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.
Read MoreCuba 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.
Read MoreThe Cuban authorities hope to incorporate by November some 2,000 soldiers to the recovery of the island’s railroad tracks, in an attempt to give a boost to this sector’s development program planned through 2013. The current state of railways in Cuba is critical.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreSeptember 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.
Read MoreThousands of meetings are being held this week in Cuba in workplaces and barrios with the aim of explaining the laying off of half a million persons from the state sector, announced Salvador Valdés, general secretary of the Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions (CTC), the only authorized union organization in the island. Valdes said: “The process will be wide ranging, with the most absolute freedom of opinions, with sincerity in the presentations and with respect for the dissenting opinions that may exist.”
Read MoreCuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez defended “the building of a new international economic and political order, based on the principles of solidarity, social justice, equity and respect for the rights of peoples and each human being,” when speaking during the UN General Assembly’s High-level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals.
Read MoreFifty-four per cent of the land handed over in usufruct in Cuba since September 2008 is still unproductive, Pedro Olivera, director of the National Land Control Centre, said. Specialists in agricultural matters point out that the process has confronted bureaucratic obstacles, despite the government’s interest in reducing food imports, which amount to two billion dollars a year.
Read MoreFormer Cuban President Fidel Castro met with the members of the Japanese Peace Boat that arrived today in the Cuban capital’s port, the local press reported. This ship represents the nongovernmental organization founded in Tokyo in 1983, whose mission is to carry a message of peace throughout the world.
Read MoreBrazil is willing to help Cuba in the development of small and medium-sized businesses, capable of assuming the half million persons who will be jobless in the state sector in the coming months, Celso Amorim, that South American country’s foreign minister, affirmed. Last Saturday he met with President Raúl Castro.
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