Odds and ends

• TelecomTV, a British web-based news service on the telecom and IT business, says Britain’s Cable and Wireless plans to run an undersea cable from Jamaica to Cuba to give Cuba a new connection to the Internet. Then, C&W hopes to buy out Telcom Italia’s share of Etecsa, the Cuban telecom monopoly provider of wireline and wireless telephony. The talk of a Cuba-Venezuela cable, last noted here (see fifth item) seems to remain just talk.

• El Nuevo: Aroldis Chapman of the Cincinnati Reds looks forward to pitching in Miami against the Marlins, “in front of so many Cubans.” He also says his control and off-speed pitches are improved.

• Tracey Eaton on the experience (and the difficulties) of reporting from Cuba. He discusses his own experience and comments on a Herald story on two recent books by reporters who worked there.

• It’s the thought that counts: El Pais reports that Spain’s prime minister planned to give President Obama a gift of a photo of an African-American who went to Spain to fight on the republican side of the Spanish civil war. The volunteer brigadista traveled to Spain from the United States, but it turns out he was Cuban. His identity is still unknown.

• In El Nuevo Herald, Paquito D’Rivera gives a welcome of sorts to “my old friend Bobby Carcasses,” the multi-instrumentalist and Cuban jazz pioneer who gave a concert in Miami last Friday night. El Nuevo has photos of the concert and the Herald’s Jordan Levin profiled him here.