While the bidding war continues to try and sign Cuban lefty Aroldis Chapman, a lesser known exile, Noel Arguelles, also a southpaw, has signed a five year major league contract with the Kansas City Royals for US $7 million, plus $2 million in further incentives. The Cuban press does not report on the island’s nationals who abandon their country’s amateur teams to play professional sports in foreign countries.
Read MoreMobile telephone service in Cuba closed 2009 with 600,000 clients (of the 11.2 million Cubans), said First Deputy Minister of Communications Ramón Linares Torres. Nonetheless, obtaining and using a cell phone is only in CUC, the island’s hard currency, not the regular pesos which Cubans earn for their salaries.
Read MoreThe US agent arrested in Cuba last month when he presumably was distributing communication equipment to Cuban opposition groups is under investigation. The Obama administration denies the charge that the unidentified US citizen is an agent, preferring to call him a “contractor”, the term used for private agents in Iraq to distinguish them from being above board government employees.
Read MorePlaya Giron, the hottest spot in Cuba during the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, was the coldest place on the island on Thursday as temperatures dipped to 4.5 Celsius (40 F). The cold snap on the island is expected to last through the weekend and into the beginning of next week.
Read MoreEveryone in Cuba must be a member of a number of the mass organizations. Although most are “voluntary,” this is only window dressing, because rejecting participation or membership in one or several of these organizations means declaring oneself to be tacitly against the revolutionary process.
Read MoreAt the burst of brightness, the stocky, balding and graying seaman and I stand side by side in the pilot house. Six decks above water line, we watch sardine-size flying fish skipping just above the sea. Following their trajectory, we see the silhouette of a chair-shaped, low mountain. “There it is, la Silla de Gibara, exclaims a smiling Sigi, “the first Cuban soil Columbus spied.”
Read MoreThe governing Spanish Workers Socialist Party (PSOE) will not cancel the visit to Cuba by its secretary of international relations, despite the conflict over the expulsion from the island of European Parliament Deputy Luis Yáñez last Sunday.
Read MoreThe Cuban Ministry of Public Health’s program for the promotion, prevention and free treatment for persons HIV-positive and suffering AIDS costs US $216 million per year, reported Luis Estruch Rancaño, deputy minister for hygiene, epidemiology and microbiology.
Read MoreThe Havana Times team wanted to give a gift to each child, not only in Cuba but to those around the whole world. Here’s a little joy for those that still refuse to grow up, for those that still want to see the world with astonished eyes.
Read MoreShopping for the Christmas-New Years dinners wasn’t easy as far as purchasing power went, though there was no canceling the pig slaughtering spectacle on the block – a prominent tradition in these holiday festivities. The world economic crisis was clearly felt at the counter.
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