Odds and ends

• In El Pais, Leonardo Padura assesses the economic reform process and predicts the next steps: changes in migration law, opening to more foreign investment, and allowing cooperatives formed by workers and professionals.

• EFE: Dissident Darsi Ferrer will leave Cuba, coming to the United States as a refugee.

• Tres virtuoso Pancho Amat and his band performed at the Country Music Association Festival in Nashville; here’s a preview and a review.

• Articles on doctors trained in Cuba returning home: to Timor Leste (Guardian) and to Bolivia (Opinion).

• New blog on the block: Cuban New Yorker, by Professor Lisandro Perez of John Jay College, formerly of FIU.  It’s “about Cuba, about New York, but mostly about the intersection of the two.”

• AP: After complaints from his attorney, Cuba provides medical records of jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross.

• Diario de Cuba: Al Jazeera can’t stand the hassles and closes its Havana bureau, at the correspondent’s request.

• Here’s the announcement of the replacement of the ministers of Communications and Basic Industries, both by their deputies.