Fidel Castro on Sunday hailed Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday, calling the Nobel Peace Prize winner ``a symbol of humanity's highest nobility.''
THE NEW YORK TIMES
President Raúl Castro continued his rollout of changes in Cuba on Friday with the start of a plan to boost the island’s sluggish food production by granting private farmers access to up to 99 acres of unused government land.
CUBA
Cuban activist Jorge Luis García Pérez has lost count of how many times he has been arrested since last year, when he finished serving every day of a 17-year prison sentence and then some.
NIAGARA FALLS REVIEW
It's a regular event in Fort Erie.Travel-weary Americans line up in Niagara's southernmost community and wait to cross the border. But this story has nothing to do with border delays. They're members of the Venceremos Brigade - a group of Americans who defy U. S. law and travel to Cuba without government permission - then openly confess their crime to border guards on the way back home.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
In the face of a U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration in the waters between Cuba and Florida, Mexican authorities have reported a surge in detentions of Cubans as quick-moving smugglers shift their routes westward.
CUBA
The labor of 108 Cuban workers in a Curacao dry dock was valued at $6.90 an hour. But the men, who worked double shifts in a joint venture between the Cuban government and the Curacao Dry Dock Company did not get to spend their wages. Their earnings were applied to the Cuban government's debt with the company, court records show.
SUN-SENTINEL
Strapped for dollars, euros and other currencies needed to buy imports, communist-run Cuba uses a unique dual-currency system to conserve foreign reserves. It pays islanders in local pesos and offers some goods and services at peso outlets, often with hefty subsidies. But increasingly, it requires a dollar-like convertible currency unit or CUC at other shops and businesses, where prices include little or no subsidies.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Gerardo Guardiola looks beyond the material items newly available to Cubans -- cellphones, DVD players, meals at restaurants once reserved for tourists -- and keys in on a more fundamental change that has transformed his life. "I now think for myself," said the 44-year-old tobacco factory worker and father of 10.
RADIO AND TV MARTI
The investigating branch of the U.S. Congress has accused the federal agency that oversees radio and television broadcasts to Cuba of awarding more than $1 million in contracts to two Miami news outlets without following regular contract-bid procedures.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Like other Cuban families, the Pineras are eating more fruits and vegetables as a result of a national campaign to boost food output and curb costly imports. Their efforts represent a small but significant step toward the government's ultimate goal to vastly reduce its dependence on more efficient foreign producers, especially for favorite foods such as rice, meat and dairy.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
On the surface, political life in Cuban Miami seems unchanged. Little Havana is still partly a Disney version of a displaced Cuba and partly a genuine community hub, where families who have long since left for suburbia still come for nostalgic weekend lunches. At the Versailles Restaurant, the community newspapers preaching no compromise with Castro are all that are on offer.
CUBA
Cuban leader Raúl Castro warned Cubans to work hard and do their jobs to the strictest standards in the face of an international economic crisis that is sure to hit the nation hard.
THE ENVIRONMENT | FORT LAUDERDALE
Fabian Pina Amargós arrived in Fort Lauderdale from Havana earlier this week with hopes of networking with his colleagues to find solutions to some of the problems facing coral reefs around the world.
A final decision on the legality of a Florida law banning academic trips to Cuba was delayed once again Friday, after a federal court judge gave both sides more time to compose their final arguments.
U.S. policy toward Cuba hasn't played a major role in this year's campaign for the White House. But many voters may be wondering: Will the end of President Bush's tenure bring changes in the trade embargo? Will travel restrictions be lifted? Will the next president meet with the leader of the communist nation that lies within 90 miles of U.S. shores?
Democrats controlling Congress are trying to loosen restrictions on allowing people of Cuban descent to visit their relatives on the island.
Fidel Castro kept a frenetic schedule for nearly five decades as a global icon who infuriated 10 U.S. presidents. Now 81 and ailing, he describes his most pressing activity as reading and writing about the news.
Cuba says it will lift a nine-year ban on new private taxis, approving a dash of private enterprise on the communist-run island and potentially legalizing thousands of unauthorized cabbies who cruise its cities in classic American cars.
BBC MONITORING
As Cuba's economy recovers, it should re-establish the policy begun by the Revolution to balance the inequalities in territorial development.
CQ POLITICS
A Senate panel Wednesday approved a $44.8 billion fiscal 2009 spending bill, which includes a controversial provision to expand family travel to Cuba.
Previous
