News

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro questioned the anti-Semitism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and urged him to recognize the Jewish Holocaust and Israel’s reasons to fear for its existence, in statements to Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist with the U.S. magazine The Atlantic, with whom he met for three days in the island’s capital last August. Castro also affirmed that the sanctions against the Persian nation will not dissuade it from wanting to develop nuclear weapons.

Representatives of Cuba and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will focus their attention on Haiti’s situation after last January 12’s earthquake during the two sides’ third summit to be held in the Cuban capital on September 17, reported IPS. The socialist system nation has a contingent of 1,500 specialists, the majority of them health professionals, in the neighboring Caribbean countries.

Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., head of the Pastors for Peace group and a close friend of the Cuban revolution, died on Tuesday after suffering a massive heart attack at the age of 80.

More than 70 specialists from several countries will attend starting today the 3rd International Seminar on Nanosciences and Nanotechnology, to be held in the Cuban capital’s International Convention Center, sources from the Organizing Committee announced. The event, sponsored by the Office of the Scientific Advisor and the Center for Advanced Studies of Cuba, will dedicate its sessions to subjects such as bionanotechnology and nanomedicine, and the social impact of the nanotechnologies.

Some 70,000 persons in Cuba have Spanish citizenship, among them 17,000 who claimed that status in 2009 through the Law of Historic Memory, known as the law of grandchildren, which “recognizes the injustice represented by the exile of many Spaniards during the Civil War and the Dictatorship” of Francisco Franco (1892-1975).

The 2010-2011 school year begins in Cuba on Monday. More than 2.1 million students —of the country’s total population of 11.2 million— will be in the classrooms. As a result of the impact of the international economic crisis on the country the island’s authorities have had to introduce reforms such as the creation of school facilities with several educational levels and greatly reduce boarding schools in the countryside.

The International Committee to Free the Cuban 5 notes that September 12 marks twelve years in US prisons for the five men accused of conspiracy to commit espionage and other crimes. Cuba maintains their mission in the US was penetrating terrorist groups operating out of Miami to gather information that would prevent attacks against Cuba.

One source of regular readers of HT are some of the 55-65 year olds who were sent without their parents from Havana to Miami in the early 1960s as young children or teenagers. This group which was said to surpass 14,000 in the airlift promoted by the Catholic Church in coordination with the US State Dept.