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/ 29 November 2006
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he was not well enough to attend the opening of several days of events celebrating his 80th birthday. Castro said in a message that was read out to 5 000 supporters and admirers from dozens of countries that doctors had not allowed him to attend a gala in Havana’s Karl Marx theatre.
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/ 15 September 2006
Cuban President Fidel Castro’s state of health loomed over a summit of non-aligned nations on Friday at which Iran and other prominent opponents of United States policy sought to forge a united front. State television showed Castro standing up briefly to greet friend and ally Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, on Thursday.
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/ 12 September 2006
Most Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) nations firmly oppose terrorism and understand the United States’ grief over the September 11 terror strikes, a top South African diplomat said on Monday. ”No grievance justifies the type of action that we saw five years ago,” Ayanda Ntsaluba told reporters in Havana.
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/ 6 September 2006
Cuban leader Fidel Castro said he has put the worst of his health crisis behind him and will be able to receive foreign dignitaries in private during a summit of the Nonaligned Movement of developing nations next week. Castro (80) said he lost 18,6kg in a few days after undergoing emergency surgery to stop intestinal bleeding caused by an unexpected health problem on July 26.
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/ 5 September 2006
Cuban President Fidel Castro, in a handwritten statement published on Tuesday, said the worst part of a health crisis that made him shed 18,5kg is over and he will attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba next week. ”You can say the most critical moment is behind me,” Castro said in the statement, published in the official daily, Granma.
Tropical Storm Ernesto was moving towards south Florida on Tuesday — the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina — after soaking Cuba with heavy rain. Florida residents lined up for supplies with the approach of Ernesto, which could strengthen over the warm waters of the Florida Straits.
Hurricane Ernesto weakened to a tropical storm after killing at least one person in Haiti on Sunday and forecasters said it could regain hurricane strength as it barreled toward south-eastern Cuba and the Florida Keys. Florida declared a state of emergency and ordered tourists out of the vulnerable Keys as Ernesto brought a reminder of the perils of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Cuban President Fidel Castro is recovering gradually, Raul Castro said in an interview published on Friday, his first public remarks since his ailing older brother temporarily handed him power last month. Raul Castro (75) thanked the doctors and others who have attended his brother ”with an unsurpassable professionalism and, above all, with much love and dedication”.
The Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde on Sunday released the first pictures of Cuban leader Fidel Castro taken after his gastrointestinal surgery, with Castro quoted as saying, ”I feel very happy.” The Cuban leader, who turned 80 on Sunday, appeared alert and in good spirits and displayed no discernible weight loss.
Cubans wished Fidel Castro a happy 80th birthday on Sunday even though the ailing leader has not been seen or heard in public since ceding power to his brother two weeks ago after stomach surgery. ”Fidel, Fidel, long live Fidel,” chanted young Cubans at a birthday concert on Havana’s Malecon seafront boulevard where 3 000 gathered.
A week after surgery forced him to put his brother in charge of the island he has dominated for 47 years, Cuban leader Fidel Castro remained out of sight and out of power, but was said to be on the road to recovery. Cuban officials and Latin American allies said the 79-year-old former guerrilla fighter was recuperating from gastric surgery but faced weeks of convalescence.
Cuba’s communist government said on Friday that Raul Castro was firmly in charge of the country but uncertainty over its political future grew as the acting president still did not appear in public. The Granma newspaper provided no new details on the condition of ailing leader Fidel Castro four days after he handed over power temporarily to his brother.
Fidel Castro told his people he was in good spirits and stable after surgery that has raised speculation his illness might be the beginning of the end of his 47-year rule. Days short of his 80th birthday, Castro issued a statement on Tuesday playing down talk he might be at death’s door after an operation to halt stomach bleeding that forced him to temporarily relinquish power to his 75-year-old brother, Raul.
Fidel Castro, who took control of Cuba in 1959, rebuffed repeated United States attempts to oust him and survived communism’s demise almost everywhere else, temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night because of surgery.
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/ 24 October 2005
Massive waves churned up by Hurricane Wilma crashed into Cuba’s capital city early on Monday, flooding the Malecon coastal highway and seeping into nearby neighbourhoods of old, crumbling buildings. The ocean penetrated up to four blocks into Havana’s coastal neighbourhoods.
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/ 28 September 2005
Americans are travelling to Cuba in dramatically fewer numbers and at the same time United States fines against those who come without permission are on the rise, the Cuban government said as it launched its annual international campaign against the decades-old US embargo.
Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer was buried on Monday as fans mourned the passing of the Buena Vista Social Club crooner, who died just days after coming back from a tour in Europe. About 200 relatives and friends attended the simple but evocative ceremony at Havana’s Colon cemetery, during which Ferrer’s bolero Mil congojas played in the background.
Ibrahim Ferrer, who achieved fame late in life as the singer of the Buena Vista Social Club, died on Saturday in Havana at the age of 78. Ferrer, known for his trademark cap and greying moustache, was a devotee of traditional styles of Cuban music such as son and bolero.
Hurricane Dennis gathered strength again on Saturday as it moved over the Gulf of Mexico away from Cuba, where it killed 10 people and left 1,5-million homeless, after causing five deaths in Haiti. It is expected to wreak havoc with a swipe at the Florida Keys, which have been put under a hurricane warning.
Hurricane Dennis pummelled Cuba on Friday, killing 10 people and displacing 1,5-million others, President Fidel Castro announced, after its fierce winds and heavy rains left another five dead in Haiti. Cuban authorities had rushed more than 700 000 people into shelters overnight, including at least 2 500 tourists.
Cuba on Friday braced for the arrival of an increasingly dangerous Hurricane Dennis after the storm dumped rain on Jamaica, while Florida authorities issued a state of emergency and ordered first evacuations. The storm looks set to hit the central part of the island with winds in excess of 215kph and pounding rain.
The American group Audioslave broke decades-long barriers with a thundering concert before thousands of Cuban fans, who knocked over barriers of their own to get closer to the first United States rock band to play an outdoor concert in Cuba.
Pressure cookers and rice steamers, essential tools of the Cuban kitchen, are the weapons in Fidel Castro’s latest battle to reassert control over the nation’s economy — while still making the island’s housewives happy. The plan ”will do away with the rustic kitchen,” Castro told top members of the Federation of Cuban Women.
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/ 21 October 2004
President Fidel Castro, Cuba’s leader for more than 45 years, broke his left knee and his right arm in a fall, and urged the Caribbean country’s population of 11-million to stay calm, a government statement said on Thursday. TV cameras captured the incident on Wednesday when the leader stumbled as he was descending a flight of stairs.
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/ 14 September 2004
Hurricane Ivan sliced through the western tip of Cuba late on Monday, tearing off roofs, triggering mudslides and hurtling toward the Gulf of Mexico and the United States coast after killing at least 71 in the Caribbean. Ivan’s eye made landfall at Cape San Antonio late on Monday and took about three hours to cross the western tip of Cuba.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=122138">Ivan pushes up oil prices</a>
Cuba on Friday slammed United States plans to tighten sanctions on the communist country as ”cruel and cowardly”, with the Communist Party insisting it will stand strong against US President George Bush’s ”putrid ideology”. Bush on Thursday endorsed a plan to ”hasten” Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s departure.
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/ 12 February 2004
Cuban police inspected a house and several car repair shops on Wednesday in a neighbourhood where residents recently converted two 1950s cars into boats that refugees used in attempts to reach the United States.
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/ 25 September 2003
With its long snout and tiny body covered with spiky, long brown hair, the worm-munching creature known as Solenodon cubanus long has been a mystery to zoologists, who believed it to be extinct. But a farmer in eastern Cuba has found the first live specimen seen in four years.
Ending several years of relative tolerance for Cuba’s critical voices, Fidel Castro showed American diplomats and the dissidents they courted that he can only stand so much.
Cuba for the first time has acknowledged ties to the former senior US intelligence analyst, Ana Belen Montes, sentenced this week to 25 years jail for spying for Havana’s communist government.
Inside modern towers that are a pride of Fidel Castro, scientists peer through huge microscopes at tiny proteins they hope to tailor to treat such major killers as Aids, heart disease and cancer.
AS the strains of the ”Star-Spangled Banner” faded in the wind at Havana’s international airport, President Fidel Castro turned to his visitor and said, ”It’s been a long time since that happened.”