News

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.

The 2008-2009 sugar harvest began in Cuba over the weekend with milling beginning in two sugar factories to the east of the island. A total of 54 mills will have joined the harvest by January, noted Ministry of Sugar authorities.

We have a new page as of today titled “Fun” on our main menu. Yandy Fragela takes two seemingly identical photographs and then invites you to find the eight differences. The first photo centers on the intersection of 23rd and L Streets in the Vedado district of Havana, taken back in the 1950s.

If U.S. President-elect Barack Obama eases the blockade against Cuba it would be “a positive first step” on the road to the normalization of relations between our nations, said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque on Friday. During his electoral campaign Obama promised to lift the travel restrictions on the Cuban-American community and on the sending of remittances to the island. Earlier in the week 12 US business associations asked Obama to end all travel restrictions and normalize trade with the island.

HAVANA TIMES, Dec 5.— Steven Soderbergh’s film with Benicio del Toro playing Ernesto “Che” Guevara gets a special showing at the Havana Film Festival on Saturday December 6th at the Yara theater. The Oscar winning actor will be on hand to present the two-part, four-hour production which won him the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Che is revered in Cuba by government leaders, much of the general citizenry, as well as by people who see in him ideals they think have been sidetracked over 50 years of the ups and downs of revolution.

A group of 12 U.S. business associations asked president-elect Barack Obama to lift the blockade against Cuba or at least ease the restrictions on trade and travel. Among the groups requesting a policy change are the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business organization of the country, The National Retail Federation, the Grocery Manufactures Association, American Farm Bureau Federation, Business Roundtable and the National Foreign Trade Council.

“There is no need to build permanent naval bases in Venezuela and Cuba,” affirmed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in statements to his country’s television. Putin pointed out that he expects “positive changes” in relations between Moscow and Washington with the arrival to the White House of Barack Obama. Cuba was the center of a dispute between both the US and the former Soviet Union back in 1962, during the so-called Missile Crisis, reported IPS.

A new vaccine factory opened this week at the scientific research center on the west side of the capital. The plant has a capacity to produce 100 million doses of active components, especially against meningitis A and C.

Representatives of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Cuba will debate the effects of the international financial crisis in the region during the 3rd bilateral summit, to be held on December 8th in Santiago de Cuba, 850 kilometers east of the Cuban capital. Environmental problems and threats to food security in the region will receive special attention.

Fifty-five per cent of the Cuban-American community in Florida’s Miami-Dade County feel the US government should lift its blockade against Cuba, according to a survey done by Florida International University, with sponsorship of the Brookings Institution, a non-profit organization based in Washington. Moreover, 65 percent of the 800 interviewees said they favor re-establishing diplomatic relations with the island, reported IPS.