Category Archives: Caribbean

Human rights groups decry US plan for Guantánamo camp for Cuban migrants

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Exclusive: Dozens of organizations write to Congress after general announced plan to ‘deal with’ those fleeing any humanitarian crisis on the island

Dozens of US and international human rights organizations are decrying the Trump administration’s plans to establish a migrant “camp” for fleeing Cubans at the Guantánamo Bay military base if the island nation’s crisis worsens under pressure from the US, according to a letter to members of Congress on Friday.

The 85 groups plan to submit the joint letter, exclusively shared with the Guardian, to US senators and House representatives, expressing their “profound concern” with comments made last month by a top Department of Defense commander, and describing any prospect of further migrant detention at the base as “deeply troubling and unacceptable”.

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Trump ‘reaping bitter fruit’ of thinking Iran intervention as easy as Venezuela, says former diplomat

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John Feeley says US president was ‘flush with victory’ of Maduro capture and could make same mistake in Cuba

Donald Trump is “reaping the bitter fruit” of erroneously thinking that the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, offered a blueprint for toppling the Iranian regime, according to one of the US state department’s most respected former Latin America experts.

John Feeley, a Marine helicopter pilot who later served as the US ambassador to Panama, believed Trump had been “flush with the victory from Venezuela” when he made the ill-fated decision to attack Iran in February, leaving a trail of destruction across the Middle East and dealing a hammer blow to the global economy.

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US accused of pressuring Latin America to cut ties with Cuban doctors program

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Cuba accuses US of ‘extorting’ countries in pushing them to axe deals with Havana to send doctors on medical missions

Cuba’s foreign minister has accused the United States of “extorting” Latin American countries by putting pressure on them to cancel decades-old deals with Havana for the supply of doctors.

Bruno Rodríguez said the United States was trying to “strangle” the economy of the communist island, which earns billions from its foreign medical missions, after several countries stopped deploying Cuban doctors.

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Stork warning: woman gives birth midair on Jamaica-to-New York flight

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Baby was delivered during Caribbean Airlines flight from Kingston to the US; nationality of child to be determined

A routine passenger flight from Jamaica landed at New York’s John F Kennedy international airport with one more person than it took off with after a woman gave birth in midair, potentially setting up a tricky situation over the newborn’s citizenship.

The “medical event” occurred on a Caribbean Airlines flight from Kingston on Saturday, according to a news release from the carrier.

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House Democrats demand end to ‘cruel’ US energy blockade after visit to Cuba

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Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan Jackson denounce ‘collective punishment’ amid vast disruption s from US oil blockade

Two Democratic US lawmakers on Monday called for an end to the “cruel collective punishment” of Cuba after they visited the island to witness the effects of an US energy blockade.

The US House members Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois met with the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, as well as members of Cuba’s parliament during a five-day trip ending on Sunday.

“This is cruel collective punishment – effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country – that has produced permanent damage,” Jayapal and Jackson said in a statement released on Sunday. “It must stop immediately.”

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Cubans study oil tanker diplomacy for signs of progress in secret talks with US

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Despite hostile rhetoric Trump let a Russian ship break his blockade – could it herald a Venezuela-style outcome?

When a sanctioned Russian oil tanker, the Anatoly Kolodkin, docked at Cuba’s Matanzas oil terminal on Tuesday, unloading 700,000 barrels of crude, it was not immediately clear why the ship had been allowed to pass through Donald Trump’s oil blockade.

In January, the US president had proclaimed on social media: “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” yet last week he told reporters, “If a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now, I have no problem with it” – and waved the Russian ship through.

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At least 70 people killed and 30 injured in Haiti gang attack

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Nearly 6,000 people forced to flee, human rights group says, as it criticises ‘abandonment’ from authorities

At least 70 people have been killed and 30 injured during an attack in Haiti’s breadbasket Artibonite region, significantly more than official estimates, a human rights group has said.

Police initially reported 16 dead and 10 injured, while a preliminary report from civil protection authorities suggested 17 had died and 19 were wounded.

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Scientists film whale giving birth while other whales work together to help her

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Female named Rounder surrounded by family members when about to give birth to her second calf

Scientists have managed to film a sperm whale giving birth while other female whales worked together to support the mother and her newborn.

A team from Project Ceti, an international effort seeking to understand how whales communicate, was in a boat near a pod of 11 whales off the coast of the Caribbean island of Dominica on 8 July 2023.

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Missing aid boats have safely reached Cuba, US confirms

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Two convoy vessels that were supposed to get to Havana by Wednesday have made it to Cuba, says US Coast Guard

Two sailing boats that went missing while carrying humanitarian aid to Cuba have safely reached the Caribbean island, the US Coast Guard said on Friday.

Earlier in the day Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, had said his country would do everything it could to save the people on the two boats that disappeared while travelling to Cuba from Mexico.

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Two humanitarian aid boats heading to Cuba have gone missing, Mexico says

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Navy searching for two boats that left Isla Mujeres last week bound for Havana with nine crew members of different nationalities on board

Mexico’s navy said on Thursday it had activated a search-and-rescue operation in the Caribbean to locate two sailboats carrying humanitarian aid to Cuba after the vessels failed to arrive in Havana as scheduled.

In a statement, the navy said the two boats left Isla Mujeres, in the Mexican Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, last week bound for Havana with nine crew members of different nationalities on board.

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UN votes to describe slave trade as ‘gravest crime against humanity’

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Members call for reparatory justice as landmark resolution aims for ‘political recognition at the highest level’

The United Nations has voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and called for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs”.

The landmark resolution passed on Wednesday was backed by the African Union (AU) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom). It had been proposed by Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, who said: “Let it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery.”

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Trump’s threats to ‘take’ Cuba signal rising US pressure as island grapples with power crisis

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National power outage is making life extremely difficult and may force Havana into biggest economic changes in 67 years

Just a few hours after a nationwide electricity blackout struck Cuba, Donald Trump hinted at an even darker future for the island’s rulers.

The country’s entire electricity system had collapsed on Monday afternoon, leaving about 10 million people without power. Emergency teams were still struggling to restore it when the US leader made his latest threat.

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Cuba’s electrical grid collapses amid US oil blockade

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Ten million people left without power in latest of outages that sparked violent protest last weekend

Cuba’s national electric grid has collapsed, the country’s grid operator has said, leaving approximately 10 million people without power amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the island’s already obsolete generation system.

The grid operator, UNE, said on social media on Monday that it was investigating the causes of the blackout, the latest in a series of widespread outages that last for hours or days and that last weekend sparked a rare violent protest in the communist-run country.

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Five arrested in Cuba after protest at local Communist party office

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Rare action began peacefully but ‘degenerated into vandalism’ according to state-run newspaper

Five people have been arrested in Cuba for acts of “vandalism” after a small group of protesters broke into a provincial office of the Cuban Communist party and set fire to computers and furniture.

The incident, which also affected a pharmacy and another shop, took place in the town of Moron, a little more than 300 miles (500km) east of Havana.

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Cuban president confirms talks with Trump officials amid US blockade

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Negotiations aimed to ‘find solutions to the bilateral differences’ between the countries, Miguel Díaz-Canel said

Cuban officials have held talks with the US government, the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, confirmed on Friday, amid growing pain inflicted by a punishing US fuel blockade and frequent power failures.

“These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Díaz-Canel said in a prerecorded statement to senior Communist officials.

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Trump convenes ‘Shield of Americas’ summit with 12 Latin American leaders

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In Miami, president calls for regional cooperation to counter Chinese economic and political interests

Donald Trump changed the channel from Iran to the western hemisphere on Saturday, convening a gathering of Latin American leaders at his Miami-area golf club to discuss regional interests and establishing what he called a “counter-cartel coalition”.

“Just as we formed a coalition to eradicate Isis, we now need a coalition to eradicate the cartels,” he told 12 regional leaders gathered at what the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit.

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Blackout in Cuba leaves millions without power amid US oil chokehold

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Latest outage darkens island facing dwindling oil reserves and increasing pressure from Washington

A blackout hit the western half of Cuba on Wednesday, leaving millions of people in Havana and beyond without power in the latest outage to affect an island struggling with dwindling oil reserves and a crumbling electricity grid.

The government’s Electric Union confirmed the outage on social platform X, saying it affected people from the eastern town of Pinar del Rio to the central town of Camaguey.

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Cuba charges six exiles with terrorism in wake of deadly speedboat attack

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Detainees accused of coming from the US with intent to sow chaos and attack military units on Communist-ruled island

Cuban prosecutors have formally charged six people with crimes of terrorism after a US-flagged speedboat was involved in a deadly shootout with Cuba’s coast guard last week.

The US-based Cuban defendants are accused of packing a boat with weapons and heading toward Cuba in hopes of destabilising the government in Havana.

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Trump suggests US could carry out ‘friendly takeover’ of Cuba

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As tensions between two countries reach new highs, US president says regime is ‘talking with us’

Donald Trump has suggested the US could carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba as tensions between Washington and Havana reach a new high after the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

As he left the White House for a campaigning event in Texas on Friday, Trump said: “The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble.”

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Cuba vows to fight ‘terrorist aggression’ after attack from US-registered boat

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Cuban president says country will ‘defend itself with determination’ after deadly coastal assault by exiles

Cuba has vowed to defend itself against any “terrorist and mercenary aggression”, a day after border guards said they had killed four exiles on a Florida-registered speedboat that opened fire on a patrol.

Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote on X that the Caribbean country would “defend itself with determination and firmness” after the incident in which six other people on the boat were injured.

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