Odds and ends

• It’s nice to have readers in Camaguey and Hialeah and lots of other places – but last week a new reader appeared from Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Welcome.

• Last weekend, Cubans saw the pitcher El Duque Hernandez on state television for the first time since his defection. Fuera de Liga, a 2003 documentary on the Industriales baseball team on which El Duque played, was shown on television after being suppressed since it was produced. It includes ten minutes on Cubans who have left Cuba to play abroad, and El Duque is interviewed in that part. Reuters coverage in English is here, El Pais in Spanish is here. The El Pais report says the documentary was preceded by a discussion in which an announcer acknowledged that the film was banned until now.

• It’s the new year, why not say something nice about the U.S. Interests Section? The jokes and taunts that appeared on their electronic signboard are long gone. Now, it seems to be all news items. Last week, to their credit, they put up this item about a lawyer in a British court defending two men who had been detained and interrogated at Guantanamo, and face extradition to Spain:

“El abogado de dos ex detenidos en Guantánamo dijo este miércoles a un tribunal británico, que examina la extradición de ambos a España para ser juzgados por terrorismo, que el Gobierno español está "profundamente implicado" en el interrogatorio de ambos en la base naval de EEUU en Cuba.”