News

The government of the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba will return two church buildings and a parsonage facility to the Catholic Church, reported the local archdiocese on its website. Several other former Catholic Church properties have been returned in other provinces.

The eight teams that made it to the second phase of the 2012-2013 Cuban Baseball season this weekend have reinforced their lineups. Each squad selected five reinforcements from the eliminated teams.

The Cuban magazine Espacio Laical announced on Friday a presentation by Cuban intellectual Guillermo Rodriguez Rivera on February 15 at Havana’s Centro Cultural Padre Felix Varela.

The 1,269 thousand delegates who were elected earlier this month with no opposition took their positions and selected the presidents of their respective provincial legislatures; 14 of 15 were re-elected.

The leader of the Christian Democrats in the Parliament of Norway has proposed the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize be granted to Rosa Maria Paya (the daughter of the late dissident Oswaldo Paya) and to Cuba’s Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), reported the Diario de Cuba.

Berta Soler, the leader of the Cuban dissident group Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), received a passport Friday that will allow her to leave the island when she wishes. Soler said she plans to travel abroad soon and holds the “hope” to be able to collect in Strasbourg the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Alvarez, head of the immigration office at the Jose Marti International Airport,” said that those travelers whose names appear in the immigration register may be stopped when they attempt to pass through customs.

On behalf of the party leadership, Machado Ventura, 82, explained to the new legislators that their task cannot be limited to the brief bi-annual sessions of the National Assembly, saying “we’re going to attempt to elevate the content of parliament’s tasks, and these tasks will be up to you.”