Puerto Rico wind farm to be Caribbean's largest

– USATODAY.com
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno says the Caribbean's largest wind farm will be built in the U.S. territory in a bid to reduce the island's dependence on oil.

Fortuno says the $250 million project is financed by San Francisco-based Pattern Energy and will feature 44 turbines capable of providing power to about 25,000 homes.

The Santa Isabela wind farm will start operating by next September and generate up to 75 megawatt hours of energy as part of a 20-year deal with the state-owned Electric Energy Authority.

Thursday's announcement comes a week after Fortuno announced that the Caribbean's largest solar energy project will be built in Puerto Rico.

The U.S. territory relies on oil to generate 70 percent of its power.

Puerto Rico wind farm to be Caribbean's largest – USATODAY.com

Caribbean's largest solar project to be built in Puerto Rico

San Juan –  Puerto Rican Gov. Luis Fortuño announced Thursday that a $98 million solar-energy project - the largest ever in the Caribbean region - will be built on the island.

AES Ilumina's 24 MW solar facility, which will create 200 jobs during the construction phase, is to be installed on a property near the southern town of Guayama that was acquired from the state-run Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company.

Fortuño said that he expects the privately financed facility to begin producing solar energy next summer and that it will be capable of meeting the energy needs of 6,500 area households.

The goal in building the utility-scale solar photovoltaic plant is to reduce the U.S. commonwealth's dependence on fossil fuels, the governor said.

"With the vision of promoting the development of a green Puerto Rico and lessen our dependence on oil, we've strived to create a climate that encourages the real diversification of our energy sources," he added.

The project is the first to benefit from a renewable energy incentives law that Fortuño signed on July 19, 2010.

The governor said the project to be carried out by AES Ilumina - a unit of AES Solar, which is a joint venture between AES Corporation and Riverstone Holdings - is the first of seven renewable energy projects in Puerto Rico that are scheduled to get off the ground between this year and 2012.

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Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/money/2011/10/06/caribbeans-largest-solar-project-to-be-built-in-puerto-rico/#ixzz1a5MZI44O

Puerto Rico holds one of the planet’s last bright spots

By Leigh Ann Henion

I’m standing in a narrow alleyway when a stranger approaches to tell me that he can channel the power of the ocean. Crazy? Maybe. But I’m on the island of Vieques with a similarly far-fetched quest: to swim in a celestial sea. I tell the man, who introduces himself as Charlie the Wavemaster, that the Milky Way will soon crackle and shimmer as it slips through my fingers. Bits of stardust will cling to my hair.

Vieques’s Mosquito Bay, also called Bioluminescent Bay or Bio Bay, is one of the last ecosystems in the world where dinoflagellates — microscopic, single-celled organisms — create halos of light around whatever disturbs their nightly flotation. Marine bioluminescence, which appears to mirror stars in the night sky, occurs spontaneously around the globe, but no site on Earth hosts the phenomenon with more regularity than the southern coast of Vieques. Guinness World Records 2008 named Bio Bay the brightest in the world.

“The Bio Bay, it’s all about vibrations,” Charlie says. “You slap the water, and it lights up! It’s inspiring! The water holds so much awe!”

Charlie is wearing a baseball cap and handkerchief headband, and he’s holding a long metal pole, which I gesture toward. “Oh, this is my magic wand!” he says. Charlie taps it on the ground near my feet. “I’m putting out vibrations right now. Feel it?” There is a dull resonation under my sand-encrusted flip-flops.


When I turn to continue my exploration of the town of Isabel Segunda, Charlie follows. Cars blast the thump-de-thump of reggaeton. Neighbors chat through barred windows with people on the street. Young men in athletic clothing ride bareback on horses guided by rough, twisted rope. Roosters run wild through the scene, necks pumping back and forth as they dodge tires and hooves.

Just before Charlie bids me farewell, slipping into the driver’s seat of a borrowed pickup, he says: “There are so many mysterious ways and miracles in the world. There’s so much involved, you could never understand it all.” As he drives away, I can hear his metal rod echoing in the truck bed like a tuning fork.

Vieques, which is about eight miles from the main island of Puerto Rico and has a total population of roughly 9,000, is a place where it hasn’t always been easy for residents to see the bright side of things. In the 1940s, thousands of people were forced from their homes when the U.S. Navy expropriated roughly two-thirds of the 21-mile-long, four-mile-wide island for artillery storage and military training. In the following decades, Vieques was the site of perpetual military training involving munitions that delivered doses of napalm, lead, depleted uranium and a cocktail of other contaminants. In 2003, when the Navy ceased bombing, nearly 18,000 acres were designated as a national wildlife refuge. This move has kept construction concentrated in a narrow swath of land in the center of the island, preserving its status as one of the least developed in the Caribbean.

In 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency added Vieques to its list of Superfund National Priorities, officially designating parts of the island hazardous waste sites. This designation made Vieques a supremely unlikely travel destination, but the Navy’s toxic legacy has proved no match for 50 undeveloped beaches where — on a busy day — visitors might share a crescent of sand with one or two other intrepid souls.

Read more from the Washington Post Magazine

El Chupacabra Mystery Solved: Case of Mistaken Identity

Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster rank as the top two best-known monsters in the world, but since its 1995 debut, El Chupacabra has made a Justin Bieber-like ascension to No. 3 on the charts. The relative newcomer to the monster world is the go-to culprit for weird livestock deaths and creates a massive media stir whenever it's "sighted." It even has a fan club on Facebook.

That could all end, now that Benjamin Radford, author of several books on monsters and paranormal phenomena, managing editor of the journal The Skeptical Inquirer and LiveScience columnist, has released what he says to be definitive proof that El Chupacabra is not real; it's not even a hoax, he said, but rather a leftover memory of a science- fiction film.

Stories of El Chupacabra first surfaced in March 1995 in Puerto Rico, Radford said, when dead, blood-drained goats began showing up (El Chupacabra translates to "goat sucker"). That August, a newspaper printed an eyewitness description of a bipedal creature, 4 to 5 feet tall with spikes down its back, long, thin arms and legs, and an alienlike oblong head with red or black eyes. That depiction became associated with El Chupacabra, and it reports of similar creatures began popping up throughout the Caribbean, in Latin America, Mexico and Florida.

Read more from LiveScience.com

Puerto Rico Heineken International Regatta

http://www.prheinekenregatta.com/

President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status Submits Report to Obama

 The President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status said island residents should determine its  political fate – and that the decades-old political limbo should be settled by the end of next year.

In its report to President Obama, the task force, among other recommendations, said only Puerto Rican residents – and not their mainland counterparts – should vote in two plebiscites. The first vote should determine if Puerto Ricans want to be a part of the United States or independent. The second plebiscite would give residents a choice among four options: statehood, independence, free association and commonwealth.

"The issue is a difficult one," the report said, referring to limiting the vote to island residents. "But on balance, those who have committed to the island by residing there have strong arguments that only they should vote on its future."

The task force, made up of 18 members, urged the President, Congress and the leadership of Puerto Rico to come to a resolution on the island's status by the end of 2012. It recommended that President Obama draft legislation and work with Congress to push it through.

"The legislation should commit the United States to honor the choice of the people of Puerto Rico (provided it is one of the status options in the legislation) and should specify the means by which such a choice would be made," the report said.

President Obama, who presumably will be running for reelection in 2012, said he wants to work with Congress to ensure that Puerto Ricans can determine their political future.

"I am firmly committed to the principle that the question of political status is a matter of self-determination for the people of Puerto Rico," the president said in the letter.

"Both the president and Congress have roles to play to help Puerto Rico settle on its future status," he added. "I am committed to working with Congress to ensure that a fair, clearly defined, and transparent process for the people of Puerto Rico to decide on their future for themselves."

Obama signed an executive order in October 2009 that directed the task force to examine Puerto Rico's status, as well as economic development, health care and job creation, among other issues. The task force was first created in 2000 by President Bill Clinton. President George W. Bush, too, received two reports by the task force -- one in 2005 and the other in 2007.

The report submitted to Obama also recommended that if voters were to choose statehood, Puerto Rico should control its own cultural and linguistic identity. If Puerto Ricans choose independence, the report said, the president and Congress should commit to preserving U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans during the political transition.

The task force touched on another hot-button issue for Puerto Ricans – Vieques. The report said the U.S. Navy – which used the tiny Puerto Rican island as a bombing range for years – should accelerate the pace with which it is cleaning inert explosives. Further, the U.S. Health and Human Services should seek ways to improve health care for residents there, the report said.

"The task force believes that a needs assessments should be completed to identify the most effective and efficient way to ensure that the people of Vieques receive the care, including expertise in environmental medicine, that they need," it said.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2011/03/16/presidents-task-force-puerto-ricos-status-submits-report-obama/#ixzz1Gq2lTEfm

Ricky Martin to promote Puerto Rico tourism on world tour

Published March 14, 2011

San Juan –  Singer Ricky Martin will collaborate with the government of Puerto Rico on a campaign to boost tourism to the Caribbean island during his world tour, which will begin on March 25, officials said Monday.

The "Puerto Rico lo hace mejor" (Puerto Rico does it better) campaign will be featured in the advertising and on the concert entry tickets in the more than 70 cities where Martin will perform on his "Musica, alma, sexo" tour, Economic Development and Commerce Secretary Jose Perez-Riera said in a statement.

During the artist's shows, videos will be played that show landscapes, tourist attractions and culinary and gastronomic delicacies of Puerto Rico, Perez-Riera said.

"By joining Ricky Martin's world tour as a presenter, we can continue strengthening our "Puerto Rico lo hace mejor" campaign on the international level presenting Puerto Rico as a synonym for quality," Perez-Riera went on to say.

Martin will kick off his world tour in the Jose M. Agrelot Colosseum in San Juan with four shows and will then travel to the U.S. cities of Orlando and Miami, as well as to Montreal, Canada.

The singer, meanwhile, emphasized that Puerto Rico "is always present" within him and expressed his gratitude for "the chance to be able to collaborate with this effort to position our land" more advantageously in the tourism industry via the campaign.

"The chance for Puerto Rico to have a presence on each stage of this tour is an honor," the singer said.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/entertainment/2011/03/14/ricky-martin-promote-puerto-rico-tourism-world-tour/#ixzz1Go9mK0Fi