Odds and ends

· AFP: Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas wins the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize.

· From the UK magazine Cruise Critic, news of a new cruise that will originate in Havana, call in ports around Cuba and also in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, perhaps for passengers that can’t start their cruise in Havana. The company, Tropicana Cruises, will do heavy marketing in Russia.

· EFE: Three more political prisoners arrive in Spain, the first who are not part of the 75 arrested in the spring of 2003.

· Europa Press: The EU will review its Cuba policy next Monday but will not drop its 1996 Common Position, as Spain has proposed. On the eve of that meeting, Spain has replaced Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos, who led the push in Brussels. Health minister Trinidad Jimenez, formerly the foreign ministry’s Latin America chief, takes his place. Spain’s aid to Cuba amounts to 13 million Euros this year, and if the Common Position is maintained EU members will continue to engage with Cuba as they wish, although the EU as a whole will not.

· A reader sent this Cuban American’s very poignant view of living here, adjusting, and missing all that’s good about the island.