While the bidding war continues to try and sign Cuban lefty Aroldis Chapman, a lesser known exile, Noel Arguelles, also a southpaw, has signed a five year major league contract with the Kansas City Royals for US $7 million, plus $2 million in further incentives. The Cuban press does not report on the island’s nationals who abandon their country’s amateur teams to play professional sports in foreign countries.
Read MoreMobile telephone service in Cuba closed 2009 with 600,000 clients (of the 11.2 million Cubans), said First Deputy Minister of Communications Ramón Linares Torres. Nonetheless, obtaining and using a cell phone is only in CUC, the island’s hard currency, not the regular pesos which Cubans earn for their salaries.
Read MoreThe US agent arrested in Cuba last month when he presumably was distributing communication equipment to Cuban opposition groups is under investigation. The Obama administration denies the charge that the unidentified US citizen is an agent, preferring to call him a “contractor”, the term used for private agents in Iraq to distinguish them from being above board government employees.
Read MorePlaya Giron, the hottest spot in Cuba during the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, was the coldest place on the island on Thursday as temperatures dipped to 4.5 Celsius (40 F). The cold snap on the island is expected to last through the weekend and into the beginning of next week.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreNearly one year after his inauguration, hopes that President Barack Obama would bring fundamental changes to U.S. relations with Latin American have faded badly.
Read MoreIn 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.”
Read MoreSeveral 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
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