A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake has struck in the sea south of Cuba, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.
Tsunami warnings for Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands were issued but lifted shortly afterward with no reports of major damage.
Continue reading...New Orleans and Cuban musicians join in Havana’s annual jazz festival, defying Trump’s efforts to weaken US-Cuba relations
Continue reading...Some are trusted aides, others are fixers who work in the shadows. Often unelected and unaccountable, they all have the ear of national leaders
The role of Dominic Cummings in plotting and facilitating Boris Johnson’s drive for power has focused attention on the influence exerted by behind-the-scenes advisers and confidants who have the ear of prominent politicians.
Powerful men and women around the world all have personal counsellors, trusted aides and backroom mentors. Then there are the “insiders” – string-pullers, fixers and manipulators with ambitions of their own. Few become well-known, although Cummings’s notoriety is by no means exceptional.
Continue reading...Bolivia’s toppled president flies out of Mexico for what his former health minister says is a medical appointment
Bolivia’s recently toppled president, Evo Morales, has left Mexico for Cuba as part of what some observers suspect is the first step in a bid to stage a dramatic political comeback.
On Friday night, less than a month after being forced into exile in Mexico, Morales flew out of the country on a plane bound for Havana.
Continue reading...Most of the money earned by Cuban doctors working in Qatar goes to their national government. But while some feel exploited, others tell a different story
Drive west from Doha’s glistening glass towers, past two World Cup stadiums still under construction and out into the desert, and you’ll eventually reach a small hospital surrounded only by sand and shrubs.
At its entrance hang two flags rippling in the scorching breeze: one of Qatar, the other of Cuba.
Continue reading...Thirty years from the fall of the Berlin Wall, new global tensions are polarising our world – and our cities feel more divided than ever. From today and for the next four weeks, our international film series will tell the stories of five cities that reflect these divisions in surprising and troubling ways
Thirty years ago, a rapt world watched the unfolding of one of the great city stories of all time. Every hammer blow chipping away the imposing grey blocks of the Berlin Wall, which had come to embody global geopolitical divisions, seemed to herald a more united future.
Since then, however, our world has fractured anew and our cities feel more divided than ever. When the Berlin Wall fell, there were two border walls in Europe; now there are 15. Nor is this fracture merely physical: many cities are havens of wealth and privilege for those who hold the access codes, hives of struggle and poverty for those who do not. Wherever I travel to report I have always been struck by how different people can have such contrasting experiences of the same city – and it’s no different at home, in my neighbourhood of Camberwell, south London, where upscale coffee shops and gang violence occupy the same stretches of road.
Continue reading...Eduardo Bolsonaro’s incendiary remarks prompted many across the political spectrum to condemn him
Voices from across Brazil’s political spectrum have condemned the son of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, after he suggested hardline dictatorship-era tactics might be needed to crush his father’s leftist foes.
Related: An explosion of protest, a howl of rage – but not a Latin American spring
Continue reading...Mariela Castro and state media journalists were also blocked in move Cuban Union of Journalists called ‘massive censorship’
Twitter has blocked the accounts of the Cuban Communist party leader Raúl Castro, his daughter Mariela Castro and Cuba’s top state-run media outlets, a move the Cuban Union of Journalists denounced as “massive censorship”.
Related: Cuba is driving dissidents off island with threats of violence and jail, report finds
Continue reading...US-bound Cubans used to encounter far fewer obstacles on the migration passage, but that’s changed due to crackdowns
Yatsel Jerez Ramón has been in Mexico for six weeks, and so far, nothing has gone well for the Cuban migrant trying to reach the United States.
On his first night in Tenosique, a small city in the southern border state of Tabasco, Jerez, 37, narrowly escaped a police raid at his hotel. The following day, a man posing as a state lawyer convinced him to handover $500 to obtain a humanitarian visa with which, Jerez was told, he’d be able to safely continue his passage north.
Continue reading...An upcoming exhibition at London’s House of Illustration collects 185 posters and magazines from Cuba’s golden age of design, from the 1960s to the early 90s.
“The posters tell us that Cuba sees supporting the struggles of liberation movements internationally as an integral part of its own revolution,” says curator Olivia Ahmad.
Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics is at House of Illustration, London N1 from 27 Sept to 19 Jan
Reforms will oblige Cuba to work more closely with its US neighbours – in spite of US President Trump’s frosty attitude
Cuba has introduced sweeping reforms of its fishing laws in a move seen as smoothing the way for possible collaboration with the US on protecting their shared ocean, despite Donald Trump’s policy of reversing a thaw in relations.
The move is the first time the text of an environmental law in Cuba specifies the need for scientific research, which experts say will mean greater reliance on state-of-the-art US technology.
Continue reading...Diplomats had reported falling ill after what was thought to be ‘acoustic attack’
Brain scans of US embassy staff who became ill in mysterious circumstances while serving in Cuba have found potential abnormalities that may be related to their symptoms.
The scans taken from 40 US government workers who suffered strange concussion-like symptoms during their deployment to Havana revealed that particular brain features looked different to those in healthy volunteers.
Continue reading...Gay pride parade in Cuba’s capital goes ahead despite official march being banned
The annual gay pride parade in Cuba’s capital is usually an upbeat, vivacious conga. Since it was launched in 2007, it has provided a moment for gay and transgender people to celebrate their sexuality, identity and assert their right to exist in public space. But it was altogether different this year. About a hundred activists bedecked in rainbow colours marched just four blocks from the heart of Havana’s colonial district towards the Malecón seawall on Saturday before they were corralled and dispersed by police and plain-clothed state security officers.
Still, for Daniel Triana, 21, a gay drama student who had come to the march with family and friends, the march was “a beautiful moment”. “We managed to organise this march ourselves. That’s a massive advance because all the gay rights marches we’ve had up until in Cuba now have been organised by institutions.”
Continue reading...One was a Cuban newspaper reporter working to support his family and writing fiction in his spare time. The other was one of the world’s most famous novelists who came to Havana in search of inspiration.
New research shows that the themes and style in the writing of Enrique Serpa, a little-known Cuban author, find an echo in the works of Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his most notable books while in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s.
Continue reading...Commerce minister announces limits on purchases of staples such as chicken, eggs, rice, beans and soap
The Cuban government has announced that it is launching widespread rationing of chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other basic products in the face of a grave economic crisis.
Betsy Díaz Velázquez, the commerce minister, told the state-run Cuban News Agency that various forms of rationing would be employed in order to deal with shortages of staple foods. She blamed the hardening of the US trade embargo by the Trump administration.
Continue reading...Navy rear admiral John Ring was relieved of his duties on Saturday. About 40 prisoners are being held at the facility
The commander of the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba was abruptly fired for unknown reasons over the weekend.
Navy R Adm John Ring was relieved of his duties on Saturday. A statement from US Southern Command said the change in leadership was “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command”, and would “not interrupt the safe, humane, legal care and custody provided to the detainee population” at Guantánamo.
Continue reading...Democrats condemn Barr’s handling of report’s release following news it will not come until after press conference
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that House Democrats, looking into President Trump’s financial interests, have subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America, Capital One Financial Corp., Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto Dominion Bank.
Investigators on the House Financial Services Committee and House Intelligence Committee have focused their early efforts on Deutsche Bank, which has said it in engaged “in a productive dialogue” with the committees.
Deutsche Bank’s relationship with Mr. Trump goes back decades. Since 1998, the bank has led or participated in loans of at least $2.5 billion to companies affiliated with Mr. Trump, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Continue reading...US will allow lawsuits against firms using property nationalised by the revolution, cap remittances and restrict ‘non-family’ travel
Donald Trump has taken another step towards reversing Barack Obama’s historic rapprochement with Cuba with a measure that earned swift criticism from allies in Canada and Europe.
The US announced on Wednesday that it would enable lawsuits against foreign companies that use properties nationalised by the communist government after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
Continue reading...Tech firm has acted as US-Havana intermediary as memo says Cubans trust Google more than Trump administration
Google has worked as an intermediary between the Trump administration and the Cuban government as it has sought a deal to improve internet access on the island, according to private remarks by Google’s manager in Havana.
Related: Apple Arcade v Google Stadia: which is the future for video games?
Continue reading...Ballet and film complement each other perfectly in a biopic of the superstar dancer that captures life under Castro’s rule
Dance on film can have many functions. It might act as a showstopping decoration to the drama (most movie musicals), a shorthand for its protagonist’s obsession or madness (Black Swan, The Red Shoes) or a blunt tool for illustrating cultural difference (Step Up, Save the Last Dance and every other ballet-girl-meets-hip-hop-boy movie). But, aside from Jerome Robbins’ masterpiece West Side Story, it doesn’t often work as a narrative device – an alternative script. That’s how it functions in Yuli, a new biopic of Cuban ballet star Carlos Acosta, by Spanish director Icíar Bollaín and writer Paul Laverty (I, Daniel Blake).
In Yuli (the title is Acosta’s father’s nickname for him), the concept sounds overcomplicated: a biopic played in flashbacks, mixed with real footage of the dancer on stage, framed by the conceit that “current” Carlos is creating an autobiographical dance piece in which he also performs as his own father. But it works. It really works.