News

Cuba will try to recover 500 hectares of mangroves on the north central coast, very damaged by salinization and soil mismanagement, said Mileydi León, specialist of Environmental Management of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (CITMA) in Villa Clara province, some 260 kilometers east of the island’s capital.

Tropical Storm Matthew was named on Thursday afternoon as it churns in the central Caribbean en route towards Central America. At 6:00 p.m. EST, Cuba weather experts spotted the center of the storm at 665 kilometers (450 miles) east of Cabo Gracias a Dios in northeastern Nicaragua.

The Cuba travel ban will be brought up Wednesday September 29, at the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, announced Chairman Howard L. Berman.

A tropical depression, the fifteenth of the season, developed on Thursday morning south of Jamaica and north of Colombia in the central Caribbean, notes Cuba’s Meteorological Institute (INSMET).

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recognized Cuba’s advances in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in a meeting with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, reported IPS. The Korean diplomat also thanked the island for its cooperation with Haiti, a country devastated by an earthquake on January 12, 2010.

The Cuban government will allow the released prisoners who are opposed to going to Spain to remain on the island, under an extra-penal permit that liberates them from the 2003 judicial process against them, reported IPS, citing Spain’s El País daily. Madrid hopes that the release of the 52 dissidents concludes before October 25, when the European Union will again review its relations with Cuba.

Cuba will reduce the participation of teams in national and international sports events and will demand the minimum level of high performance from athletes in record and time sports starting 2011 to reduce spending in that sector, Agustín Miguel Abril, national director of the sports system of the Sports Institute (INDER), affirmed. “With these measures we aim to concentrate the quality in each one of our events, with those who because of their results really deserve to participate,” the official said.

The Cuban and Nicaraguan national baseball teams will play five exhibition games in Havana starting Tuesday evening. The two squads are getting ready for the Pan American Games and World Cup qualifying tournament to take place Oct. 1-12 in Puerto Rico.

September could equal the record of most tropical cyclones with a name, which up to now is eight, a figure reached during the same month in 2002 and August 2004, the local press reported. The most dangerous period for Cuba is October, although in the ninth month of the year it has been hit by devastating hurricanes like Ike in 2008.