In 1985, Cuban artist José Bedia was a rising star in his homeland. He had recently completed a Ford Foundation artist’s residency in the United States when the notification arrived. “I was 26 and had just returned to Havana from New York. The Cuban military called me up for mandatory service in Angola at a time when my wife had just given birth to my son. Now, three short months later, I was being shipped to Africa and couldn’t say no for fear of retaliation against my family,” Bedia recollects in this article by Carlos Suáarez de Jesús for The Miemia Herald.

That unexpected journey to Angola was the catalyst for his decision to leave Cuba. It was also a rare opportunity to venture into the African hinterland to discover the fountainhead of his faith — the Afro-Caribbean religion Palo Monte.

Those experiences and others are the inspiration behind “Transcultural Pilgrim: Three Decades of Work by José Bedia,” a new exhibit at the Miami Art Museum featuring 35 works, including large-scale figurative paintings, drawings, and installations marking a major career retrospective. Bedia’s work explores his Afro-Caribbean roots, ancient African and Native American religions and symbols, and the myths of indigenous cultures across the globe.

The traveling exhibit was organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA, where it opened last year. It is the first conclusive survey of his work shown in Miami since Bedia permanently relocated here in 1993.

A member of Cuba’s vaunted generation of the ’80s, when young artists experimented with new forms of expression often critical of the government, Bedia won international recognition in the first and second Havana Biennials.

During the early ’80s, he was also initiated into the Regla de Congo, part of a religion that arrived on the island with West African slaves. His faith is the foundation of his art, and a trio of 1984 drawings on view at MAM shows that the nganga — or cauldron, the central icon of his religion — is a recurring theme in his work.

The drawings depict the nganga as a powerful receptacle of divine and natural forces that acts as a microcosm for elements linking the spiritual and physical worlds. For Palo practitioners, the nganga provides security and stability. It is unique to each initiate.

Typically the cauldrons contain items such as cemetery dirt, herbs, sticks, and human and animal bones. They are mixed with blood offerings.

Wall text at MAM informs that when Bedia was initiated, he received Sarabanda, the spirit guardian of iron implements. So the artist’s cauldron bristles with items such as magnets, knives, nails, razor blades, an anvil, a horseshoe, scissors, a hammer, a tortoise shell, and animal antlers — all of which are shown descending into his nganga from the heavens in a drawing here.

But even the nganga couldn’t save Bedia in Angola. “People don’t realize how terrible that was,” he explains. “We were sent there without training, and most of the Cuban combatants were like me, civilians plucked from the jobs to go and fight. With the exception of pilots and [some] others, none of us were soldiers. Even the tanks were operated by former bus and truck drivers.”

Bedia sought opportunities to venture into villages to meet locals who shared his beliefs. He also tried to collect sacred implements called matari to take home with him, but found it difficult. He says he was there for six months in 1985 and 1986, and once found himself pointing a rifle at fellow soldiers after they dragged a villager into their truck and attempted to rape her in front of her three children.

“It was like Cuba’s Vietnam. We left Luanda in a convoy of 200 trucks and had to cross through mined territory. Along the way, a bridge in front of our caravan was blown up, and we got bogged down in the mud for three days,” he recollects.

“We stopped to trade with villagers, and some of the men in my unit pulled a woman carrying a basket of potatoes into the truck and started stripping her naked while her kids watched. I grabbed my rifle and stopped them. Later, one of the commanders pulled me aside and told me to be careful during combat because I might end up a victim of friendly fire. It was traumatic. That’s when I decided that if I made it out of there alive, with my limbs and sanity intact, I would leave Cuba,” says Bedia, whose works often offer a scathing commentary on colonialism.

A sprawling ink-on-amate-paper piece from 1991 captures the moment Bedia left his homeland.

Titled Si en Mi Tierra No Hay Sol, Yo Brinco al Lado Allá (If There Is No Sun in My Country, I Jump to the Other Side), it depicts the artist straddling two worlds like the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on a seaside city to the right of the composition and the other on a busy highway filled with automobiles to the left. On his back he carries his nganga, which ties him to his ancestors and is the only possession too valuable to leave behind, reflecting that his cultural roots are linked more to religion than nationality.

The exhibit is organized in sections that include his travels to Mexico, his studies with the Lakota peoples in North America, and his visits with shamans in the Peruvian Amazon.

Other sections feature Bedia’s later travels to Zambia. There is also the artist’s tribute to Caribbean revolutionary figures who were Palo practitioners and combined their faith with social justice and activism.

Works such as Intipi (Sweat Lodge), created in 1995, reflect Bedia’s experiences during his initial visit to the United States, before he was shipped to Angola. It records his first powerful spiritual experience with Native American traditions. “I visited the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota where I met Leonard Crow Dog, a Lakota medicine man and spiritual leader who was involved in the Wounded Knee incident at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation during the 1970s,” he says. “The experience in the sweat lodge was very powerful and complicated to explain but dealt with summoning the Great Spirit.”

“Transcultural Pilgrim: Three Decades of Work by José Bedia”: Through September 2 at Miami Art Museum, 101 W. Flagler St., Miami; 305-375-3000; miamiartmuseum.org. Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday noon to 5 p.m.

Bedia says indigenous religions, with traditions rooted in prehistory, are the oldest on the planet. “I have seen Crow Dog summon eagles under a cloudless sky until several of the birds appeared from nowhere and began circling overhead. All life force is impregnated with what some call wakan and others call mana. This power endures even after something is dead.”

While visiting South American shamans and ingesting ayahuasca, a brew made with psychotropic herbs, the artist found himself in the presence of the Otorongo Jaguar and Great Anaconda spirits. “It was a fundamental experience for me,” says Bedia, who painted his encounter with the black jaguar. “Anyone interested in visual arts should have such an experience. You see a great many things during these experiences, which I later try to interpret in my work.”

As much an anthropologist of the soul as a gifted artist, Bedia peels back the veil on the sacred and unknown with an undeniable force all his own.

Miami Art Museum

101 W. Flagler St.
Miami, FL 33130

For the original report go to http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-05-31/culture/José-bedia-transcultural-pilgrim-at-mam/

Tucked away in the eastern corner of Guatemala near the Caribbean Sea, and running along the Honduran border, the Sierra Caral is an isolated mountain range that is home to numerous rare and endangered animals and plants.

Exploration of these mountains has yielded several new discoveries of beetles, salamanders, frogs, and snakes over the past two decades.

The site will offer protections for many birds including threatened species such as: the Highland Guan, Great Curassow and Keel-billed Motmot. Furthermore, the site is known as a haven for an abundance of migratory birds including the Canada Warbler, Kentucky Warbler, Wood Thrush, Painted Bunting, Worm-eating Warbler, and Louisiana Waterthrush.

“The new Sierra Caral Reserve safeguards key stopover habitat for perhaps millions of migrating U.S. birds, making it an invaluable addition to Central America’s roster of protected areas and a real benefit to U.S. bird conservation efforts,” said Dr. George Fenwick, president of American Bird Conservancy (ABC).

The Sierra Caral forests are especially diverse due to the convergence of floras and faunas from North and South America, as well as many species unique to the region. Only a few Merendon Palm Pit Vipers have been found, most often in a palm native to the Sierra Caral. Guatemalan biologist Carlos Vasquez Almazan, one of the few individuals to find a Merendon Palm-pitviper in the wild, drew international scientific attention to the conservation importance of the Sierra Caral in recent years. He was recently awarded the prestigious Whitley Award for Conservation that recognizes outstanding nature conservationists around the world.

Speaking to the accomplishments of Carlos Vasquez Almazan in Guatemala, Sir David Attenborough noted, “Surveys of the area uncovered not only species new to science, but also led to the rediscovery of several previously thought to have become extinct.”

Brian Sheth, chair of Global Wildlife Conservation said, “The Sierra Caral reserve is important not only for the rare and endangered species that are unique to the region, but also as a corridor for animals between the continents.”

The remaining wild lands of the Sierra Caral are a critical component of the “Jaguar Corridor” that will permit large-ranging species such as Mountain Lions, migratory birds, and other wildlife to continue moving between the continents as they have done for millennia. Still largely unexplored by scientists, the almost 6,000 acres of core forest in this isolated site, and the species that depend on them, were almost lost.

“Each year 70,000 hectares of Guatemala’s forests disappear due to the expansion of agriculture and timber extraction, threatening not only wildlife but also the well-being of local people who rely on the clean water and other ecosystem services they provide,” said Sir David Attenborough.

Despite official pleas for forest protection by the local communities and a leading Guatemalan conservation organization, FUNDAECO, this area has been steadily deforested over the past decade. Rampant clear-cutting and shortsighted conversion of the mountain slopes into cattle pasture have followed large land acquisitions by a few individuals. As a result of these activities, the rivers that originate in these mountains and provide freshwater for thousands of people have been degraded for surrounding communities, and the risk of devastating landslides has increased. Local communities persuaded the Guatemalan Congress to declare the area a nationally protected area; however, budgetary restrictions prevented the government from purchasing the privately owned lands.

Over the past year, a consortium of fifteen international conservation groups, led by Global Wildlife Conservation, partnered with FUNDAECO to raise the funds needed to purchase the last stands of primary forest in the Sierra Caral. Critical support was received from the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (USFWS), World Land Trust-US, International Conservation Fund of Canada (ICFC), American Bird Conservancy, Conservation International, and others.

“This is a real triumph for the planet – conservationists across North and Central America banded together to save the last stand of this unique rainforest.” said Dr. Paul Salaman, CEO of World land Trust-US.

Marco Cerezo, CEO of FUNDAECO, said, “This major land purchase lifts the last hurdle for the Guatemalan government to declare the area a National Wildlife Sanctuary, something that local communities and conservationists have been desperately awaiting since 2000.”

“We were very impressed with FUNDAECO’s track record of working with local communities and involving them in conservation, including creating good long-term jobs at their reserves”, said Anne Lambert of the International Conservation Fund of Canada. “Sierra Caral is also stunningly beautiful, on top of its conservation significance.”

The inauguration of the new Sierra Caral Amphibian Reserve occurred on May 2, and was presided over by Mr. Rafael Estrada, Governor of Izabal, and other dignitaries from local government. Over 200 local community members attended and participated in environmental education activities and festivities, highlighting a win for nature and people.

“The Sierra Caral reserve is a jewel in the biodiversity crown of Guatemala and of the world. This success story demonstrates how international alliances and local and national conservation leadership capacity can come together and protect unique species and habitats for future generations to enjoy.” said Dr. Claude Gascon, co-chair of the IUCN/SSC Amphibian Specialist Group.

For the original report go to http://www.chattanoogan.com/2012/5/29/227210/Blue-Vipers-Endangered-Frogs-And.aspx

The documentary, Forward Home: The Power of the Caribbean Diaspora, showcases the experiences of members of the Caribbean Diaspora who straddle the dual worlds of Caribbean Homelands and Global Cities as tourists, travellers and entrepreneurs, and the organizations that make the relationship work, according to Dr. Keith Nurse, the film’s executive producer.

“The documentary maps the uncharted territory of diasporic tourism and provides empirical evidence to support what we have known anecdotally, which is that the diasporic economy is of huge significance to the diversification and competitiveness of the Caribbean economy,” said Dr. Nurse, who is the director of the Shridath Ramphal Centre (SRC) of the University of the West Indies (UWI). The SRC is a training, research and outreach organization that services the Caribbean region in trade, industrial and development policy matters.

Forward Home is based on an analysis of the diasporic tourism and investment flows of four Caribbean countries and counterpart global cities – Jamaica and London; Guyana and Toronto; Suriname and Amsterdam; and The Dominican Republic and New York – and was shot in nine countries.

The Diaspora Forum is part of the programme for Caribbean Week in New York – a series of consumer events and business meetings, showcasing the diversity and vibrancy of the Caribbean to thousands of New Yorkers and visitors to the Big Apple. The Forum will be held on Tuesday 5 June from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the Marriott Marquis hotel in the heart of Times Square and the Broadway theatre district.

Themed Rediscover Home: Defining our Role, the Forum brings together ministers, commissioners and directors of tourism, as well as senior tourism officials and the Caribbean diaspora in an exchange of information on the unique selling propositions of the various destinations.

This year’s Forum will also feature presentations by Montserrat, which is celebrating its 50th carnival, and Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, both observing their golden jubilee. In addition, the CTO will give an update on its Rediscover Home programme – a series of activities aimed at encouraging the Caribbean Diaspora to rediscover the Caribbean – including a loyalty card and the Diaspora website, www.onecaribbeandiaspora.com

For the original report go to http://tropicalfete.com/?p=3286

A multiple-award-winning documentary about Jamaica’s vibrant and fascinating dancehall scene is set to enthrall audiences as part of the annual We Beat festival in St James.

The screening of Hit Me With Music, which takes place at the St James Amphitheatre on Saturday 2 June from 7pm, is part of the trinidad + tobago film festival (ttff) and bpTT Community Cinergy series of film screenings. Presented in association with the St James Improvement Committee, the screening is free of charge, and open to all persons sixteen years and over.

Released in 2011 and directed by Miquel Galofré, Hit Me With Music is a brilliant exploration of the various facets of dancehall culture, including feuds between rival musicians, skin bleaching, and the “daggering” phenomenon. Dancehall pioneers Yellowman and the late Bogle make appearances in the film, as well as more recent stars Elephant Man, Mavado and Vybz Kartel.

The film—which has been playing to enthusiastic audiences in North America and Europe—won both the jury and audience awards for best documentary at the ttff/11.

Following the screening there will be a Q&A session with the director.

The ttff is held annually in September and is presented by Flow, given leading sponsorship by RBC Royal Bank and bpTT, and supported by the Trinidad & Tobago Film Company, the National Gas Company, the Tourism Development Company, the Tobago House of Assembly and the Ministry of Arts and Multiculturalism. For more information visit www.ttfilmfestival.com.

An elusive songbird that wings its way each year from austere mountaintops of the northeastern United States to the steamy forests of the Caribbean has inspired the creation of what conservationists hope will be a new model for nature reserves in the Dominican Republic, which has long struggled with deforestation—the Associated Press reports.

The reserve is taking shape in a lushly overgrown former cattle ranch measuring about 1,000 acres, at the edge of a deep green forest in the Dominican Republic’s rugged northeast. Conservation-minded Dominican and U.S. investors have acquired the plot as a pilot project, hoping to protect what they say is a global biodiversity hot spot that’s home to dozens of threatened species.

The government sees the reserve as a potential example that such land can be put to better uses than burning down the trees to convert it to pasture. That’s the typical approach in the Caribbean country, with only about 40 percent of its forest cover left. Neighboring Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola, has virtually none of its forest standing.

“We are trying to create a model and break the cycle of destruction,” said Jesus Moreno, a Dominican businessman whose family is partially funding the reserve.

A main goal of the reserve is to protect the zorzal migratorio, known in English as the Bicknell’s thrush. It divides its time between the Caribbean islands and mountaintop forests in the northeastern United States and southern Canada. The bird is considered vulnerable, with an estimated fewer than 100,000 in the wild, said Chris Rimmer, an ornithologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies who helped establish the reserve. “It’s much bigger than just this one little migratory songbird,” Rimmer said.

For the original report go to http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/saving-songbird-will-also-fight-deforestation-in-dominican-republic/1232638

For the original report go to http://www.thebahamasweekly.com/publish/caribbean-news/A_Good_Read_The_Allure_of_Anguilla22210.shtml

LOT can happen in five years. Back in 2007, Levi Roots was a struggling reggae musician with a small business selling jerk barbecue sauce with little cash to his name.

Half a decade and a memorable appearance on Dragons’ Den later, his brand has exploded, with ready meals, drinks, numerous table and cooking sauces and collaborations with the likes of KFC under his belt. And thanks to a new TV advert, he’s even joined an elite group of stars who have been animated by Aardman.

With a cool nod of the head, the 53-year-old confirms the business is worth £35 million.

“I don’t think you can imagine that kind of success,” he says in his gentle Jamaican lilt, cutting a striking figure in a green Ozwald Boateng suit and stacks of silver jewellery.

“I knew I had it in me, obviously. I knew the sauce was great.

“But to be invited to dinner by Prince Charles and to be invited to Number 10 and have Camilla telling me that she knows me – she knew me more than I knew her! Where I was five years ago, it’s impossible to think things like that would happen.”

But it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Last year, Roots was sued by former friend Anthony Bailey, who claimed that he created the recipe for Reggae Reggae sauce. Bailey ultimately lost the case and the pair don’t speak any more.

Roots says: “I can either look at 2011 as the worst year of my life or the best year of my life. The worst part was that everything was open, my life was open to the press and it was a lot of stress, and people you knew didn’t think the best of you.

“But the best part is that it’s all behind me and I’ve managed to get the monkey off my back and prove to the world that what was being said wasn’t true. And I stress the latter – I think it was the best year, as opposed to the worst, with all the negative part of it.”

Despite winning the legal battle, Roots admitted in court that some of the sauce’s back story – that the recipe had been handed down by his grandmother and that he’d sold it at the Notting Hill Carnival for 15 years – was created to help market the product.

But he is confident this has not affected his business and insists his grandmother was always “an inspiration behind everything I do”.

“It’s just about the story. And all we have to do now is be careful about how we tell the story. I think everyone in food now has this thing about a grandmother’s recipe, so everybody has to be careful now!” he laughs. “Inspiration and actuality are two different things.”

Another positive about the court case, he says, was the support he received from his licensees and from his original Dragons’ Den mentors Richard Farleigh and Peter Jones.

Farleigh, who put £25,000 into the business and then sold the shares back to Roots for a whopping £200,000, remains a “great friend”, Roots says.

“Now I only have one investor, but he’s not just an investor, he’s one of my best friends,” he adds.

“I don’t think I’ll ever want to buy Peter Jones out. Having him as a mentor is invaluable. He’s been there, done it all, including being bankrupt.”

With Jones’s help, Roots hopes to extend his brand to the US. But he has no plans to spread his own wings yet, and still lives in a Housing Association flat in Brixton, where he says he pays £450 a month rent.

“I don’t think five years out of Dragons’ Den is long enough for you to fly the roost and leave the people who were supporting you six years before. I’m reminded of that every evening when I drive into my estate and I see the kids run out and say ‘Levi! We love you!’ That’s part of the reason I stay.

“Plus, that flat has great connections with my business. I will either buy that flat or stay there for the rest of my life.”

As well as wanting to inspire people from his own community – “I never had someone like me in Brixton when I was growing up,” he says – he is pleased to see the profile of Caribbean food growing, an achievement he puts down in part to his TV show Caribbean Food Made Easy.

“It’s fun. It’s about sunshine flavours because the Caribbean is all about that. It’s about cooking outdoors and inviting the family around.”

For the original report go to http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/lifestyle/weekend-life/food-drink/levi-explains-how-business-grows-from-the-roots-upwards-1-3893107

Volcano was written in 1956 when Noël Coward was suffering the dubious status of having become Britain’s first celebrity tax exile. The play – unperformed in his lifetime – is the product of his laidback life in Jamaica, and of a period during which he was regarded as a crumbling colonial relic outmoded by a post-war Labour government and the rowdy commotions of the Angry Young Men back home—as Philip Hoare reports in this article for theartdesk.com.

Coward’s reputation had taken a battering in the post-war years. The British public were no longer satisfied with reruns of Brief Encounter, and critics such as Beverley Baxter posed the question, “Did Noel Coward survive the war?” Coward seemed to be a casualty of revolution, and he had retreated to his island paradise to lick his wounds.

In Volcano he proved that he had taken on board the radical new changes of the post-war world, but that his work had pre-empted those changes. As he wrote Volcano, he was in the process of becoming a Las Vegas cabaret star, posing surreally in the Nevada desert in an evening suit with a cup of tea, a cross between Bryan Ferry and Elvis. One might say he had more image changes than Lady Gaga. And Volcano is an explosive example of the manner in which he could confound his critics.

Coward had based its sexual intrigue on a real-life situation

On Samola, a fictional Caribbean island but all too evidently Jamaica, a widow in her early forties, Adela Shelley (Jenny Seagrove in a new touring production), is faced with the ghosts of her passionate past when Guy Littleton, a handsome Lothario, returns on a visit – and in the process seduces a young married woman, Ellen Danbury (Dawn Steele). When Melissa Littleton and Keith Danbury, their respective spouses, arrive, the plot is further complicated.

The play’s overt discussion of sex was not what Coward’s now middle-aged audiences expected of him. His producer, Binkie Beaumont, turned it down on grounds of its construction; but may have envisaged problems getting it past the censors of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office (an old enemy for Coward). Then Katharine Hepburn, whom Coward had hoped would play Adela, turned it down too. But the more pressing reason for the shelving of Volcano was the fact that Coward had based its sexual intrigue on a real-life situation.

Coward’s Jamaican home, Blue Harbour, and his clifftop chalet, Firefly, were set on the fashionable, if not louche north coast of the island, a veritable ants’-nest of celebrities, from Ivor Novello and Edward Molyneaux to Claudette Colbert, from Bette Davis and Clara Bow to Errol Flynn.

In the days before cheap air travel, celebrities here were left unbothered by the plebeian hordes – and the paparazzi – to carry on their affairs in private. Days would be spent idling by the pool over rum punches; evenings driving to neighbouring villas to drink more rum and eat supper served by silent, white-coated black servants who could be relied upon to keep their own counsel.

Here Laurence Olivier came to smoke dope and sunbathe naked by Coward’s pool. John Gielgud could be found on the balcony, “admiring his own profile”, as one veteran Jamaican writer, Maurice Cargill observed. Coward’s attitude to guests was equivocal. As one of the characters in Volcano says, “The most beautiful thing about having people to stay is when they leave.” He relished his solitude in Jamaica – and later built a second house on top of the hill, Firefly – partly because the noise of the sea ended up driving him mad, but also so that he could escape his visitors.

Another guest was Hepburn, who would zoom up the drive in a sports car with Irene Selznick in the passenger seat. When I interviewed Miss Hepburn in her Upper Eastside house in 1992, she told me how she was frustrated by the Master’s lack of interest in exercise. He was more fascinated by the activities of his friends’ and neighbours’ love-lives, it seemed. And none were more intriguing than that of Ian Fleming – who lived close by in his house, Goldeneye – and Blanche Blackwell, the glamorous scion of an old plantation family, at Bolt House.

For the original report go to http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/noel-cowards-volcano

Yesterday, May 29, 2012, the United States Mint made available its 2012-P El Yunque National Forest 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin at a price of $204.95.

Throw out the differing sizes, finishes and metallic compositions and the uncirculated coin is a twin to the El Yunque National Forest quarter which was released into American circulation back in January — down to the obverse portrait of George Washington and the QUARTER DOLLAR inscription.

Both coins mark the eleventh issues from their respective America the Beautiful coins series which honors national parks and sites throughout the U.S. and its territories. El Yunque National Forest celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2003 and is located on the Caribbean Island of Puerto Rico, one of five U.S. territories to be honored between 2010 and 2021.

Coin Designs and Specifications

As is the case with each of the U.S. Mint’s America the Beautiful Five Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coins™, the El Yunque issue features a 3.0 inch diameter, 5 ounce weight, and a composition of 99.9% fine silver. That makes its melt value alone equal to $138.60 at the current spot silver price of $27.72 an ounce.

El Yunque coins bear reverse designs that show an image of a Coqui tree frog sitting on a leaf and a Puerto Rican parrot behind an epiphyte plant with tropical flora in the background. Inscriptions include EL YUNQUE, PUERTO RICO, 2012 and E PLURIBUS UNUM.

Gary Whitley designed and Michael Gaudioso sculpted the reverse of the coin.

The obverse was designed by John Flanagan and it includes the additional inscriptions of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, LIBERTY, IN GOD WE TRUST. There is also a “P” mint mark to denote its production at the U.S. Mint facility in Philadelphia.

Each 5 troy ounce silver uncirculated coin also sports edge letterings of .999 FINE SILVER 5.0 OUNCE.

Current Sales, Mintages and Order Information

The 2012-P El Yunque National Forest 5 Ounce Silver Uncirculated Coin features a maximum mintage of 25,000, which is 10,000 less than each of the still for sale 2011 ATB 5 Ounce uncirculated coins. The 2010-dated coins sold out with mintages each of 27,000.)

For reference, U.S. Mint sales for the 2011-dated coins as of Tuesday are:

The latest or any of the 2011-dated collector coins may be purchased from the U.S. Mint online product page, located here, or via the toll-free phone number, 1-800-USA-MINT (872-6468). There are no per household ordering limits.

Each coin arrives enclosed in a plastic capsule that is set within an attractive presentation case and accompanied by a U.S. Mint Certificate of Authenticity.

For the original report go to http://www.silvercoinstoday.com/2012-p-el-yunque-5-ounce-silver-uncirculated-coin-available/106637/

Spanish oil firm Repsol said Tuesday it will stop looking for oil in Cuba after hitting a dry well drilled at a cost of more than $100 million, a blow to the island nation desperate to find its own energy sources amid deep economic hardship—as Alan Clendenning reports in this article for Business Week.

Speaking to investors and reporters about the firm’s plans over the next four years, Repsol Chairman Antonio Brufau said the company “won’t do another” well in Cuba.

“The well we drilled turned out dry and it’s almost certain that we won’t do any more activity there,” Brufau added.

Cuba’s last chance for hitting oil in the near future could come from Malaysian state oil company Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas), which started drilling last week in an area of the Florida Straits known as the Northbelt Trust, about 110 miles (180 kilometers) southwest of Repsol’s drill site. Results are expected in July.

Experts say it is not surprising that Repsol’s 3-mile (4.8-kilometer) deep exploratory well was a bust. Four out of five such wells find nothing in the high-stakes oil game, and petroleum companies are built to handle the losses.

The Scarabeo-9 platform that Repsol used is the only one in the world that can drill in Cuban waters without incurring sanctions under the U.S. economic embargo, but it is scheduled to head to Brazil after being used for one to four more exploratory Cuban wells.

A delay in finding oil would hurt Cuba because 80-year-old President Raul Castro is trying to lift the country’s economy through limited free-market reforms, and has been forced to cut many of the subsidies islanders got in return for salaries of just $20 a month.

It could also make Cuba more dependent on Venezuela, which provides $3 billion of subsidized oil each year. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez is suffering from cancer, and the deal might disappear if he dies or doesn’t win re-election in October.

Industry experts have said Repsol YPF SA was under contract to drill a second Cuban well but could get out of the deal by paying a penalty to an Italian company that owns the drilling platform used for Repsol’s well.

Brufau didn’t mention the penalty, and Repsol spokesman Kristian Rix said he could not immediately provide details on how the arrangement would work.

The Scarabeo-9 was built in Asia with less than 10 percent U.S.-made parts to avoid violating Washington’s embargo.

Because of the embargo, Cuba is shut off from borrowing from international lending institutions. An oil find could change the situation, with Cuba using future oil riches as collateral to secure new financing, economists say.

For the original report go to http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9V2FK781.htm