News

The price of a cell phone line for Cubans was lowered by nearly half to 60 CUC (US $75), according to an official announcement on Thursday from the Cuban Telecommunications Enterprise (ETECSA). The company said that a greater capacity to offer the service had made it possible to drop the price.

Another 11 Chinese-made locomotives arrived in Cuba as part of the investments to recover the country’s railway system, highly deteriorated during the economic crisis that began in the 1990s. Revitalizing the railway network also includes the purchase of coaches and freight cars from Iran, in addition to improving the tracks and the communications systems, reported IPS.

Cuba does not consider it a priority to return to the Organization of American States (OAS), affirmed Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. Under pressure from Washington, the island was expelled from that regional organization in 1962 during the Cold War era, reported IPS.

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that Cuba should make the first gesture in the negotiations to lift the blockade imposed by the US in 1962, affirmed Brazilian Minister of Defense Nelson Jobim, who met with the potential advisor to President-elect Barack Obama in Washington. Jobim reportedly responded that “the first move must be made by those that imposed the blockade.”

Cuban President Raul Castro is set to fly to Venezuela to attend a joint summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) and Petrocaribe to take place on Sunday December 14 in Caracas, reported IPS. The trip will be the Cuban president’s first trip to another country since taking office on February 24, 2008.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Prizewinner for Literature, is in Havana for the final days of the Havana Film Festival, an annual event that he rarely misses. “Gabo”, as he is known in Latin America, will give a three-day workshop on “how to tell a story” for scriptwriters and movie makers at the International Cinema and TV School located in San Antonio de los Baños on the outskirts of the capital. It is not known whether he will meet with his close friend Fidel Castro.

Cuba and the 14-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) continued to strengthen ties at a summit held in Santiago de Cuba on Monday. Rotating CARICOM president, Antigua’s Prime Minister Baldwin Spence said he hopes the US blockade on Cuba will soon be “relegated to history.”

The Caribbean leaders warned of the “devastating” impact of the US economic and financial crisis that unleashed a snowball effect which threatens to erase any progress made in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals to combat poverty.

While Cuba is not a member of CARICOM it provides assistance to several of its nations especially in the fields of health care and education. Many Caribbean island nations are seeing regional cooperation as a vital way to cope with the global financial, energy, environmental and food crises that seriously affect them.

There will not be another postponement to implement the labor reform that will eliminate the wage ceiling and pay people according to work productivity, said Carlos Mateu, a deputy minister of Labor and Social Security. The measure aims to do away with “egalitarianism”, considered one of the brakes on the development of the country’s productive forces, reports IPS.

A delegation made up by 40 specialists from the Japan Federation of Democratic Medical Institutions will travel to Cuba in January to get acquainted with the island’s healthcare system, announced Jose Fernandez de Cossio, Cuban ambassador to Tokyo. A total of 60,000 health workers from 1,457 institutions, including 155 hospitals, belong to the Japanese Federation.

The Cuban government announced lower fuel prices on Monday, taking into account the drop in the international price of oil products. Regular gasoline will now cost US $1.08 a liter down from $1.45 (from around $5.50 to $4.00 a gallon). The high-octane gasoline went from $1.62 to $1.18 per liter. Fuel is sold in Cuba at state-owned and operated service stations. While the island produces a large percentage of the oil used to generate electricity, the lighter oil needed to produce gasoline is imported from Venezuela.