18 pm ET. HAVANA – Cuban state-television on Monday accused a former bureau chief for the Reuters international news agency of arranging a meeting on a darkened Havana street between an undercover Cuban agent and a U.S. diplomat who the program claimed was really a CIA operative. Read More

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Hank and Cupcakes move from Israel to Cuba Brooklyn

<p style="text-align: justify;">Gino DePinto, AOL. Deriving their name from Charles Bukowski's oeuvre, Hank and Cupcakes are an Israeli pop group to be reckoned with. Having lived in Havana, Cuba for six months to study music before relocating to Brooklyn, the band has slowly made their mark in the States."Our live set is compiled of just bass and drums, and I'm the drummer and singer and I stand while I play the drums and Hank plays bass, but with 10 million effects," singer Cupcakes, aka Sagit Shir, tells Spinner. Read More

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Cuban, British Experts Host First Joint Neurology Forum

<p style="text-align: justify;">Por Fany Rodríguez.Havana, Apr. 5 (Prensa Latina) The Cuba-Great Britain Neurology Meeting, the first such annual forum in Latin America, continues Tuesday, with presentations on epilepsy and Parkinson''s disease.The Association of British Neurologists and the Cuban Society of Neurology and Neurosurgery are sponsoring the event at the Hermanos Ameijeiras Clinic Surgical Hospital is aimed at creating a space for exchanging information on the topic. Read More

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