The plane touches down in the middle of a Havana night and tourists pass through the international airport terminal where dozens of Cubans offer them taxis, rooms for rent, rum or mulatas. A young man approaches a short, dumpy visitor and, squatting close to his ear, asks, “Mister, you like cigars?” but the answer comes [...]
WHEN ON JULY 31st 2006 Cuban state television broadcast a terse statement from Fidel Castro to say that he had to undergo emergency surgery and was temporarily handing over to his brother, Raúl (pictured with Fidel, left), it felt like the end of an era. The man who had dominated every aspect of life on [...]
by COL. JEFF BEAROR, (USMC, RET.) Let’s be clear, this Memorial Day will be very difficult for thousands of families, friends, and military teammates of those American warriors who have died during the last year. Many of these heroes leave behind very young families and all have grieving mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and [...]
“If I were a U.S. citizen I’d vote for Obama for president,” said Mariela Castro during her San Francisco conference this week. “I think he is sincere, I think he speaks from the heart.” To cheers and applause from the San Franciscan crowd Raul’ Castro’s daughter also proclaimed that, “what we want is the power [...]
By PAUL HAVEN — Associated Press Posted: 12:52pm on May 27, 2012; Modified: 1:20pm on May 27, 2012 HAVANA – It was supposed to be Cuba’s economic savior: vast untapped reserves of black gold buried deep under the rocky ocean floor. But the first attempt in nearly a decade to find Cuba’s hoped-for undersea oil [...]
A controversial R350-million “economic assistance package” SA plans to give to Cuba sparked heated debate in Parliament on Wednesday. Earlier this month, the portfolio committee on trade and industry ratified – by a single vote – an agreement entered into after President Jacob Zuma visited the country last year. The deal includes a R100m “solidarity [...]
By Tania Mastrapa Posted: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 ARTICLES Publication Date: May 22, 2012 The lecture below was given as part of an event organized by The Heritage Foundation and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation on May 18, 2012. Please click here for a video of the event. The latest installment in political warfare by the [...]
by Mychal Massie At a time when many Americans can barely afford Burger King and a movie, Obama boasts of spending a billion dollars on his re-election campaign. Questioned at a recent appearance about the spiraling fuel costs, Obama said, “Get used to it” – and with an insouciant grin and chortle, he told another [...]
PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba — The elderly cigar maker sits at a rustic table next to a tobacco field and a barn filled with hanging rows of aging tobacco and meticulously selects the brown leaves, rolling the most tender ones carefully for the center of the world’s most celebrated tobacco product: the Cuban cigar. But [...]
HAVANA – An exploratory oil well off the northern coast of Cuba has proved a failure and will be capped and abandoned, Spanish company Repsol said Friday, a disappointment for a cash-strapped nation hoping for an economic lifeline. Trial and error is par for the course in oil exploration, however, and analysts said the news [...]
HAVANA — From her small, tidy apartment here, Niurka dreams of visiting Miami one day to see her son’s home and the school where he is studying medicine. She also yearns to bid farewell to her late father at his graveside and to meet her brother’s children while they are still young. “Economic necessity has [...]
HAVANA — In the echoing cobbled walkway of an 18th-century fort that is home to part of the 11th Havana Biennial, an insistent clang emanates from an artwork in which a bronze bird continually hits a boat propeller with its beak. Behind that noise floats the melody of a Cuban son played by a trio. [...]
A secretive network of left-wing billionaires and their political operatives descended on the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Miami over the weekend to discuss strategy for the coming elections. The location of the conference had been kept a closely guarded secret by the members and guests of Democracy Alliance (DA), a collection of ultra-wealthy liberal donors [...]
Early this month, a senior Cuban official raised the possibility of loosening travel restrictions, potentially making it far easier for Cuban citizens to travel abroad as tourists. So far, little is known about the details of the policy Havana has in mind. But the flurry of interest stirred by this news reminds us that change [...]
WASHINGTON — The 50-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba is getting in the way of safety when it comes to deepwater drilling in Cuban waters, an expert on the communist country’s offshore drilling activity said Thursday. Lee Hunt, the former president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, warned that Cold War-era economic sanctions threaten not [...]
It was roughly this time three years ago when Luis DeCubas brought a bunch of Cuban defectors – five altogether- just off the boat to fight at Planet Hollywood. These Cubans were mostly unheard of, though one had a fantastic amateur record. And I remember DeCubas saying that in two years this one with the [...]
Criticism of statements made by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega during a recent visit to the U.S. heightened with an editorial by Miami-based Radio and TV Martí that describes the clergyman as a “lackey” of the Cuban government. The editorial — penned by Carlos A. García-Pérez, director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which oversees Radio [...]
Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland’s contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century might be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible, a new study shows. “So far, on average we’re seeing about a 30 percent speedup in 10 years,” [...]
Miami, Florida – Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) released the following statement today regarding press reports that three Cuban spies who were expelled from the U.S. in 2003 may be living in Buenos Aires, Argentina: “Cuba’s foreign intelligence service, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), is known as one of the most effective and ruthless intel agencies [...]