Odds and ends

• AFP: The Havana archdiocese spokesman says the Church’s dialogue with the Cuban government, begun a year ago, has been positive, should take on other issues, and should produce more results.

• Greenwire: Former EPA chief William Reilly, co-chair of a U.S. panel promoting safer offshore drilling, says he has had his “wrist slapped” by the State Department when pushing his next step, which is to go to Cuba to discuss safety and environmental protection before drilling begins.

• Bloomberg: Oil guru Jorge Pinon puts very high odds on Cuba’s offshore oil prospects.

• Cuba and Norway signed agreements on economic cooperation, including in the energy sector. It sounds like training and technical assistance; if there’s money involved there are no figures cited in Prensa Latina’s story or in this one in English from Xinhua.

• A Washington conference on Hugo Chavez and 21^st century socialism gets some coverage in Granma.

• “Manufacturing pretexts,” a Granma editorial on the death of Juan Wilfredo Soto in Santa Clara, notes wryly that President Obama is a busy man but was able “to retain in his memory the case of a person detained in a Cuban park who was able to return a short while later.” The President’s remarks were in an interview with Miami’s Univision affiliate (short excerpt here) for which there seems to be no transcript. Additional quotes in this Reuters story.

• At Babalu they say it would have been nice to see news coverage of a May 15 ceremony where Luis Posada Carriles received an award presented, as the photo seems to show, by Congressman David Rivera and former U.S. Interests Section chief Jim Cason. I agree.