Odds and ends

• According to Hugo Chavez, the Cienfuegos oil refinery is about to start production after completion of a joint Cuban-Venezuelan refurbishment project. The refinery, built with Soviet aid and technology, has been idle since the early 1990’s when the Soviet Union collapsed.

• Will they run? El Nuevo covers two websites urging Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez to challenge the Diaz-Balarts.

• Rui Ferreira hears that Havana’s annual December film festival will include “The Lives of Others,” the 2006 film about Stasi internal spying and persecution in the former East Germany.

• And in the New York Sun, a review of “Soy Cuba” (1964), a Soviet-Cuban collaboration that the reviewer aptly calls “antique agitprop,” now on DVD.

• An affectionate profile of Versailles, where the Fidel death watch continues, and the death itself will, apparently, be bad for business.