US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has thanked the Cuban government for the opening of its airspace to aircraft with emergency and health evacuation missions from Haiti. For several years Cuba already had over 400 doctors and other health staff working in Haiti, and with reinforcements arriving from a special emergency service brigade, the island is the main health care provider facing up to the crisis.
Read MoreCanadian airlines will be granted access to fly between multiple domestic locations within Cuba announced The Canadian Press on Friday. Canada provides Cuba with over 40 percent of its overall tourists. Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, De JesDus Vicente Sotolongo, told The Press that the measure would apply to four Canadian charter airlines that currently run tours to Cuba: Air Transat, Sunwing Airlines, WestJet and Canjet Airlines.
Read MoreA tragedy has occurred at the main Havana Psychiatric Hospital with 26 patients dying, possibly from hypothermia during one digit cold this past week, informed the Cuban Public Health Ministry on Friday. The ministry said the exact cause of the deaths at the 2,500 patient facility is still under investigation and that “deficiencies were found in measures taken at the hospital.”
Read More“Whites came here of their own will, as settlers, with life goals that were often realized. Blacks were brought here by force and turned into slaves. These are different points of departure that cannot be forgotten, nor can they be avoided, and their weight is still felt today… What affects us politically from the point of view of our international and national image is to have a discourse that doesn’t correspond to reality, because until very recently we said there were no racial problems in Cuba.”
Read MoreThe Cuban government has authorized the US military to fly over Cuban territory during their aid operations to Haiti and evacuation of victims. White House spokesperson Tommy Vietor was quoted by IPS as saying the permission will greatly reduce the duration of the flights. The US occupies a portion of Cuban territory at Guantanamo Bay, where it maintains a naval base and prison camp.
Read More“Only in the movies have I seen this,” said 33-year-old Jacques Nicholas, who jumped over a wall as the house where he was playing dominoes tumbled. “When Americans send missiles to Iraq, that’s what I see. When Israel do that to Gaza, that’s what I see here.”
Read MoreCardinal, Jaime Ortega, put out a call Thursday to Cuban catholics “to carry out a national drive” to help the Haitian people, hard hit by the earthquake that devastated the capital Port au Prince on January 12. Ortega said the money raised through the initiative would be sent to the neighboring country by way of Catholic Relief Services.
Read MoreCuba will promote its tourist offerings including the opening of new hotels during the upcoming IMEX trade show that takes place in Frankfurt, Germany from May 25-27, 2010. Since the fall of the Socialist Camp back in the early 1990s, Cuba has turned to its vast tourism potential as a key pillar to recover its economy.
Read MoreThe enormous relief effort being mounted in Haiti since a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled most of Port-au-Prince is facing a host of difficulties, including bottlenecks at the main airport and lack of heavy equipment to clear debris from streets and roads.
Read MoreTemperatures in Cuba have warmed a little after a cold front brought down thermometers in some communities to one digit Celsius and brought out jackets and blankets across the island.
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