News

The governing Spanish Workers Socialist Party (PSOE) will not cancel the visit to Cuba by its secretary of international relations, despite the conflict over the expulsion from the island of European Parliament Deputy Luis Yáñez last Sunday.

The Cuban Ministry of Public Health’s program for the promotion, prevention and free treatment for persons HIV-positive and suffering AIDS costs US $216 million per year, reported Luis Estruch Rancaño, deputy minister for hygiene, epidemiology and microbiology.

In statements to the press in Madrid, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos described as a “mistake” the expulsion of Spanish European Parliament Deputy Luis Yáñez on his arrival to the Cuban capital’s José Martí Airport, reported IPS. In a communiqué, the Spanish Foreign Ministry requested that the island not repeat similar events, since “they do not help the development of relations between the two countries.”

Several Nicaraguan newspapers published photos of former Cuban President Fidel Castro taken during the meetings he held in 2009 with Daniel Ortega, president of the Central American country, reported IPS on Tuesday. Castro has not appeared in public since he retired from government in July 2006.

The Cuban Council of State, the island’s top governing body, established the dates for the next municipal (city council) elections for April 25, 2010, reported IPS. Municipal elections in Cuba take place every two and a half years. Elections for the national and provincial legislatures take place every five years.

Cuba is the country in the America’s that has been the victim of the largest number of terrorist attacks including the bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane that killed 73 persons back in 1976. The attacks against the island and its leaders were mostly plotted from safe havens in Miami.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez expressed his concern “that socialism in Cuba or the Revolution can be as distant a reference point to young people as life before 1959 is to me.” Rodriguez made his statement in an interview in Spanish with Trabajadores weekly newspaper.

Spain’s Foreign Ministry has called in the Cuban ambassador to Madrid, Alejandro Gonzalez, to explain why Spanish European Parliament member Luis Yañez, a socialist, was not allowed to enter Cuba. Yanez is president for delegations dealing with Latin American trade group Mercosur and is a member of the parliamentary assembly covering European-Latin American relations.

Cuba closed 2009 with an infant mortality rate of 4.8 per 1,000 live births, slightly higher than the previous year, which was 4.7, reported IPS. According to data from UNICEF, this figure is the lowest in the hemisphere, including the United States and Canada.