Odds and ends

• In Global Post, Nick Miroff on Cuba’s sigh of relief after last Sunday’s Chavez victory in Venezuela.

• AFP: New data from the National Statistics Office (see public health section in right-hand column here) shows that consolidation and cost-cutting in the health sector are continuing.  There are 12,738 locations for health care delivery – including everything from the biggest hospital to the smallest one-doctor consultorio – 465 fewer than before.  There are 161 hospitals operating, 25 percent fewer than before.

• Reuters on the foreign executives arrested apparently as part of an anti-corruption crackdown, awaiting charges for more than a year.

• Scientific American: Looks like an opossum to me, but it’s called an almiquí, nocturnal and venomous, endemic to Cuba and thought to be extinct until a team of Cuban and Japanese researchers found a bunch out east in the Humboldt National Park between Moa and Baracoa. 

• Granma: An investigation into last month’s massive blackout finds that the cause was human error at a time when operators were scrambling to handle peak demand.

• Spain’s consul general in Havana attended the Carromero trial last week in Bayamo,  pronounced it “clean, open, and procedurally impeccable,” and said the accused was defended “very well.”  The BBC’s Fernando Ravsberg agrees, wrote down the defense lawyer’s name in case he ever needs a lawyer, and described the day-long session here.

• The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford on the new Cuban residential real estate market.

• One more from the BBC: as Cuba’s reform czar Marino Murillo visits Hanoi, the editor of BBC’s Vietnamese-language service on “What Cuba can learn from Vietnam.”