Odds and ends

• The Wall Street Journal reports on the economics of Cuba’s medical missions and on the Bush Administration’s program that gives Cuban medical personnel who seek asylum in third countries a fast track to come to the United States. Nearly 1,600 have come to the United States under that program, the article says.

• Via Penultimos Dias, an article (pdf) in Harper’s on a writer’s 30-day experiment living in Cuba on a regular Cuban peso salary.

• Financial Times on the Cuba-Venezuelan fiber optic cable.

• Yoani Sanchez recounts her conversation with visiting American actress Julia Stiles.

• A trial is under way in the case of 26 deaths of patients at a psychiatric hospital last year. Reuters story here, Granma’s here, and other links are compiled at Penultimos Dias.

• The Engineer, a British magazine, says a U.K. company is going to work with Cuba’s sugar ministry to build power plants fueled by bagasse, the waste product of sugar milling.

• Convergence: Granma calls the Posada Carriles trial “the farce in El Paso,” and Babalu calls it a “kangaroo court.”

• For the record, two articles on a story I didn’t note at the time, the January 6 cabinet changes: from AP and La Jornada. I discussed them on CNN Spanish, here.

• Off topic, who would have known that the Cosa Nostra is into renewable energy? This is from a Wikileaked cable from the U.S. consulate in Naples, June 2009: “The Sicilian Mafia’s principal activities are drug trafficking, extortion, rigging of public contracts and trafficking in persons, though the mob has also invested heavily in legal enterprises in the construction and food industries, and more recently, wind energy.”