News

The Cuban government will release another five prisoners who will travel to Spain in the next few days, the Catholic Church announced. Four men and a woman make up this group, the majority sentenced for piracy and terrorism crimes. The decision confirms the interest of the island’s authorities to extend the releases beyond the opposition members arrested in 2003.

Tropical Storm Richard remains virtually stationary east of northern Honduras and when finally picking up steam is now expected to reach land in northern Belize or the southern Mexican Yucatan sometime Monday, says the Cuban Meteorological Institute (INSMET). Both INSMET and US forecasters at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami do not show the storm posing a threat to Cuba.

Tropical Storm Richard formed on Thursday and is now 380 kilometers south-southeast of Grand Cayman and 320 kilometers east-northeast from Cabo Gracias a Dios, on the Honduras-Nicaraguan border, reported the Cuban Meteorological Institute (INSMET) at 6:00 p.m. EST on Thursday.

The Cuban Five are heroes in their country but in the US, where they have been imprisoned for over 12 years, most people are still totally unaware of their case. Now, a series of YouTubes with US personalities are being made to reach out to a wider audience.

Cuba has met almost all the Millennium Development Goals and is prepared to reach the missing ones by 2015, Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca said when presenting the third Report by the island on these UN goals. Malmierca highlighted the country’s advance in questions such as education, gender equality and public health indicators.

Representatives of 139 Cuban civil society organizations condemned the U.S. embargo against the island in the final declaration of the 7th Forum of Cuban Civil Society against the Blockade, convened by the Foreign Ministry of the Caribbean island nation.

Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas was awarded the Sakharov Prize granted every year by the European Parliament to persons or groups whose actions have been relevant in the defense of human rights, the protection of minorities, in favor of international cooperation or the development of democracy, Jerzy Buzek, speaker of this parliament, announced. This year Fariñas went on a long hunger strike to demand the release of sick political prisoners, which concluded when the release of 52 dissidents imprisoned in 2003 was announced.

The Spanish government has replaced Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos with Trinidad Jiménez, former health minister. Moratinos was the principal promoter of a new European Union policy toward Cuba instead of the Common Position, in force since 1996. Jiménez will make her debut next Monday in Luxembourg, when the top representatives of European diplomacy will decide if they maintain the current position toward the island.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro affirmed that “all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything used to make war, should disappear,” in a message published today in the Cubadebate website. In recent months Castro has been carrying out a campaign to avoid a possible nuclear war between the United States, Israel and Iran.