Odds and ends

• Herald: The UN is awaiting an invitation to Havana to talk to Cuban officials about the North Korean freighter with weapons aboard.

• More reporting from the Herald on the scam whereby immigrants fake Cuban origin, complete with forged Cuban birth certificate, to get the fast-track treatment and federal benefits that only Cubans receive.

• How does Cuba handle the human rights question?  Check out this infographic from the state news agency AIN.

• NPR interviews Arturo Sandoval, the Cuban trumpet virtuoso who will soon be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He tells how he was touched by Dizzy Gillespie (who himself was influenced by Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo).

• In El Mundo, Rui Ferreira reports on Miami families who send their kids to spend summer vacation with family in Cuba.  There’s another story to be written about those who go to Cuba for medical care.

• Diario de Cuba assembles an all-Cuban dream team of ballplayers playing both on the island and here.

• El Pais: After lots of back-and-forth, Brazil is going to contract for the services of 4,000 Cuban doctors.  More from Global Post.

• From the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, a cholera warning for travelers.

• TIME’s Tim Padgett, writing in the Herald on Daniel Shoer Roth, who is writing a biography of the late Bishop Agustin Roman.

Quotable, and very smooth

“It is not possible to make human rights policy as a weapon of political and ideological struggle.  The world must be convinced that all countries of the world should assume their responsibility, ourselves included.  Who casts the first stone without having a glass house?  We have ours in Brazil.  Hence I commit myself to speak of human rights from a multilateral perspective.  I believe this is a commitment of all civilized peoples.  There are aspects that need to be considered.  In fact it is something that we have to improve in the world in general.  We cannot think of human rights as a rock that is cast in one direction only, and not in the other.”

      – Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil, in Tuesday’s Granma

Dilma's visit

• The Wall Street Journal on the visit of the Brazilian President to Cuba, and Brazil’s stronger role in regional affairs.

• Bloomberg: Yoani Sanchez saw herself in Dilma, and was disappointed in Dilma.

• AFP: Brazil’s Odebrecht announced a 10-year agreement to work on sugar production and milling in Camaguey.

• At Diario de Cuba, a worry from Los Angeles that Brazil’s engagement is supporting the “Chinese model.”  I don’t know that Brazil is supporting any political model in Cuba, but it is trying to assist in economic reform and improvement.  My guess is that the Brazilian government would say that Cuba’s politics should be decided by Cubans.

Brazil stays in the game

Reuters raises the curtain on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s visit to Cuba next week, where she will continue her predecessor’s policy of economic cooperation with Cuba, including the major project of the port of Mariel.

Cuba Standard, meanwhile, found a Folha de Sao Paolo article where a Brazilian official, just back from Cuba, talked about the possibilities for Brazilian companies to invest in ethanol production in Cuba and declared, “Fidel’s resistance in this field is being overcome.”

Let’s hope that’s the case. Brazilian investment in Cuban ethanol production would bring world-class technology and know-how to Cuba, generate jobs, enable Cuba to cut oil imports and foreign exchange expenditures, and provide sorely needed revival to an economically and culturally important sector of the Cuban countryside.

Coincidentally, Brazil just granted Yoani Sanchez a visa to visit Brazil to attend a film screening.

Earlier notes on Brazil’s engagement with Cuba here and here. A Cuban promotional video on the Mariel port project is here. It’s a huge infrastructure project that expands Mariel’s capacity and allows for all the port and industrial facilities along the southern shore of the Bay of Havana to be dismantled and replaced with non-industrial development.

Odds and ends

• AP: A Cuban bank says it has extended credits to more than 13,000 farmers at interest rates ranging from three to seven percent. That figure refers to the number of new private farmers who have received one or more loans; see this interview in Juventud Rebelde with bank President Ileana Estevez.

• New York Times: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is in Beijing talking with our friends in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, keeping our differences in mind but working for now on the “shared vision” thing.

• The New York Times looks up close at Americans’ people-to-people travel experiences under President Obama’s new rules.

• Reuters: PSA International of Singapore will operate the container terminal at the renovated, expanded port facilities in Mariel. The project is being financed by Brazil, and former President Lula da Silva toured the site with Raul Castro last month (see stories from AP and El Pais). Also, here’s a ten-minute Cuban promotional video about the project, which also describes the improvements to Havana’s bayfront when port and industrial activities are moved from there to Mariel.

• The Times’ Larry Rohter on Yoani Sanchez.

• The United Kingdom and Cuba signed a statement that signals British interest in doing business in Cuba’s tourism sector and supporting the process of economic reforms.

• Reuters: Cuban cell phone usage, now at one million lines, has tripled since 2008.

• AP on Cuba’s black market.

• Hugo Chavez’ illness caused lots of thinking about where Cuba would be without him, and without the economic relationship with Venezuela. A sampling: from the Economist, from Professor Stephen Wilkinson of London Metropolitan University, and from the AP.

• Some dissidents spoke up in Cuba in opposition to Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart’s effort to repeal President Obama’s policy that allows Cuban Americans to visit family and send remittances as they wish. They also called for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to the Damas de Blanco, Oscar Elias Biscet, and Oswaldo Paya, something I had missed until I read the blog of Paris-based writer Zoe Valdes, who chided them for seeking a Nobel as if they were asking for “little tubes of deodorant from the ration book booth.”

• EFE: Seven of the former Cuban political prisoners that are now in Spain went on a hunger strike last month to protest the living conditions afforded them by the Spanish government and relief agencies. They were expelled from their facility June 30, the wire service reports, after “physical aggression among themselves and threats to the personnel” of the facility where they were staying.