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A renovated Cuban lineup was no match Sunday for Japan’s star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka who threw six scoreless innings and struck out eight to lead his team to a 6-0 win in round two play of the World Baseball Classic II.

Cuba opens its second round of play in the World Baseball Classic Sunday in San Diego at 4:00 ET against Japan, which dealt it a painful defeat in the final of the same tournament in 2006. Havana Times has been asking people around the capital for opinions of their country’s team.

European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel will travel to Cuba next week to meet with the new Cuban ministers of foreign affairs and foreign trade and foreign investment, Bruno Rodriguez and Rodrigo Malmierca, respectively, it was announced to the press in Brussels.

Cuba qualified along with Mexico, Japan and Korea for Pool 1 of the WBC Round Two. Pool 2 consists of Team USA, The Netherlands, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Playing double elimination as in round one, the top two teams in each pool will reach the semifinals in Los Angeles on March 21-22. The final match takes place on the 23rd also in L.A.

When US President Obama meets with his Brazilian counterpart Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on the weekend he may be forced to show some of his cards on his stance on Latin America and especially a glimpse of his policy towards Cuba and Venezuela.

The governments of Spain and Brazil announced the arrival in Havana this Sunday of a first shipload of food aid jointly offered to Cuba after the island was hit by powerful Hurricanes Gustav and Ike last year and which caused some US $10 billion in losses.

Spain’s Repsol-YPF Oil Company and Cuba’s state-run Cupet will begin the drilling of a well this year in the deep waters of the island’s Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, reported IPS. United States oil companies are barred from such joint ventures due to Washington’s economic blockade imposed on the island for nearly 50 years.

Mexico is going to have to improve greatly if it wants to play with the big boys. After a 16-4 thrashing from Cuba on Thursday night, the team that had scored 37 runs in its first three games of the 2nd World Baseball Classic was held to five hits.

More than 1.5 million persons in 35 countries have benefited from a Cuban-Venezuelan eye surgery and rehabilitation program which began more than four years ago. Out of this total, 266,743 underwent surgery at specialized centers in Cuba and the rest in the 60 institutions donated by the Caribbean nation to Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay, among other countries, reported IPS.

The US Congress just approved a bill that could be the beginning of some movement on its time-worn Cuba policy. However, nearly at the same time it was announced that the Lactalis American Group, Inc., affiliate of Groupe Lactalis of France, was being fined US $20,950 by the US Treasury Dept. over transactions related to Cuba or Cuban interests.