Odds and ends

• There was an explosion at a munitions depot in southwestern Havana on Saturday night; it was under control within an hour and there were no injuries, according to this statement from the Cuban defense ministry.

• Turnaround? Granma province is expecting to double rice output this year, and the turn to private farmers is the reason, Reuters reports from Bayamo.

• A great article from the Herald’s Frances Robles from rural Haiti on the Cuban medical missions there and the noble work they are doing right now to fight cholera.

• Wausau Daily Herald: A Cuban-American heart surgeon from Wisconsin goes to Cuba to collaborate with surgeons there, hits big snags, will go back anyway.

• Cuba is making moves for the “snowbird” market of long-term winter hotel stays, the Globe and Mail reports.

• Alberto Granado, Che’s buddy who called him “Fuser” throughout the motorcycle road trip movie, died Saturday in Havana.

• Sun-Sentinel: A proposal to run ferry service to Cuba from Tampa and other Florida ports, costing passengers half what they pay for airfare.

• Blogger Jorge Ferrer writes from Barcelona about Senator Marco Rubio: “He has not set foot in Cuba in his life and wants others to imitate him.” Cuban Americans, Ferrer writes, “fled castrismo looking for freedom but Marco Rubio, who knows about the island what I know about Kazakhstan…does not want them to go.”

• Granma has been running snippets of Fidel Castro speeches, leaving it up to readers to figure out how the principles in them might be related to current events. “One does not negotiate principles” was the headline of one that ran the day before the Alan Gross trial began. It included this, from 1980: “And we are sure that neither this nor the revolutionary generations will negotiate over principles!”