Odds and ends

• The Washington Post reports on two federal programs that cannot die: the unseen TV Marti and within it, the airplane that carries the transmitter that has not succeeded in overcoming Cuban jamming.  The government continues to carry the cost of the plane and the transmitter but it does not fly because “that’s what the customer wants,” the contractor says.

• Historian Michael Beschloss tweets a map of western Cuba with President Kennedy’s notes indicating missile sites, 1962.

• Granma marks the 16^th anniversary of the death of Italian national Fabio diCelmo, killed in a terrorist hotel bombing in Havana.

• Café Fuerte: A group of batistianos, and they don’t mind being called that, have their annual celebration in Miami Saturday night.  Here, a video from novelist Zoe Valdes, part of an interview she did with Fulgencio Rubén Batista y Godínez, the ex-president’s son, about Batista family life.

• Trabajadores has a story about a new blog on the block, from British Ambassador Timothy Cole.

• Jamaica Observer: After a seven-year course of study, 68 Jamaican graduates of Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine are returning to Jamaica to begin practicing medicine.

• Havana Times rounds up Parque Central opinions on Cuban players in the big leagues.  My musings on the same subject here.