Cuban leader Fidel Castro called China’s growing economic power in the world a ”bitter drink” for the West, ahead of a G20 summit this week.
South Africa has made great strides in creating a democratic country, former politician and transition negotiator Roelf Meyer said on Friday.
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/ 22 January 2009
Cuba’s Fidel Castro praised United States President Barack Obama on Wednesday for his ”noble intentions”.
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/ 18 January 2009
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro is "alive and kicking", Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said on Saturday.
A visit to Havana by a black president ending the US policy of isolation would be as magical as events of 50 years ago.
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/ 28 December 2008
On January 1, Cuba celebrates the 50th anniversary of its Communist revolution, which ushered in decades of enmity with the United States.
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/ 15 November 2008
Without naming Barack Obama, Fidel Castro cast doubt on Friday on the possibility that a new president would bring much change in US policy.
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/ 20 October 2008
One of Pretoria’s main streets should be renamed after former Cuban president Fidel Castro, the SACP said at a street-name hearing on Monday.
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/ 11 September 2008
SA says it has given its 2008 humanitarian award to former Cuban president Fidel Castro for his contributions to ”humankind beyond boundaries”.
Fidel Castro turned 82 on Wednesday, still a world figure even though he has not been seen in public since falling ill two years ago.
A Cuban group painted a grim picture of the human rights situation in the island nation, saying in a report it was ”very unfavourable”.
Diego Maradona, the Argentinian soccer genius notorious for the ”Hand of God” goal and a post-football descent into drugs, hits the big screen in Cannes on Tuesday in a documentary that also shows him as a staunch critic of the United States. Maradona is revered as a god-like figure in his home country.
Cuba’s gay community celebrated unprecedented openness — and high-ranking political alliances — with a government-backed campaign against homophobia on Saturday. The meeting at a convention centre in Havana’s Vedado district may have been the largest gathering of openly gay activists to date on the communist-run island.
The only time Cuba’s Fidel Castro is known to have played golf was in 1961, in a stunt thumbing his nose at the United States. Now that Fidel has handed over power to his brother, Raul, Communist Cuba is setting aside any ideological objections and is embracing golf, the most capitalist of sports.
Yunus Momoniat talks to documentary filmmaker Jihan el-Tahri about her latest production, <i>Cuba: An African Odyssey</i>.
Cuba has the coolest, most easily identifiable images of any travel destination: the shiny 1950s Cadillacs, the salsa-ing mulattas, the Buena Vista Social Club and what the travel writer Pico Iyer described as "the ramshackle glamour of an abandoned stage set” are instantly recognisable, even to those who have never been.
Johan Vega knows the Havana Golf Club well. Too well. He has played every bunker, green and fairway thousands of times and the course has become monotonous. Golfers like to tackle different courses but the club is Havana’s sole golf course and Vega (37) is Havana’s only golf instructor.
It took Fidel Castro four decades to accept limited economic reform in communist Cuba, but it has taken his brother, Raul Castro, the President since February, just weeks to launch a flurry of changes. On Tuesday, Cubans lined up outside stores to gawk at, and enjoy the new right to buy, appliances such as pressure cookers, DVDs and electric bikes.
Cubans for the first time can check into the island’s swank tourist hotels that until now had been exclusively reserved for foreigners, as President Raul Castro continues to soften a half-century of communist restrictions. Citizens here also have access for the first time to rental cars, which until midnight on Sunday had been available only to foreign customers.
Cuba has eased restrictions on the sale of computers, DVD players and other electrical goods, in the first sign of economic liberalisation since Fidel Castro retired last month. The appliances will go on sale immediately and be available to anybody who can pay, according to an internal government memo.
The presidents of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela ended a border dispute on Friday with a summit handshake after a week of regional diplomacy in the face of hostile rhetoric and troop build-ups.”And with this … this incident that has caused so much damage [is] resolved,” leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said.
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/ 25 February 2008
Cuba’s national assembly named Raúl Castro as head of state on Sunday night, formally ending 49 years of Fidel Castro’s dominance. The 614-member body accepted the 76-year-old defence minister and constitutionally designated successor as the candidate to take over from his elder brother.
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/ 24 February 2008
Fears of a Soviet-educated communist emerging as the next leader of Cyprus — and the first in the European Union — has eclipsed the closest election in the island’s post-colonial history as voters cast their ballots on Sunday. Demetris Christofias, chief of the Marxist-Leninist Akel, has angrily rejected the charges.
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/ 23 February 2008
Hillary Clinton on Friday denied she was contemplating defeat for her White House bid, after her wistful tribute to Barack Obama in a debate was seen by some observers as an admission of looming failure. Clinton is reeling from her Democratic rival’s 11 straight wins in nominating contests.
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/ 23 February 2008
The doctor was in an operating theatre when the call came through from his wife: ”He’s gone, he’s no longer there.” ”We always call him ‘he’. ‘He who shall not be named.’ Like Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter novels,” Dr Barbaro Monzon-Torres says, grinning across the table in his office at Johannesburg’s South Rand Hospital.
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/ 19 February 2008
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has wished Fidel Castro a long and happy retirement following the Cuban leader’s decision not to return to office as president. ”Comrade Fidel holds a special place in South African hearts because of his decision to deploy thousands of soldiers to help our African liberation struggles,” sais the trade union.
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/ 19 February 2008
The South African Communist Party (SACP) bade Cuban President Fidel Castro farewell after he left office on Tuesday. The ailing Cuban leader said he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution.
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/ 19 February 2008
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution. Castro (81) said he would not seek a new presidential term when the National Assembly meets on February 24.
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/ 6 February 2008
Funny, isn’t it, how we have come this far in the United States election campaign, reaching the milestone of results from 24 states in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and still a mystery remains. What, exactly, do these warring candidates stand for?
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/ 16 January 2008
Hours after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro was in ”impeccable” health, Castro told local media he was not fit for public speaking. Lula raised eyebrows and quick questions about Castro’s political future, saying after a long discussion on Tuesday: ”I think Fidel is ready to take on his political role in Cuba.”
Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, in an interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell, predicted that the United States ”empire” is about to fall, called Jesus Christ history’s number one revolutionary and offered to pose topless. ”Why not? Touch my muscles!” the burly 53-year-old former paratrooper said.
Millions staged midnight parties at icon landmarks around the world to see in 2008 but bomb attacks and security fears quickly darkened New Year festivities. More than one million people lined Sydney harbour for fireworks that set off the global party and hundreds of thousands packed Hong Kong streets and historic European venues.