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“As a policy, everyone who has a telephone should have the right to a connection” to the Internet in Cuba, First Deputy Minister of Informatics and Communications Ramón Linares affirmed. Nevertheless, the authorities will still have to overcome technical and financial difficulties before providing access to the World Wide Web, Boris Moreno, the sector’s deputy minister, noted. The island will be connected next July to an underwater fiber optic cable that will multiply by 3,000 its capacity for the transference of data, images and voice.

The lifting of restrictions on travel and sending of remittances to Cuba announced by the Barack Obama administration “confirm there is no will to change the policy of blockade and destabilization against Cuba,” affirmed the island’s Foreign Ministry in a statement released in this capital. The Cuban Foreign Ministry insisted on the need to eliminate the embargo as the only way to normalize bilateral relations.

The trial against the persons involved in the death of 26 patients in the Havana Psychiatric Hospital began Monday in this capital, the official Granma daily reported. According to the source, “once the judicial process concludes its results will be made public,” noted IPS. For more on the case read: Cuba Hospital Deaths Remain Mystery

Representatives of the academic community and the hard-line Cuban exiles in the United States reacted with differing opinions regarding the new measures announced by the Barack Obama administration, which reduce restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba. According to Wayne Smith, former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, “direct people-to-people contacts” can promote change on the island. Meanwhile, Cuban-American legislator Ileana Ros-Lehtinen affirmed that those measures will only benefit the Cuban authorities.

The Fernando Ortiz Foundation awarded the prize that bears the name of that outstanding Cuban intellectual to the UNESCO Regional Culture Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. The agency was recognized for its contribution to the project The Slave Route and its cooperation with continental initiatives.

An attorney from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was the first person to testify in the trial against self-confessed terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the Miami-based El Nuevo Herald reported. Gina Garrett-Jackson interviewed Posada when he entered U.S. territory illegally in 2005. During that conversation the accused denied his links with the bomb attacks in Havana but frequently avoided answering her questions.