Odds and ends

• The Herald has a terrific report on Humberto Rios, a Cuban who won a prize for innovating and spreading organic farming techniques. He accepted the award in San Francisco, but it’s not clear if his $150,000 in prize money can be wired to him.

• The Economist looks coolly, and former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda a little less so, at la coyuntura.

• Cubaencuentro: Arturo Lopez Levy looks at the exchange between Carlos Alberto Montaner and Silvio Rodriguez and finds Montaner’s “laundry-list” approach wanting.

• TIME: A look back at the Elian Gonzalez saga, ten years later.

• LA Times: Casa Don Rolando, a restaurant well worth visiting.

• Livan teaches us: old guys can still play.

• Europa Press: A Spanish official visits Cuba and gets assurances that 23 million Euros owed to companies from Asturias will be paid. Payments to these and other companies were frozen last year.

• Another hunger strike has begun, this one by Yamil Dominguez, a Cuban American with U.S. citizenship who is in Cuban prison. According to CubaNet and Spain’s El Mundo, he was convicted in 2007 of offenses related to alien smuggling, but he claims that he only took his yacht to Cuba because a storm forced him off his Miami-Cancun course. Dominguez’ demand is for his own freedom.

• Progreso Weekly translates the article (cited earlier here) by Cuban historian Esteban Morales about corruption.