viernes, 30 de enero de 2009

Deciphering The Thoughts Of The New President Of The United States

It is not too difficult. After taking office, Barack Obama said that the decision to return the territory occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base to its legitimate owner requires weighing up the extent to which the defensive capacity of the United States would be or not in the least
affected.

Soon after that he added, with regards to the return of the territory occupied by the Base to Cuba, that he would first consider under which concessions Cuba would accept that solution, which would be tantamount to demanding a change in its political system, a price against which
Cuba has been struggling for half a century.

To keep a military base in Cuba against the will of our people is a violation of the most elemental principles of international law. The US President has the faculty of abiding by that rule without exacting any condition whatsoever. Non compliance with it would be an act of
arrogance and an abuse of his immense power against a small country.

For a better understanding of the abusive character of the power of the empire, please consider the statements published by the US Government’s official website on January 22, 2009, after Barack Obama took up his post. Biden and Obama have decided to resolutely support the
relationship between the United States and Israel, and believe that the irrefutable commitment in the Middle East should be the security of Israel, the main US ally in the region.

The United States will never distance itself from Israel, and its president and vice president “firmly believe in the right of Israel to protect its citizens”, as was stated in the declaration of principles which takes up again in those aspects the policy followed by the government of George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor.

This is the way in which our friend Obama shares the genocide against Palestinians. Similar sweeteners have been offered to Russia, China, Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world, after the United States turned Israel into a major nuclear power which absorbs every year a significant share of the empire’s booming military industry exports, with which they threaten, with extreme violence, the population of all Muslim countries.

Similar examples abound; there is no need to become a fortune teller. For further illustration, please read the statements made by the new Chief of the Pentagon, an expert in war affairs.


Fidel Castro Ruz
January 29, 2009
6:17 p.m.

(DESCIFRANDO EL PENSAMIENTO DEL NUEVO PRESIDENTE DE ESTADOS UNIDOS)

Guantanamo must be Returned to Cuba, urged Paraguay and Venezuela

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 29.Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Paraguayan counterpart Fernando Lugo today demanded, in Brazil, the immediate return to Cuba of Guantanamo bay, a territory occupied by the United States against the will of the Cuban people.

Addressing participants at the World Social Forum, underway in the Brazilian city of Belem, President Hugo Chavez said that after the White House decision to shut down the prison camp, Washington must return the occupied territory to Cuba, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile Fernando Lugo recalled that Guantanamo is part of Cuban soil and it should be returned to the free people of Cuba who, for the past 50 years have proven that no power on the Earth can bend them.

The Paraguayan President praised the Cuban Revolution’s history and dubbed as poor the decisions taken by the US president regarding Guantanamo Bay, reported Prensa Latina news agency.

The debates at the World social Forum will run till next Sunday and are being attended by some 100,000 people from 150 countries.

The meeting analyzes the deplorable ecological situation of the planet, as well as other topics like the world food, economic and financial crisis from a different perspective from the positions expressed by the big powers at the Forum of Davos, held in Switzerland.

(Chávez y Lugo: devolver a Cuba suelo ilegalmente ocupado)

A young radial station turns five years

By:Ernesto Pantaleon Medina

Toward several years, for the inhabitants of the city of Camagûey it was made notice an absence: their local radio, since the provincial main plant had assumed the challenge of giving to know the reality of those more than 300 000 people that here reside, besides the whole wide programming related with the remaining l2 municipalities.

Without ending up being created a hole, there were without satisfying many yearnings of the citizens who have their own radio station for one half a decade that by chance didn't leave to the air February 2 of 2004, dates of the birth in l5l4 of the village of Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe, then transformed into the capital of the people of Camagüey.

The young radio station offers in the morning time and during seven hours, from Monday to Sunday, a varied programming that attend to 26 workers , of them 6 are journalists.

Musical, sections of promotion of the culture, news spaces , historical, didactic and of varieties spaces, integrate in the essential thing the content of the transmissions that promote values of the head territory.

Experience, youth and total delivery to the work are elements that define to their community, which receives for these days the warmest congratulation, to occupy a preference place in each heart of this earth that the National Poet called Nicolás Guillén "soft district of hats and shepherds."

High presence of tourists in Santa Lucía's pole

Por:Carmen Hernádez and Gelsy Rodríguez

Camagüey, Jan 30 Santa Lucía's spa, one of the biggest of Cuba, reports in the current high season an average of a thousand 800 foreign tourists' daily occupation, 200 more than in the previous year.

Located to the north of the county Camagüey and with an extension of beach of 19 kilometers, that area has among its attractions the proximity of the coralline barrier that skirts the north coast of the Island, and includes 34 diving points where ships sunken and great variety of fish can be appreciated.

In spite of the affectations caused by the step of the hurricane Ike, the one thousand rooms that add to the four hotels and all their services are in full functioning, explained Berta Rodríguez, especialist of the Provincial Delegation of the Ministery of the Turism.

Its hotel plant, integrated by Oasis Breezes Santa Lucía, Club Santa Lucía, Hotel Club Friends Snail and Club Friend Mayanabo belongs to the chain Cubanacán, and some have administration contracts shared with foreighner signatures .

The visitors can enjoy, among the optional , of several trips that include traveled by the city of Camagüey whose urban historical center was declared Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity recently.

They are also trips to Beautiful Beach in Sabinal Key, and to the biggest reservation in rosy flamingos of the Caribbean, in the outlet of the Maximum river.

jueves, 29 de enero de 2009

FULLNESS: To fall in love causes addictive chemical reactions

By:Doris Hernández Fernández

To be in love is identified with the passion, it constitutes an emotional state marked by the happiness and the satisfaction of finding another person able to understand and to share the life.

However, it is a less romantic process from the biochemical point of view, because it is a process that begins in the cerebral bark, passes to the endocrine system and becomes physiologic answers.

Some investigations indicate that in the childhood, between the five and the eight years, the cerebral molds are already developed that determine with who we fall in love.

For it, often the arrow arises with similar people along a lifetime.
So thatto be in love takes place, should have agreement of interest among two people and that memories of other moments of attraction arise, José Luis explains to González de Rivera, boss of Psychiatry in the Foundation Jiménez Díaz, of Madrid.

This is explained in that cause addictive chemical reactions when being fallen in love, like with the drugs, and the indifference produces the terrible syndrome of abstinence, characterized by the suffering.

The women emit feromons when ovulating, as other females of animals. They are inodors hormones but that the men perceive.

Other investigators have demonstrated that, on the other hand, the women detect the complex of more histocompatibiblity (CHM) of the immune system, some genes that produce different scents, and they feel bigger attraction for the males with a CHM different to the own one.

When it is opposing the most attractive person, the nervous system starts and takes place a feniletilamin discharge, a made up of the family of the amphetamine and the passion loosens.

She is the responsible of producing the excitement, the one that makes that the dopamin takes place that is the neurotransmisor related with the pleasure and the recompense, according to David Vegetable gardens, psychiatrist of the Hospital of Guadalajara, Mexico.

The testosterone is another hormone in active.There has been discovered that it generates sexual desire in the women, in which it acts as an afrodisíaco that could receive from the masculine couple's kisses.

To know what areas of the brain light for love the functional magnetic resonances and the positrons tomography are.

In accordance with Helen Fisher, are the areas affected by the dopamina (that takes place in the ventral tegmental area and it is liberated in the nucleus accumbens and the front bark) those that put on to the red live, as well as the septum of the women, an area where the emotions are located , and the visual bark in the men, where the beauty is appreciated.

Other investigations checked that, also, the front córtex is inhibited, where it resides the rationality and the critical sense regarding the couple. Here the explanation of the madness of the love is.
Once passing the passion that lasts months, other areas begin to work, the vital in the durable relationships. This explains that a stable relationship can turns surprised by an accidental adventure.

There is another variable, in some cases doesn't arrive to the second phase, and with the passion all the attraction disappears.

Anyway, being in love is furrowed by the emotion.

Russia Condemns US Economic Blockade of Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 29 . The Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Serguei Lavrov, ratified on Thursday his country’s rejection of Washington’s almost fifty-year-old financial, trade and economic blockade of Cuba.

In an interview with Prensa Latina news agency, the diplomat recalled that every year Russia supports a resolution presented by the Caribbean nation at the General Assembly of the United Nations condemning this hostile US policy.

“Cuba is a country with a great history that chose the path of freedom and independence, and which is not willing to abandon its principles,” Lavrov said.

“It is a very uncommon case in our contemporary world. The Cuban people deserve all our respect because they know their rights and they defend them,” he added.

“We hope that the solidarity of the majority of the world contributes to the revision by the US Government of its policy towards Cuba,” The Russian Foreign Minister concluded.


(Rusia ratifica rechazo a bloqueo de EE.UU. contra Cuba)

Cuba Pays Tribute to Ecuadorian Hero

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 29 (acn) Ecuador’s ambassador to Cuba, Universi Zambrano, unveiled on Wednesday a commemorative plaque at the Monument dedicated to Ecuadorean National Hero Eloy Alfaro (1842-1912), at Havana’s Infanta Park.

A group of children from the Miguel Fernandez Primary School placed wreaths by the bust built there in 1928 to perpetuate the memory of Alfaro.

At the end of the ceremony, Zambrano recalled the history of this champion of Cuba’s independence and recalled details of his life of struggle and how after 40 years of battles, he became president of Ecuador on June 5, 1895.

The assassination of Alfaro, a great admirer of Cuban National Hero Jose Marti, was followed by a conservative, neo-liberal, oligarchic, submissive and pro-imperialist period in Ecuador, until a young man named Rafael Correa, great-grand nephew of Eloy and today President of the Republic, emerged from Quito University, said Zambrano.

The plaque, created by artist Roberto Lopez, reads: “As President of Ecuador, Alfaro sent a letter to the Queen Regent of Spain on December 19, 1895, demanding Cuba’s independence.” It also notes that he “raised his voice for our homeland and the peoples from The Americas.”

During the ceremony, Zambrano gave Cuban sculptor and architect Andres Gonzalez, the creator of the statue to Alfaro —recently unveiled in this capital by President Correa during his visit to Cuba— a diploma of recognition signed by the Ecuadorian Minister of Culture, Galo Mora
Witt, for his valuable contribution to the strengthening of the cultural bonds existing between the two peoples.

Eloy Alfaro was born on June 25, 1842 in the town of Montecristi, in Ecuador’s Manabi province. He was assassinated on January 28, 1912, in Quito, the capital of that South American country.

(Recuerda Cuba a Eloy Alfaro, Héroe Nacional ecuatoriano)

Ricardo Alarcon Calls for World Campaign in Favor of Cuban Five

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 29 .The President of the Cuban National Assembly (Parliament), Ricardo Alarcon, urged participants in the Pedagogy 2009 International Congress underway in Havana to carry out a world campaign in favor of five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters who remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States since 1998.

Speaking during a plenary session of the event, Alarcon said that Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labanino, Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez – internationally known as the Cuban Five - are also educators who teach with their example, their patriotism, their dignity and their spirit of self-sacrifice.

He recalled that, in fact, the Cuban Five have helped many inmates in different US prisons learn to read and write.

Alarcon announced that next Friday, the defense team of the Cuban Five will present a petition to the US Supreme Court asking this judicial body to revise the case.

He described the current moment as complex and decisive in the legal battle to demand the release of the anti-terrorist fighters and to annul the sentence against Gerardo Hernandez (two life terms plus 15 years).

The Cuban top legislator stressed that international solidarity is essential for the Cuban Five now and recalled that the US Supreme Court accepts only nearly 1.5% of all cases presented to it.

The Cuban Five were arrested in Miami in 1998 for infiltrating extremist right-wing groups that were planning and carrying out terrorist actions against Cuba.

(Convoca Alarcón a movilización mundial por Los Cinco)

miércoles, 28 de enero de 2009

Editorial of Camagüey will present The Villager

Camagüey, Jan 28. The most complete investigation about Ignacio Agramonte´s death contains one of the books with which will be presented the editorial The Villager, in the anniversary 495 of this town.

Attributed to the Office of the Historian of the City of Camagüey (OHCC), the entity will have its promotional act February two, during the celebration of the birthday of the traditional date of the foundation of the Village of Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe, at the moment the capital of the county.

Elaborated by a community of authors, “Ignacio Agramonte and the combat of Jimaguayú” is the result of a study on the fall in the hero's combat, its exemplary behavior and courage.
The other text is “ Historical Urban Center of Camagüey. "

World Patrimony”, of the doctor Lourdes Gómez, one of the main Cuban authorities in connection with the built patrimonial environment.

The work approaches elements like the values that justify the concession of the status of Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity to the oldest part in the town.

Both books will begin to circulate in the presentation of the editorial The Villager, denominated with the alias of Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, one of the good known ones public personalities of Camagüey of the XIX century. Inserted in the Week of the Culture dedicated to the date, the promotional program of publishing will also include the magazine Senderos, of the OHCC, and to the 7th volumeof workbooks of the Camagüey history, compilation in charge of the master Elda Cento.

President Raul Castro Arrives is in Russia for Official Visit

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 28 (acn) Cuban President Raul Castro today arrived in Russia to begin an official visit next January 30, at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev.

The Cuban Head of State was welcomed at the Vnukovo Airport, in the outskirts of the capital Moscow, by Deputy Foreign Minister Serguei Riabkov.

During his stay in Russia, Raul Castro will hold official talks with President Medvedev and with other top government Russian officials.

The visit to Russia by the Cuban Head of State takes place in the context of excellent bilateral friendship and cooperation relations between Moscow and Havana.

Russia has been the third country, after Venezuela and Brazil, and the first European nation to have been visited by Raul Castro, since he was elected Cuban President.

(Presidente cubano Raúl Castro llega a Rusia)

Organization of Ibero-American States Highlights Cuban Education

HAVANA, Cuba , Jan 28 (acn) The Secretary General of the Organization of Ibero-American States (OIS), for Education, Science, Culture, Alvaro Marchesi Ulastres said Cuba is an example on education.

Marchesi made the statement during the Pedagogia 2009 International Education Congress underway in Havana, where he gave a special lecture about the organization’s educational goals for Ibero-America in 2021.

The official talked about results of global studies that show Cuba as nation with the highest educational performance in the learning of math for six grade students.

He highlighted the effort of Cuban experts in the field, and noted their contribution to the erradication of illiteracy in Venezuela and Bolivia in the years 2006 and 2008, respectively.

Likewise, Marchesi praised the Nicaraguan government’s commitment to eradicate illiteracy by July this year with the collaboration of Cuban teachers.

The OIS secretary general analyzed the educational problems of the region, where only 50 percent of 5-year-old children go to school, while malnutrition affects 7 million of Ibero-American children.

In Cuba pre-school teaching for 6-year-old children is universal and 99 percent of those from zero to five years of age receive educational attention in kindergartens and through a program of non- formal education.

During the first working session of the Congress on Tuesday at Havana’s Convention Center, more than 3,000 delegates from 44 countries discussed pedagogy prospects for the 21st century and theoretical and methodological fundamentals of citizen’s moral education, among other
topics.

(Resalta organismo internacional logros de educación cubana) -Daydee Díaz
Fleites

Today, educators of the world make honor to José Martí

By:Yamile Castro Ibarra

Havana, Jan 28 (AIN) Coinciding with the Cuban National Hero José Martí`s 156 birthday the Congress Pedagogy 2009, will surrender today tribute to the inspiring of Fidel when proposing an education for all.

The Message to the town of Cuba of Armando Hart, director of the Office of the Martian Program , which is foreseen to begin this day, will be one of the ways to honor the intellectual author of the Moncade.

This Tuesday was published by the press the call of Hart to the children and young to transmit the thought of Martí, in which expressed, "you the youths, heirs of a Cuban cultural tradition, can transmit to the whole world that the roads of the Cuban Revolution are in the ideas marti`s"

Ena Elsa Cobiella, Cuban minister of the sector, in the inaugural speech of the eleventh edition of the biggest appointment in educators of the world, said that the Cuban teachers are buried in completing José's command Martí of making that the knowledge and the culture are patrimony of all without exception.

She also remembered that in the adverse moments after the assault to the barracks Moncada, on July 26 of 1953, the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, defined that he would make the revolution when it triumphed, included the education.

The achievements of Cuba in these 50 years of victories are not more than the execution of the program of the Moncada - it expressed - the best way to surrender homage to the author of The age of gold.

The Educational and humanist thought forum José Martí, that also will sesion this Wednesday in the appointment, will be good to perfect the bond between the ideary of Martí and the pedagogy.

martes, 27 de enero de 2009

International Congress on Pedagogy Inaugurated in Havana

The Pedagogy 2009 International Congress was inaugurated on Monday evening at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana with
the presence of First VP Jose Ramon Machado Ventura.

In her opening address, Education Minister Ana Elsa Velazquez
highlighted Cuba’s achievements in the education sector over the past 50 years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, in spite of the economic, financial and trade blockade imposed by the United States.

In particular, Velazquez praised the role of Cuban teachers who, inspired by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, helped Cuba become the first Latin American country free from the scourge of illiteracy in 1961.

In this respect, she also highlighted Cuba’s contribution with personnel and the “Yo si puedo” (Yes, I Can) methodology to ongoing literacy campaigns in almost 30 countries and recalled that Venezuela, in 2006, and Bolivia, in 2008, recently declared themselves free from illiteracy
with Cuba’s assistance.

Velazquez highly commended the efforts by the Cuban government in order to improve education at all levels and explained that, due to Washington’s blockade, the country has to spend almost 30% more than it would normally do in order to acquire educational means and resources.

The official stressed that Cuba also guarantees the education of children and youths with physical and mental impairments.

She added that 72% of university graduates in the field of education are currently linked to post-graduate courses.

Also present in the opening ceremony of the event were VP Esteban Lazo Hernandez and Jose Ramon Fernandez, VP of the Cuban Council of Ministers.

More than 3,000 teachers and researchers from 44 countries are in Cuba for the meeting that will end next Friday. The countries with the largest delegations attending the event are Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico.

Thus far, 14 Education ministers have confirmed their presence in the Cuban capital for the Congress. Also attending will be the General Secretaries of the Ibero-American Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Association of Ibero-American Educational
Television.

The Scientific Program of the event includes four main topics: integral formation of citizens, scientific and developing education, training of educators and education sciences.

(Evidencia Cuba logros en educación, a pesar del bloqueo)

More than Eleven Thousand Venezuelans recovered their vision in January

Some 11,700 people in Venezuela recovered their vision in January, after being operated on thanks to Operation Miracle, a project boosted by that nation and Cuba, aimed at helping people of scant economic resources to recover their sight.

The international coordinator of this program, Manuel Pacheco, told the press in Caracas that, from this figure, 10,831 were operated on by Cuban specialists working in Venezuela, while 861 were patients seen by doctors from that South American nation. Pacheco added that another 363 Venezuelans are waiting to be operated on in their country, between this week and February 1st.

He highlighted that, as well, 456 Latin Americans, coming from Honduras, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Ecuador, will also be operated on.

The joint work by Cuban and Venezuelan specialists, he stressed, made it possible to operate on patients, and to begin the surgery procedures with those found during the travelling campaigns to identify potential patients, held in 2008, Prensa Latina news agency reports.

So far, more than 1,384,300 people from 33 nations, including Cubans, have been operated on under this eye program, the CubaCoopera Web site reports. From this figure, 1,212,098 are foreigners, 265,443 of whom have been operated on in Cuba. The rest underwent surgery in 57 eye centres, with 88 operating rooms equipped with high technology, donated by the archipelago to 15 nations.

In Third World countries, the main causes of blindness are cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, infectious diseases, and Vitamin A deficiency .


Recuperan la visión en enero más de 11 mil venezolanos

Make beauty people from Camagüey their city to celebrate anniversary 495

The respect of the current generations of Camagüey, beats in each of the rebuit works and in each artistic and social action that will greet to the historical center of the old provincial capital in its anniversary 495 the next one February two.

The above-mentioned stood out in the conference of offered press this Monday for the maximum authorities of the Municipal Assembly of the Popular Power, of the Historian's Office and of other entities made responsible with the organization of the Week of the Culture that will pay to the date, between the first and seven in the incoming month.

Andrés Morales Leal, president of the maximum government organ in the town head, emphasized that the celebration-already to the doors - it continues corroborating the fullness recuperator of a demarcation that experienced severe hurts in his built patrimony, during the step of the recent hurricanes.

“Not for less brilliant than the festivity of the Anniversary 490- indicated - these activities prepare consequently to the territory to welcome the means millennium of this lover's urban historical center existence and the declaration of one of their segments for the UNESCO like Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.

The interventions of different officials, enumerated during the press Conference, the multiplicity of foreseen activities that surpass the figure of 300, which will take place in a demarcation that continues beautifying and being rejuvenated, such us its patrimonial legacy demands it. (Yolanda Ferrera Sosa).

lunes, 26 de enero de 2009

Some considerations on the Special Period, and a little more

By:Ernesto Pantaleòn Medina

The called Special Period in Cuba brought itself a sensitive depression in the infrastructure created in the county of Camagüey (about 500 kilometers to the east of City of Havana) and that had its good stage in the years 80, time in that the territory had real possibilities to produce 11 000 tons of pig meat, 300 million eggs and other so many of liters of milk, for only to mention some examples.

The fact was very near those ends, and the swinish company ended up giving 9 000 tons, while in the branch milkmaid the flock had 73 000 cows in double milk, what propitiated a true jump in the food production.

But to sustain that gigantic productive apparatus, the agriculture of Camagüey prepared of almost 200 000 tons of food annually, and the sugar entities gave like complement double that volume of honey for the diet of the animals, among other items that constituted a guarantee and that in a moment, starting from the 90 stopped to exist in a good part.

Although today the country experiences a discreet recovery in its economy, the readiness in the insurance distan much of those reference levels, especially in times in that the prices are shot in the International Market, at the same time that you intensify the blockade that maintain the United States for five decades.

And when there is not back material, or is this insufficient, what is it? of what the workers are been worth to move away to the country of the terrible one "level zero" that threatened us during years.

The answer can only be in strengths that, not had enunciated an and another time, lose its validity: the intelligence, the organization, the control on the few resources that we prepare, but mainly, the exact understanding that many wait for us.

Cuban Artists Return to Venezuela

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 26 (acn) The first group of Cuban teachers and artists that will continue with the Corazon Adentro cultural mission in Venezuela have begun to arrive in that nation.

Other groups will be arriving in Venezuela in February to make up the 540 teachers and artists that will take part in the project that started in 2008 in the humblest communities of Caracas. The humanitarian community work will be extended later to other states of the country, according to agreements signed between the two countries.

In mid December, the first 530 Cuban cultural promoters, artists and teachers who carried out the community project began to come back to the island for vacations after more than six months of work.

The group held hundreds of workshops for children, youths and adults, as well as artistic shows in the communities to train theatre groups, artists and dancers, raising the cultural level of the poorest communities of the Venezuelan capital.

The cultural projects between Cuba and Venezuela are being developed as part of the solidarity-based relations established by the Bolivarian Alternative of Our America (ALBA) and its Cultural Fund.

Reemprende Cuba misión cultural en Venezuela Alina Martínez

Cuban GM Leinier Domínguez Undefeated at Corus Chess Tournament

Cuban Grand Master (GM) Leinier Dominguez tied on Sunday with Azerbaijan’s Teimour Radjabov and remained undefeated with seven draws and a win in the strong Corus chess
tournament that is taking place in the Dutch city of Wijk aan Zee.

Leinier, the best Latin American chess player with an ELO rating of 2717 points, played with the black pieces and tied with Radjabov (2761) in only 14 moves of an English Opening.

After this result, the Cuban player has 4.5 units and shares the second place of the tournament with three other players: Radjabov, Ukranian Sergey Karjakin (2706) and Armenian Levon Aronian (2750).

Slovakian Sergei Movsesian (2751) leads the event with five points.

Meanwhile, hosts Jan Smeets (2604) and Loek van Welly (2625), Norwegian Magnus Carlsen (2776), British Michael Adams (2712) and American Gata Kamsky (2725) share the third spot with four units apiece.

Closing the standings are Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk (2779), Chinese Wang Yue (2739) and Dutch Daniel Stellwagen (2605) with 3.5 points while Russian Alexander Morozevich (2771) is at the bottom with only 2.5 units.

The annual tournament features 14 elite players with an average ELO rating of 2720 points, which makes the event a Category 19 competition, according to the International Chess Federation (FIDE).

Original de Manzanillo in national tour

The popular Original Cuban orchestra Original de Manzanillo defends and transmits cuban style from the most autochthonous in the roots of it town, said in this city it managing Wilfredo (Pachi) Naranjo concerning the 45 years of having created the grouping.

The also musician and composer expressed that the charanga of Manzanillo is located among the best in the musical panorama of the island and it possesses an unmistakable Caribbean sonority tinged with rhythms and traditional instruments of the oriental region of Cuba.

As part of a national tour the Original of Manzanillo toasted last night a concert to the people from Santiago which included topics of the decade of the 70 and a popurrit that marked the orchestra's history which has made dance to generations of Cuban from its beginnings.

The square of Santiago of Trail and Highway of the Muzzle was the scenario for the premiere of the originals with the public who enjoyed the interpretations of musical works as That way to feel well, to dance casino, boy's little bit, The pitch, the conga Manigueta, manigueta among others.

The tour will conclude on February 21 in Manzanillo and it is composed of 22 presentations in heads of counties, in the municipality special Island of the Youth, Santa Cruz del Sur, Banes and in other two towns of The Tunas and Pinegrove of the River that were affected by the last three hurricanes.

jueves, 22 de enero de 2009

Cuba’s First Trilingual Multimedia on Athletics

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba, Jan 21 (acn) A multimedia on Athletics
(Multiatleti), with over 170 track-and-field terms translated and spoken
in Spanish, Italian and English, was presented at the 11th International
Social Communication Symposium.

This program is meant to become a tool for the Physical Education
students, in order to pass them knowledge through concepts and specific
terminology of the different track and field events, backed up by images
to help a better understanding.

Roberto A. Averhoff, one of its creators, said that the new work tries
to relate in a didactic and profound way different subjects, as physical
education, basic gymnastic, physiology, biochemistry and psychology,
among others.

It also includes a short film for the most important terms where the
students can see what they read and have a clearer idea of some of the
operations in athletics, added Averhoff.

The multimedia is also important for the history of the sport since
includes a small review of the main athletes in this eastern Cuban
province.

Primera multimedia trilingüe de atletismo en Cuba

Fidel Castro In Good Health, Says Argentinean President

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 22 (acn) Minutes before leaving Cuba on Wednesday,
Argentinean President Cristina de Kirchner said her official visit to
Cuba had the perfect end with a meeting with the leader of the Cuban
Revolution, Fidel Castro.

At the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, where she was seen
off by Cuban President Raul Castro, Fernandez de Kirchner said Fidel
looked in good health and high spirits.

The Argentinean leader added that they spoke about many topics,
including the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, the situation
in Latin America and other international issues.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner concluded a three-day official visit to
Cuba where she arrived last Sunday accompanied by a delegation of
ministers, legislators, other officials and businesspeople.

Her agenda in the Caribbean nation included official talks with Raul
Castro and a meeting with the President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo
Alarcon. She also gave a key lecture at the Main Hall of the University
of Havana, participated in the 2nd Seminar on Business Opportunities
that was attended by Cuban and Argentinean businesspeople, and presided
over the signing of 11 bilateral agreements between Cuba and her country.

On Wednesday, she also visited the Havana-based Latin American School of
Medicine and met with the Argentinean students there.

The Argentinean President departed for Venezuela on Wednesday for a two-
day visit. There, she will meet with President Hugo Chavez and will sign
cooperation accords.

Fidel está muy bien de salud, afirma Presidenta argentina

Cuban Foreign Minister Visits Nicaragua and Guatemala

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 22 (acn) Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque on
Thursday carries out an official visit to Nicaragua, where he will meet
with President Daniel Ortega.

According to Granma news daily, during this visit, that will serve to
further strengthen the excellent bilateral relations between both
governments and peoples, Perez Roque will also hold official talks with
his Nicaraguan counterpart.

Then, on Friday, the Cuban FM will travel to Guatemala to participate,
on behalf of the presidency of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM), in the
inauguration of the 2nd NAM’s Ministerial Conference on the Advancement
of Women.

Perez Roque’s agenda in Guatemala also includes meetings with President
Alvaro Colom and with other government authorities.

He will also meet with Cuban personnel currently making their
contribution in the Central American country.


Realiza Canciller cubano visita a Nicaragua y Guatemala

To 495 years of it foundation: Camagüey Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity

By Yanais Vega Bacallao

To 495 years of the foundation of the Village of Santa María del puerto del Príncipe, people of Camagüey will receive with pride, this February two, the official declaration, of an area of the Historical Center as Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.

Also known as city of the earthenjar receives the deserved distinction in honor to its intertwined streets, its squares, facades, lathed wooden grills, its Main Theater and why not, its town.

This proclamation that the UNESCO grants is also a desert homage to the cacique Camagüebax, to who the city owes its current name.

Seated in our days among the rivers Tínima and Hatibonico, in the same heart of the bigger than the Antilles is one of the oldest demarcations in the country.

It was founded on February 2, 1514, in Tip of the Güincho, in the northern Bay of Nuevitas, but due to the conditions of the land don't propitiate to the agriculture and the shortage of water the inhabitants were forced to look for a more appropriate place.

In 1516 ,the village is established in the cacicazgo of Caonao, on the seashore of the river of the same name. Already for January 6, 1528, before a rebellion of Indians, it was settled down definitively in the current place.

For the defense and conservation of Historical and Cultural Patrimony, Camagüey conforms the fifth center historical Cuban included inside the category of Patrimony and it has been denominated specifically as: “ Historical Urban Center", Patrimony of the Humanity.”

Writers and artists, of yesterday and of today, form the list of those that made Camagüey rename. From soft and delicate gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda`s feather , until the quarter note and burning poetry of Nicolás Guillén that more than to index to this colonial village, have honored whole Cuba.

miércoles, 21 de enero de 2009

Work in development of copies equine pure blood

Por:Alejandro Rodríguez

Camagüey, Jan 21. The reproduction work and it raises of genetic copies of equine, starting from the attention and cares of animals pure blood, it is developed by The Company for the Flora Protection and the Fauna of Camagüey.

Several facilities in the county work with that objective, as the San Vicente Ranch , in the municipality of Jimaguayú, the bigger of Cuba in the breeding of horses of the Arab race, the San José, in Sibanicú, The Amelita, in Guáimaro and that of The Nativity, in Najasa.

The digital site of Radio Cadena Agramonte that in the pastizals and blocks of these properties the development of diverse races is assisted, as Arabic, Patibarcino, Morgan, Creole of Trot, Paint Cuban, Apaluza and Pony.

At the present time, add thousands the copies of these animals of high genetic value, dedicated fundamentally to the preservation of the races, their multiplication and in a future to their commercialization inside of and outside of the country.

The dedication of its workers stands out in the attention to the copies, mainly to the sires, horses of very high value in the market, but that in Cuba are dedicated to preserve the equine species.

Among the animals pure blood, with which one works in this branch of the cattle raising, are the horse Breaks Wind, only sire in the country of the race Morgan; Monte Rey, the father of the Creoles in Cuba mount, already with 30 years, and Marajá, son of Rohara Renuir, one of the most renowned Arab copies nationally.

Will be declared officially urban historical center of Camagüey Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity

Camagüey Jan 21.The sector of the city of Camagüey declared Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity, will be proclaimed officially with that condition the next February two, anniversary 495 of the traditional date of the foundation of the formerly village .

The ceremony will happen linked with an artistic show in the park Iganacio Agramonte, old Square of Weapons, where began to be born the last location of the Village of Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe, today Camagüey.

Dedicated to one of the first stable populational nucleo constituted by the Spaniards in the New World, the project for the date has artistic, literary, historical, political, recreational and sport character.

The programming includes activities like the symposium “Challenges in the handling and administration of the cities”, and the presentation of the Net of Offices of the Historian and of the Conservative of the City, which contains to entities of five counties.

Among the attractions figure equally the performance of the singers Kelvin Ochoa and Rosa María Ameneiro (Rochy), the first and two of February in the Square of the Workers, subjected at the present time to rebuilding, also in vigor in other areas of the town.

The list of companies to the celebration includes personalities like Herman Van Hoof, representative for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Organization of United Nations for the Education, the Science and the Culture (UNESCO).

In last July, the UNESCO granted the status of Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity to the part of bigger antiquity of the historical urban center of Camagüey, the most extensive in the country and with the category of National Monument.

Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe arose beside the northern bay of Nuevitas,it had it second establishment in the indigenous cacicazgo of Caonao, and in 1528 was transferred to her current location. (AIN).

martes, 20 de enero de 2009

Raul Castro Meets with UNESCO General Secretary

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 20 (acn) Koichiro Matsuura, General Secretary of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) met this Monday with Cuban President Raul Castro in this
capital.

Raul and the distinguished visitor agreed to continue strengthening
cooperation relations between the Caribbean nation and the UN body in
charge of promoting development in sectors to which Cuba gives top
priority at home and also abroad through its solidarity with other
countries.

Matsuura expressed his satisfaction with his visit and sent greetings to
the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro. He also praised the
Cuban Government and people for their permanent support of UNESCO’s work.

The UNESCO official stressed that Cuba is an example of what can and
should be done in favor of education.

Also present in the meeting were the Cuban Foreign Minister, Felipe
Perez Roque; Cuban VP Jose Ramon Fernandez; Cuba’s Permanent
Representative at UNESCO and UNESCO’s Permanent Representative in Cuba.

Encuentro de Raúl con director general de la UNESCO

lunes, 19 de enero de 2009

General director of the UNESCO visits Cuba

Havana, Jan 19 . Koïchiro Matsuura, general director of the United Nations for the Education, the Science, the Culture, the Communication and the Information (UNESCO), arrived to Havana in official visit.

Matsuura who visits for the first time Cuba, acts to the front of the organization since November of 1999, the Granma newspaper highlights.

During his stay he will meet with Cuban leaders and will travel places of historical and cultural interest.

Cuba is member of the UNESCO since August 29,1947, and starting from the victory of the Revolution there is potenciated qualitatively its taxes in the different spheres of this organization, mainly in thematic related with the education, the sciences and the cultural patrimony.

Streeets with faces in the Village of Puerto Príncipe.

With everything, every time that I visit to my town, and I travel him lovingly, already with very few friends of those that left more than forty years ago, finish my walk in front of those relics... *

Nicolás Guillén

Por:Yanetsy León González

Camagüey, Jan 18 . At some time do you planned to see the official face of the streets? In Cuba it never happened same thing, but Camagüey began to give the note only one week ago with the placement of badges with the image of the personalities or of the facts that suggest the toponyms and believe me, there is expensive that bring them to him.



Rejuvenate vetusta square of Camagüey.

The new pieces with the name of the streets and the relief of what they represent 30 x 40 cm. measure, and they are placed according to the height of each construction.

Of brass they seem, although they are made with mud of Camagüey in the technical rakú. Of the artisans artists Néstor Liván Peña Díaz and Aníbal Verdecia Blanco got the idea of this luck of permanent exhibition in the homeland, project that signs up to Aníbal Díaz, Jorge Herrera and Maikel Blanco, its partners of the shop of ceramic EFRA. Néstor Liván and Aníbal, son, assumed the location for the care in the manipulation, and because it facilitates them a peculiar socialization of the work.

If it tunes the view, will discover the distribution of the new signs in corners and converged places. Until the moment the initiative of the Office of the Historian of the City (OHCC) understands 23 streets of the area of the Urban Historical Center considered in the List of the World Patrimony from July of the 2008.

TO PASS THE THOUSAND AND A...

The Department of Historical Investigations of the OHCC selected the photographic, cartographic and historical material of each appellative, and it has spent the thousand and one nights with some.

Most of the visual information comes from pictures, but the prints of the Parents Olallo and Valencia, for logic, they leave of drawings of previous centuries. The same option left the siblings Diego and Gaspar Agüero Betancourt, thanks to the similar work conserved in the Provincial Historical File.

Also the Department of Strange and Valuable Fund of the Provincial Library Julio Antonio Mella dissolved another dilemma, when locating a postcard with the historian's figure Juan Torres Lasquetti (before San Pablo).

Has not still been the doctor's graphic indication Emilio González Hurtado who completed his medical service in the homonymous hospital of the old street San Juan of God, and where it cured sick of the influenza.

On the other hand, of Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, well-known as The Villager, yes they had references, but of figure little favored. In a same way they took care the details of the reliefs and the personality, as that of Rosa La Bayamesa (old San Isidro) with the mambisa hat, similar to the instantaneous of the gun.

SInce the first rotule, that of Cisneros, corner to Martí, the restlessness arose for the cases that are not distinguished with own names. Then they cleared the doubts with the two flags: the national one and that of La Demajagua, reserved for Independence and the Shield for Republic.

ALSO BILINGUAL SIGNS?

Maybe the design dazzles as much as the intention of incorporating aesthetic elements for the embellishment of the city, awaiting the official declaration on behalf of the Urban Historical Center as Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.

Since the contemporary language suppose the assumption of most of the names countersigned by the City council in the XX century. Only the first additions with the toponyms date of 1939.

Clear, now it is not badges fused with inscriptions in Braille for the tactile identification, like happens in Peru; neither of linguistic variants as the plurilingual signalings in European countries.

But who stops the diatribe of the inhabitants' love that continue offering according to the Catholic calendar, when the constructive landmarks marked the route. Insurance will jump some historian like Frizzy Fernando Baró, specialist of the OHCC, to say “the Cuban identity knows how to distinguish between the old thing and the modern thing, between the historical thing and the current thing. In that there have not been contradictions.”

But in people, always in people, the germinal marks survive and still today “all the roads lead to Rome”, like indicated the disposition of the paths made by the Roman army from the headquarters of that empire to move to other places.

The villager takes the bilingual print inside in terms of feelings, for example with the street San Ramón, of 25 blocks, so similar to a horseshoe; Avellaneda, the first one with woman's name or the old Alley of the Gallería, by the way, without exit and with the only entrance for Lope Recio, where in one of the houses they raised roosters of you fight.

Of officialdom the famous historian of the city spoke to Gustavo Sed Nieves in the section “My dear streets of Camagüey”, here in the Adelante newspaper ,since the originated documental reference of April 30 1627 about the Real Street—become bigger Street and then Salvador Cisneros—for the notary's registration Silvestre de Balboa Troya and Quesada.

The laws in fact arose to order according to the address of the winds of the time. Otherwise, how to contain the faces of this town, of real live stories in those public spaces enriched in 495 years to complete the next one February 2, when the Village de Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe.

viernes, 16 de enero de 2009

Cuba’s Scientific Achievements Acknowledged on National Science Day

CIEGO DE AVILA, Cuba, Jan 15 (acn) National Science Day was marked in Cuba today with a meeting to acknowledge the advancement made in the sector.

The national meeting to mark the date was held in this central province with the participation of Fernando Gonzalez Bermudez, acting minister of science, technology and environment (CITMA).

The minister highlighted the achievements made in 2008, in particular in the exports of the biotechnology and medical-pharmaceutical industries and also in the replacement of imports with local production.

Among the major results is the registration of the Interferon-Gamma recombinant vaccine for the treatment of the rheumatoid arthritis in young persons, resistant tuberculosis, atypical lung bacterium, among other conditions, said Gonzalez Bermudez.

Likewise, he mentioned the conclusion of the first stage of the clinical trials on a therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of lesions leading to uterine cervix and prostate cancer. In both cases the results were very satisfactory, said the minister.

The Cuban scientific community has the great challenge of further contributing to the economic recovery of the country and to the sustainable development in food production, health, housing construction and other sectors, said CITMA’s acting minister.

More than 100 scientific and technological projects are being carried out in Ciego de Avila, most of them related to agriculture, the protection of natural resources and the use of renewable energy sources.

Reconocen quehacer de comunidad científica cubana Lubia Ulloa Trujillo

First Defibrillating Pacemaker Implanted in Cuban Province

HOLGUIN, Cuba, Jan 15 (acn) The first permanent defibrillating pacemaker implanted in Cuba outside Havana is carried by Alvaro Morgado Martínez, an 82-year old patient from Holguin who suffers from a malignant heart condition.

Morgado's surgery was recently performed at the Vladimir Ilich Lenin hospital in the eastern city of Holguin by Cuban cardiologists Elier Ricardo and Roberto Zayas. After the successful operation the patient was released from the hospital and is now successfully recovering at home.

Dr. Ricardo told the press that such a procedure had been only performed in Havana's Cardiology Institute of Havana previously.

Permanent defibrillating heart pacemakers detect heart arrhythmias and automatically treat them with electrical shocks avoiding the patient's death by restoring the cardiac rhythm.

The implant of each pacemaker, which is performed at no cost to the Cuban patient, is valued from 8 to 12,000 Euros, including the surgical procedure and the pre- and post-surgery care.

Lorenzo Llerena, president of the Cuban Cardiology Society, said the implant of the first automatic defibrillator in Holguin shows the steady development in the specialty reached in the province.

Implantado en Holguín primer marcapaso desfibrilador

jueves, 15 de enero de 2009

Given prizes CITMA 2008

Camagüey, Jan 14 . The results in the science and the technological innovation of 19 investigation works developed in the county of Camagüey, were recognized with the prizes Ministry of the Science, Technology and Environment 2008, in opportunity of the acts for the Day of the Cuban Science, in ceremony made in the protocol living room Nicolás Guillén, of the Square of the General bigger Revolution Ignacio Agramonte and Loynaz, in this city.

Of the current prizes, several were nominated for the recognition National Academy of Sciences of Cuba, among these, Characterization of the features of growth and reproduction for the bovine genotype Chacuba, of the Dr. Angel Ceró Rizo; The teaching of the conservation of the patrimony, of the Doctor Lourdes Gómez Consuegra and Improvement of the Process of Teaching learning of the mathematics, of the Dr. Ramón Blanco Sánchez, to the prize of the Innovation was nominated the investigation of the Dra. María Teresa Machado Durán, under the title of Formation of the culture; a look since the languages and the languages, all these studies and their results come from the University of Camagüey.

In the group are also important investigations of the tecnoscience elaborated by specialists of the institutes of Investigation of Tropical Viandas and Pedagogic Superior José Martí, Ministry of the Agriculture, Forest Company, the centers of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and of Investigation of the Environment of Camagüey, Provincial School of the Party Cándido González and of the Provincial Hospital Manuel Ascunce Domenech.

Established from January 15 1960 by the Commandant in Boss Fidel Castro, the Day of the Cuban Science, proclaimed the indispensable necessity of the scientific development of the country like a strategy for the survival of the Revolution and the projection that could link us with the nations in economic and social progress.

Every year, in opportunity of the anniversary, the CITMA presents in competition the best works of scientific investigation picking up the results of the same ones and its practical and efficient application at the same time. The figures of the 2008 demonstrate the reach of the tecnoscience of Camagüey and the diversity of fields in that it is intruded.

martes, 13 de enero de 2009

Profile preparations with view to week of culture and anniversary 495 of Camagüey

The week of culture and the anniversary of the city coincides with the declaration of the urban historical center as Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.Camagüey, Jan 13. - More than 200 cultural and recreational offers will be villagers' and visitors disposition during the celebration of the Week of the Culture in the City of Camagüey that will take place the first one at next February seven.

The event coincides with the commemorative acts for the anniversary 495 of the formerly Villa of Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe and the declaration of the urban historical center as Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.

The day will be dedicated, this time, to the Orchestra Maravilla de Florida, in its sixtieth anniversary, to the Newspaper Adelante, in its 50 birthday, and to the student Abel Barrero Barreiro, international prize of the World Program of Foods.

The program will begin officially the first of February, with the reading of the Decree from the headquarters of the Municipal Assembly of the Popular Power, and it will include until the day seven multiple options to cover the population's more varied likes. (Miguel Febles Hernández)

lunes, 12 de enero de 2009

Celebrates Camagüey anniversary 50 of the weekly publication Adelante.

Camagüey,January 12. A cultural elegance dedicated to the 50 anniversary of the foundation of the Adelante newspaper, of the county of Camagüey, was carried out on Saturday in this city with some of the most outstanding groupings in the territory.

The Folkloric Ballet of Camagüey, of grateful international prestige, led the function that was developed in the headquarters of the Office of the Historian of the City, an old convent of the Ursulinas Sisters.

The occasion was favorable for the premiere, taking like topic the date, of a rap, a guaguancó and a peasant point .

During the presentation several political organizations and of masses and institutions of the State gave recognitions to “Adelante” that circulated for the first time in the afternoon of January 12,1959 as organ of press of the Movement 26 of Julio.

In the last days were carried out numerous activities for the anniversary, among them a colloquy on the press written in Camagüey and the inauguration of an exhibition where the newspaper resides, transformed since the 2005 into a room promoter of the plastic culture of the county.

viernes, 9 de enero de 2009

Raul Castro and Rafael Correa Presided over Commemorative Rally in Havana

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 8 (acn) Presidents Raul Castro, of Cuba and Rafael Correa, of Ecuador, presided over a rally that marked the 50th anniversary of the victorious entrance in Havana by Fidel Castro and the Rebel Army back in 1959.

The gathering took place at the former Columbia camp, the major military headquarters of the Batista dictatorship, which was turned into a school complex by the Cuban revolution, as it happened with all former military barracks in the country.

The same scenario, where Fidel Castro spoke to the Cuban people January 8,
1959 after his entrance in the city, served as meeting place for students at the center, the Ecuadorian delegation accompanying President Correa in his official visit to Cuba, Cuban Communist Party leaders, commanders of the Revolution, veterans of the revolution, government officials, relatives of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters held in US prisons and people in general.

Addressing participants, high school student Cesar Daniel Fumero asserted that the new generations of Cubans will never let Fidel down, while brigadier general Delsa Ester Puebla, who bears the Hero of the Republic of Cuba medal, said she was proud to witness the huge social work that began January 1, 1959.

The First Secretary of Cuba's Communist Party in Havana, Pedro Saez warned that no aggressions, hurricanes or blockades have been able to submit the Cuban people. "We have lived five decades of restless efforts, he said as he recalled that the people's unity and their confidence in their leaders have allowed the country to carry on.

At present, Cuba is part of a Latin American region which is increasingly revolutionary and independent and that boasts its determination to boost integration and solidarity, said Saez, who extended warm greetings to the people and government of Ecuador and to President Correa in particular.

Rafael Correa gave the closing speech of the rally in which he praised the Cuban revolution and its historic leader Fidel Castro. He demanded the lifting of the nearly-50-year US economic, financial and commercial blockade of Cuba and the immediate release of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly held in US prisons for over 10 years now.

Presidieron Raúl y Correa acto en Ciudad Libertad

Ecuador’s Rafael Correa Stresses Meaning of Historic Cuban Commemoration

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 8 (acn) Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa today described the historic dates of January 1 and 8, as glorious moments for the world revolutionary movement. January 1 marks the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and on January 8th Fidel Castro and the Rebel Army reached he city of Havana, two historic events marked today in Havana.

In his speech at the central rally commemorating the events, President Correa extended his warmest greetings to Fidel Castro. He described the Cuban Revolution as the most important event in 20th Century Latin America, due to the hope and example that it represents for the nations of the region.

Correa stressed the ethic principles honored by the Cuban Revolution over the past 50 years and he recalled Fidel’s words on January 1, 1959 when he said that the upcoming period of the Revolution would be more difficult.

We bring our solidarity and joy from Ecuador for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, said the Ecuadorian President, who demanded the lifting of the US economic blockade of Cuba and the release of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters held in US jails.

President Correa described the Cuban revolutionary process as hope and destiny for the Americas. “We honor the essence of this revolution because we consider it crucial to the evolution of humankind, because its principles are also crucial to reach the wellbeing of our peoples, said Correa.
Cubanews/lach/20:40/abierto

Subraya Rafael correa significado de conmemoración en Cuba

Cuba and Ecuador Sign Nine New Agreements

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 9 (acn) Cuban President Raul Castro and his Ecuadorian counterpart Rafael Correa on Thursday presided over the signing of nine bilateral agreements that will contribute to strengthening the existing friendship and cooperation relations between Cuba and Ecuador.

The new accords signed on Thursday will serve to increase bilateral cooperation in the sectors of health, education, sports, energy, science and technology, and foreign relations.

After the ceremony, held at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, both sides exchanged greetings and reiterated their interest in implementing the agreements.

Prior to the ceremony, Correa and his accompanying delegation were officially welcomed at the Palace of the Revolution.

Correa paid tribute to Cuban National Hero Jose Marti at the Revolution Square and also placed a floral wreath at a monument of Ecuadorian renowned politician and military leader Eloy Alfaro in the Cuban capital.

He also presided over – along with Cuban President Raul Castro - a rally that marked the 50th anniversary of the victorious entrance in Havana by Fidel Castro and the Rebel Army back in 1959.

Presiden Raúl y Correa firma de acuerdos Cuba-Ecuador

miércoles, 7 de enero de 2009

Ecuadorian President Arrives in Cuba on Wednesday

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 7 (acn) Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa arrives in Cuba on Wednesday for an official visit at the invitation of his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro.

According to Granma news daily, this visit is in keeping with the historic bonds of friendship and cooperation that exist between the peoples of both countries.

During his stay in Cuba, Correa will hold official talks with Raul Castro and will visit places of historic, scientific and social interest.

Llegará hoy a Cuba Rafael Correa, presidente de Ecuador

Havana will Host Second Cuba-Panama Business Round

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 7 (acn) The 2nd Cuba-Panama Business Round will take place in the Cuban capital on January 21-23 and, with this meeting in mind, the Panamanian Ministry of Commerce and Industries (MICI) has already began to negotiate with the productive sectors of this Central American nation in order to determine which products will be on the list for the business event.

According to Prensa Latina news agency, the Panamanian negotiating group, comprised of officials from MICI and the Panamanian Ministry of Agricultural Development (MIDA), will also discuss with their Cuban counterparts about topics such as the list of specific assets, rules of origin and solution of controversies.

During the most recent visit to Cuba of Panamanian President Martin Torrijos, which concluded on Monday, the head of MICI, Gisela Alvarez, discussed aspects of the bilateral trade between Cuba and Panama with the Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade, Raul de la Nuez.

In this regard, Alvarez said that the Cuban market offers business opportunities that are attractive to Panamanian exporters.

Preparan segunda ronda de negocios Cuba-Panamá

martes, 6 de enero de 2009

Panamanian President Concludes Official Visit to Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 6 (acn) Panamanian President Martin Torrijos Espino
concluded a three-day official visit to Cuba that contributed to the
strengthening of friendship ties and cooperation between the two
countries.

The Panamanian leader was seen off at the Jose Marti International
airport in Havana by Cuban First VP Jose Ramon Machado Ventura and by
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.

During the last day of his visit on Monday, Torrijos held official talks
with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro and received the Jose Marti
Order, the highest honor granted by the Cuban Council of State.

Also on Monday, he unveiled a monument built to pay homage to his late
father, Omar Torrijos, and laid a floral wreath at the monument of Cuban
National Hero Jose Marti at the Revolution Square in Havana.

The Panamanian delegation was comprised of First Lady Vivian Fernandez
de Torrijos; First VP and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro; the
President of the Panamanian National Assembly, Raul Rodriguez; and
Gisela Alvarez de Porras, Minister of Commerce and Industries.

This was Torrijos’s sixth visit to Cuba. The most recent one was on
April 30, 2008, on the occasion of the First Cuba-Panama
Intergovernmental Joint Commission.


Concluyó Presidente de Panamá visita oficial a Cuba

Cuban and Panamanian Presidents Hold Official Talks

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 6 (acn) Cuban President Raul Castro and his Panamanian
counterpart Martin Torrijos Espino held official talks on Monday at the
Palace of the Revolution in Havana as part of the latter’s official
visit to the Caribbean nation.

According to Granma news daily, the meeting reaffirmed the healthy state
of relations between the peoples and governments of the two countries
and the desire to continue working to strengthen them in the future.

Raul and Torrijos discussed the economic, social and political tasks
ahead for both nations amid the complex international situation and the
consequences of climate change. Bilateral relations and multilateral and
regional issues were also on the agenda.

President Torrijos congratulated the Cuban people on the 50th
anniversary of the Revolution and thanked Cuba for its collaboration in
training Panamanian doctors and recalled that a group of them who
graduated from the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana are
already working in his country.

For his part, Raul praised the human qualities of the graduates and
their willingness to work in remote communities. He also expressed
Cuba’s gratitude to Panama for its solidarity and the assistance
received after three hurricanes hit the island last year.

The Cuban president also expressed interest in the project to expand the
Panama Canal and asked Torrijos about the characteristics of the boats
that will be able to cross the channel when the widening project
concludes and how that will affect the Panamanian economy.

Sostienen conversaciones oficiales Raúl y Martin Torrijos

Fidel Castro Bestowed ‘Omar Torrijos Order’

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 6 (acn) The ‘Division General Omar Torrijos Order’ in
its degree of Great Extraordinary Cross, was granted on Monday by
visiting Panamanian President Martin Torrijos Espino to the leader of
the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.

The decoration was received by Cuban President Raul Castro from the
hands of the visiting Panamanian leader during a ceremony at the Palace
of the Revolution in Havana.

During the ceremony, Marin Torrijos recalled that when Cuba was
submitted to diplomatic isolation, his late father, Gen. Martin
Torrijos, resumed diplomatic relations with the Caribbean nation and
traveled to Havana.

He added that Fidel Castro deserves the Order because of his courage,
his determination, his loyalty to his principles and for his immense
solidarity with Panama.

He also recalled that Fidel always supported the independence of Panama
and the right of its people to have full control of the Canal.

Upon receiving the Order on behalf of Fidel Castro, Raul thanked the
Panamanian Government for its decision and made reference to the legacy
of Gen. Omar Torrijos.

For his part, Jose Miyar Barrueco, Secretary of the Cuban Council of
State, said that the administration of Martin Torrijos in Panama has
brought a deep change in bilateral relations that are now based on
mutual understanding and cooperation.

Also present in the ceremony were the President of the Cuban National
Assembly (Parliament), Ricardo Alarcon; the VP of the Council of
Ministers, Ricardo Cabrisas; Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque; and
Culture Minister Abel Prieto.

Otorga condecoración a Fidel el Presidente de Panamá

lunes, 5 de enero de 2009

Cuban President Raul Castro’s Speech at Celebrations for the 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution

SPEECH MADE BY ARMY GENERAL RAUL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE STATE COUNCIL AND THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF CUBA, AT THE COMMEMORATION OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION. SANTIAGO DE CUBA, JANUARY 1ST, 2009, “YEAR OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRUMPH.”

Men and women from Santiago;

People from Oriente;

Combatants of the Ejército Rebelde, of the underground struggle and of every combat in defense of the Revolution throughout these 50 years;

Compatriots;

In a day like this, our first thoughts are for those who fell in this long struggle. They constitute a paradigm and a symbol of the efforts and sacrifices of millions of Cubans. Closely united in the clamor of battle, waging the powerful weapons embodied in Fidel’s leadership, his teachings and his example, we have learned how to transform our dreams into a reality; how to keep our heads cool and our confidence in the face of dangers and threats; how to get over the big setbacks; how to turn every challenge into a victory and to overcome adversity, no matter how insurmountable they might have seem.

Those of us who have had the privilege to experience the intensity of this stage of our history are well aware of the truth contained in that alert he issued that January 8, 1959, during his first speech after entering the capital:

“The tyranny has been overthrown. Our joy is immense. However, much remains to be done. We shall not deceive ourselves believing that in the future everything will be easier, because perhaps everything will be more difficult,” he said.

For the first time, the Cuban people had attained political power. This time, with Fidel, the mambises entered Santiago de Cuba leaving behind exactly 60 years of absolute domination by the emerging US imperialism, which did not take long to show its real purposes by preventing the Liberation Army from entering this city.

The great confusion and above all the enormous frustration caused by the US intervention had been left way behind. But the Mambí Army, despite its formal dismantling, always preserved its fighting spirit and the ideas that led Céspedes, Agramonte, Gómez, Maceo and so many other heroes and independence combatants to take up arms.

For over fifty years our people would endure corrupted governments and new US interventions, the Machado tyranny and the frustrated revolution that overthrew him. Later, in 1952, the coup d’état dealt with the support of the US administration, reinstated the dictatorship. This formula was commonly applied in those years to ensure its dominion in Latin America.

It was clear to us that the armed struggle was the only way. Again, the revolutionaries would have to face –as Martí before us—the dilemma of the necessary war for the independence that was cut short in 1898.

Thus, the Ejército Rebelde took up again the weapons of the mambises and after the triumph was forever transformed into the unbeaten Revolutionary Armed Forces.

The Centennial Generation, which in 1953 stormed the Moncada’s and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes’ barracks, was inspired in Marti’s important legacy and his humanistic global vision reaching beyond the attainment of national liberation.

Speaking in historical terms, a short time would pass from the moment the mambises’ dreams were frustrated to the triumph of the War of Liberation. Early in that period, Mella, one of the founding members of our first communist party and of the FEU (University Students Federation), became the legitimate heir and the bridge connecting Marti’s thoughts to the most advanced ideas.

In those years, the conscience and action of workers and farmers matured and a genuine, valiant and patriotic intelligentsia was formed which has accompanied them to the present. Then, the Cuban school, as a loyal repository of the fighting traditions of its predecessors, planted them in the best of the new generations.

Right after the triumph it became evident for every humble man and woman that the Revolution was like a social cataclysm of justice knocking on every door, from the large palaces on the 5th Avenue, in the capital of the country, to the poorest shanty in the remotest mountain or plain field.

The revolutionary laws not only fulfilled the program that inspired the Moncada but also went far beyond it in the logical evolution of the process. At the same time, they set a precedent for peoples of Our America, which 200 years back had started the movement for the emancipation from colonialism.

But, in Cuba the history of the Americas would take a different turn. Nothing morally valuable has been alien to the turmoil that even before January 1st, 1959, started to sweep away opprobrium and inequity while opening the way to the enormous effort of all the people determined to give itself everything it deserves and that it has built with its own sweat and blood.

Millions of Cubans, men and women, have been workers, students or soldiers; sometimes all of these as the circumstances have demanded.

Nicolas Guillén’s masterly verses synthesized what the January 1959 triumph brought to our people. “I have what I was meant to have,” he said in one of his poems, referring not to material wealth but to being the masters of our own destiny.

This victory is twice as worthy for it has been attained despite the unhealthy and vindictive hatred of the powerful neighbor.

The promotion and support of sabotage and banditry; the Playa Girón [Bay of Pigs] invasion; the blockade and other economic, political and diplomatic aggressions; the permanent slandering campaign aimed at denigrating the Cuban Revolution and its leaders; the October [Missile] Crisis; the hijackings of and attacks on civilian planes and sea crafts; the state terrorism, with its terrible result of 3478 dead and 2099 maimed; the attempts on the life of Fidel and other leaders; the murder of Cuban workers, farmers, fishermen, students, diplomats and combatants; these and many other crimes bear witness to the stubborn insistence on putting out, at any cost, the beacon of justice and honor that January 1st meant to so many.

One way or another, with more or less aggressiveness, every US administration has tried to impose a regime change in Cuba. Resistance has been the key word and the explanation of every one of our victories throughout this half century of continued fighting when we have consistently acted on our own and taken our own risks notwithstanding the extensive and decisive solidarity we have received.

For many years, Cuban revolutionaries have abided by Martí’s apothegm: “Freedom is most precious and one must either accept to live without it or be determined to buy it for its price.”

On the 30th anniversary of the victory, Fidel said at this square: “We are here because we have put up a resistance.” Ten years later, in 1999, from this same balcony, he said that the Special Period was “the most extraordinary page of revolutionary and patriotic glory and firmness […] when we were left absolutely alone in the West, only 90 miles away from the United States, and we decided to continue forward.” End of quote. We repeat the same thing today.

We have firmly resisted --far from any fanaticism-- based on sound convictions, and on the resolution of all of the people to defend them at any cost. Presently, our glorious Five Heroes are a living example of that unshakable determination. (Applause and exclamations)

Today, we are not alone on this side of the ocean facing the empire, as it was the case in the 1960s when in January 1962 the United States of America forced on the OAS the absurd expulsion of Cuba, the country which had shortly before been the victim of an invasion organized by the US administration and escorted to our coasts by its own warships. Actually, as it has been proven, that expulsion was the prelude to a direct military intervention only prevented by the deployment of the Soviet nuclear missiles leading to the October Crisis, known to the world as the Missile Crisis.

Today, the Revolution is stronger than ever; it has never failed to stand by its principles, not even in the most difficult circumstances. This truth cannot be changed in the least even if some get tired or even renounce their history as they forget that life is in itself an eternal fight.

Does it mean there is less danger? No, it doesn’t. Let’s not entertain any illusions. As we commemorate this half century of victories, it is time to reflect on the future, on the next fifty years when we shall continue to struggle incessantly.

The observation of the current disturbances in the contemporary world tells us that the coming years will not be easier. This is the truth; I am not saying this to scare anyone.

We should also keep in mind what Fidel told us all, but especially the youth, at the University of Havana on November 17, 2005: “This country could destroy itself, this Revolution could destroy itself, but they [the enemy] cannot destroy it. We could destroy it ourselves, and it would only be our fault,” he argued.

In the face of this possibility, I ask myself:

What is the guarantee that such a horrible thing would not happen to our people?

How could we avoid such a numbing blow that we would need much time to recover from and to attain victory again?

I am speaking on behalf of all those who have been fighting from the moment the first shots were fired on the walls of the Moncada barracks 55 years ago and of those who fulfilled heroic internationalist missions.

Of course, I am also speaking on behalf of those who fell in the wars of independence and more recently in the War of Liberation. I speak on behalf of them all, and on behalf of Abel and Jose Antonio, of Camilo and Che, when I say that this demands foremost from tomorrow’s leaders that they never forget that this is a Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble; (Applause) that they should never be misled by the enemy’s siren songs and be aware that, given its very essence, the enemy will never cease to be aggressive, treacherous and dominant; that they should never distance themselves from our workers, our farmers and the people at large; that the party members must prevent the destruction of the Party. Let’s learn from history.

If they act consistently, they will always have the support of the people, even if they make mistakes which do not breach basic principles. But, if their actions were inconsistent with such principles, they would even lack the strength and the opportunity to rectify, since they would fail to have the moral authority that the masses only grant to those who never back from the struggle. They could end up incapacitated for tackling internal and external dangers and unable to preserve the work that is the fruit of the blood and the sacrifices of many generations of Cubans.

Nobody should have any doubt that if that would ever happen our people would put up a fight, and today’s mambises would be in the frontline; that they would never be ideologically disarmed nor would they ever let down their sword. (Applause and exclamations)

It befits the historical leadership of the Revolution to prepare the new generations to take up the enormous responsibility of continuing to carry forward the revolutionary process.

This heroic city of Santiago and all of Cuba witnessed the sacrifices of thousands of compatriots, the rage accumulated for so many lives cut short by crime, the endless pain of our mothers and the sublime courage of its sons and daughters.

This was the birthplace of a young revolutionary killed when he was only 22 years old, a man who is a symbol of that willingness to make sacrifices, of that purity, courage and serenity, and of that love for our people: Frank País García.

This eastern land was the birthplace of the Revolution. It was here that the call of duty was made in La Demajagua and on July 26th; it was here that we landed in the Granma and started the fight on the mountains and the plains, the same that extended later to the entire island. As Fidel said in History Will Absolve Me, “every day here looks like it will be again the day of Yara and Baire.”

Never again shall poverty, ignominy, abuse and injustice return to our land!

Never again shall the heart of our mothers be filled with pain and the soul of every honest Cuban succumb to shame!

Such is the firm resolution of a nation on a war footing; a nation that is aware of its duty and proud of its history.(Applause)

Our people are well aware of every shortcoming in the work they have built with their own hands and defended with their own lives. We, the revolutionaries are our strongest critics. We have never hesitated to publicly discuss our flaws and mistakes. There are plenty of past and recent examples.

Since October 10, 1868, disunity had been the main cause of our defeats. After January 1st, 1959, the unity forged by Fidel has been the guarantee of our victories. Our people have been able to preserve that unity despite all of the ups and downs and the attempts at division, and have rightly placed common aspirations above differences, crushing meanness with the strength of collectivism and generosity.

Revolutions can only advance and endure when they are carried forward by the people. The full understanding of this truth and the consistent and unshakable action carried forward have been decisive elements in the victory of the Cuban Revolution over its enemies, and over seemingly insurmountable difficulties and challenges.

As we arrive at the first half century of the victorious Revolution, let’s pay homage first to our wonderful people and to its exemplary decision, courage, loyalty and internationalist and fraternal vocation; to its extraordinary show of will, its spirit of sacrifice and its confidence in victory, in the Party, in its maximum leader and, above all, in itself. (Applause)

I know that I am expressing the feelings of my compatriots and of many revolutionaries in the world, when I pay homage to the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz. (Applause and exclamations)

We know that a man alone doesn’t make history, but some men are indispensable as they can have a decisive influence in the course of events. Fidel is one of them; nobody doubts it, not even his most bitter enemies.

Ever since his early youth he adopted as his own one of Martí’s thoughts: “All of the glory in the world fits in a kernel of corn.” This he turned into his shield from everything that is superfluous or transient, into his main weapon to transform praises and honors --even if well-deserved—into greater humility, honesty, fighting spirit and love for truth, which he has invariably placed above all else.

He made reference to these ideas 50 years ago in this same square. His words that night are absolutely valid today.

At this very special moment when we think of our past journey and particularly of the long way ahead, when we reiterate our commitment to the people and to our martyrs, allow me to conclude by recalling the premonitory alert and the call to combat made by the Commander in Chief in this historic place on January 1st, 1959, as he indicated:

“We do not believe that all of the problems can be easily solved; we know that the path is fraught with obstacles, but we are men of faith, we are used to facing great difficulties. Our people can be sure of one thing, and that is that we can make one or many mistakes, but we will never steal and we will never betray you.”

And he added:

“We shall never let ourselves be carried away by vanity or ambition, […] there can be no greater reward or satisfaction than the fulfillment of our duty,” he concluded.

On this date full of significance and symbolism, let’s reflect on these ideas which constitute a guidance for true revolutionaries; let’s do it with the satisfaction of having fulfilled our duty until the present and having behind us a life lived with dignity in the most intense and fruitful half century of our history. Let’s do it with the firm commitment that we will always be able to proudly claim in this land:

Glory to our heroes and martyrs! (Exclamations)

Long live Fidel! (Exclamations)

Long live the Revolution! (Exclamations)

Long live Free Cuba! (Exclamations)

(Ovation).

¡Jamás regresará el dolor al corazón de las madres ni la vergüenza al alma de cada cubano honesto!

Discurso pronunciado por el Presidente de los Consejos de Estado y de Ministros de la República de Cuba, General de Ejército Raúl Castro Ruz, en el acto por el aniversario 50 del triunfo de la Revolución, efectuado en Santiago de Cuba, el 1ro. de enero de 2009, "Año del 50 aniversario del triunfo de la Revolución".

Panama’s President Reiterates Friendship Relations with Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 4 (acn) After arriving in this capital city on Saturday, Panama’s President Martin Torrijos said he came to reiterate bilateral friendship relations with Cuba on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Revolution.

“Visiting Cuba is always a privilege, particularly in such a significant occasion for the Cuban people and for Latin America,” said the Panamanian President upon his arrival at the Jose Marti International Airport. Torrijos added that he belongs to a generation of Panamanians who grew up admiring the achievements of the Cuban Revolution.

Panama and Cuba have shared mutual solidarity in difficult circumstances, said the head of state, who will meet with Cuban President Raul Castro and will also unveil a monument raised in honor of General Omar Torrijos, among other activities on his agenda.

He said that every time he has visited Cuba, he has seen the opening of new ways for mutual understanding, development and the increase of bilateral exchange in the social and economic fields.

“Many of our achievements in Panama are the result of our sharing of experience with the Cuban people and we are very thankful for that,” said Torijos.

Cuba and Panama maintain excellent bilateral cooperation relations, particularly in the fields of health, education and sports. Medical cooperation between both countries began in July 2005 with the implementation of the Miracle Operation free-surgery program, under which over 32, 400 Panamanians underwent surgery in Cuba and at Panama´s Omar Torrijos Eye Hospital.

Cubannews/lach

Presidente de Panamá reitera lazos de amistad con Cuba

jueves, 1 de enero de 2009

Raul Castro Presides over Ceremony Marking 50th Anniversary of the Revolution

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba, Jan 1 (acn) The central ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution is underway at the Céspedes Park, in this eastern city, and it is being presided over by Cuban President Raul Castro.

Some 3,000 Santiago citizens, representing the Cuban people, are attending the ceremony, in which Raul Castro is scheduled to give the key speech following the statements by representatives of several generations of Cubans.

The documentary film Ode to the Revolution, by Roberto Chile, was screened in the beginning of the ceremony, which takes part in front of the old City Hall of Santiago, where Fidel Castro proclaimed the revolutionary triumph in 1959. The event’s agenda also includes a gala with the performance of local artists.
Cubanews/lach

Preside Raúl acto central por aniversario de la Revolución

President Raul Castro Pays Tribute to Cuba’s Martyrs

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba, Jan 1 (acn) Cuban President Raul Castro today paid tribute to Cuba’s heroes and martyrs at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in this eastern city as part of commemorations of the 50th Anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

Raul laid wreaths in the name of Fidel Castro and his own at the mausoleum that treasures the remains of Cuban National Hero Jose Marti, as well as at the pantheon of the martyrs of the 1953 attack on the Moncada military barracks and at the monument raised to Cuban internationalist soldiers killed in action.

Revolution Commander Juan Almeida Bosque and Army Corps General Ramon Espinosa Martin, Chief of the Western Army, also paid tribute to the Cuban martyrs.

Raul Castro watched the change of the guard of honor permanently staged by cadets of the Revolutionary Armed Forces at the tomb of Jose Marti.
Cubanews/lach

Rinde Raúl homenaje a los mártires de la Patria

Fidel Castro Sends the Cuban People Congratulations Message

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 1 (acn) Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro sent a congratulations message to the Cuban people on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution; the message was aired on Cuban radio and TV at 12 am, January 1st, 2009.

“A few hours from the upcoming 50th Anniversary of the Triumph, I congratulate our heroic people.”

Fidel Castro Ruz December 31st, 2008, 7:00 pm

Raul Castro to Address the Cuban People Today from Santiago de Cuba

Havana, Cuba, Jan 1 (acn) Cuban President Raul Castro will address the Cuban people during central commemorations today at 6:00 pm for the 50th anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, which will take place at the historic Cespedes Park, in eastern Santiago de Cuba city.

Some 3 000 Santiago citizens, representing all Cubans, will gather in front of Santiago’s old City Hall to commemorate the victorious entrance of the Rebel Army in that city and the speech given by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro, in which he proclaimed the definitive independence of the Cuban people.

The famous expression by Fidel, when he said: “At last we have reached Santiago!” will mark the beginning of the celebration, which will count on the performance of outstanding local artists, Granma daily reported.

Also scheduled during the rally is the screening of a documentary film on the history of the Cuban Revolution. The event will be aired on Cuban national and international radio and Television.
Cubanews/lach/

Hablará hoy Raúl en Santiago de Cuba

Cuban Leinier Domínguez among the World’s Chess Elite

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 30 (acn) Cuban Grand Master (GM) Leinier Dominguez remains among the world’s chess elite according to the ranking of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) that was updated on Tuesday.

Dominguez now places 23rd in the list with an ELO rating of 2717 points, which makes him the top player in Latin America and the second in the Americas – only behind American Gata Kamsky who places 17th with 2725 units.

The outstanding chess player, who was included in the list of the Top Ten Cuban sportspeople of 2008, won the World Chess Blitz Championship held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, last November and remained undefeated during the World Chess Olympiad held also in November in Dresden, Germany.

The FIDE world ranking is led by former world champion GM Vesselin Topalov of Bulgaria with an ELO rating of 2796 points and he is followed by reigning world champion GM Viswanathan Anad (2791) of India.

The Top Ten also includes Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk (2779), Russian GM Alexander Morozevich (2771), Azerbaijan’s GM Teimor Radjabov (2761), Russian GMs Dmitry Jakovenko (2760) and Vladimir Kramnik (2759), Hungarian GM Peter Leko (2751) and Slovakian Sergei Movsesian (2751).

Cubano Leinier se confirma en la elite del ajedrez