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Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes confirmed he will make a state visit to Cuba in early September, during which he will meet with his counterpart Raúl Castro and will sign several agreements, one of which will allow TACA Airlines to have direct flights between the two nations. Funes re-established diplomatic relations with the island when he took power on June 1, 2009.

Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs rejected the statements by former Cuban President Fidel Castro in his last two Reflections dedicated to reviewing the book “La mafia que se adueñó de México… y el 2012,” by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In the text, the Mexican Secretariat sincerely hoped that the Cuban population “can have free elections to vote for their representatives and that human rights be fully respected in the island.”

Specialists from the University of Computer Sciences (UCI) are working on a third version of the NOVA operation system, which it expects to present in early 2011 and which functions on GNU/Linux distributions, as part of a national program to change to free software, sources from that center of higher learning announced.

Another six imprisoned dissidents will be released “soon” and accepted the proposal of traveling to Spain after leaving prison, the Archbishopric of Havana announced Friday evening in a press release signed by spokesman Orlando Márquez.

The current hurricane season could intensify due to the start of La Niña, the cooling of the waters of the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, reported the Climate Centre of the Cuban Institute of Meteorology. Although the forecasts were that this would be a more active season than 2009, up to now the island has not been affected by a hurricane.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro met with Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, who is the leader of the Colombians for Peace Movement, Cuba’s state-run press reported. During the meeting they dealt with issues related to the peace process in the South American country. Castro agreed to meet again with Córdoba and other Colombian leaders next Sunday.

After four years of convalescence the leader of the 1959 Cuban revolution is back in the limelight as the government’s leading voice on international affairs.

Senator Piedad Córdoba, president of the Colombian Congress’ Peace Commission, will talk with former President Fidel Castro on the possibilities of achieving peace in that South American country, the legislator announced through the Twitter social network. Córdoba hopes to present to the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) an initiative in that sense, which would include the guerrillas and the paramilitary.