Odds and ends

·         As the 15^th round of Colombia peace talks proceed in Havana, Juventud Rebelde gives ample coverage to the Colombian government’s complaint that the guerrillas are dragging their feet and trying to add extraneous items to the agreed agenda.  Cuba acts as “guarantor” in the talks.

·         Herald: Panamanian officials say that some of the aircraft engines on the North Korean freighter seized in Panama were “brand new.”  They also say that “friends overseas” tell them that Cuba and North Korea have an arms trade agreement of uncertain scope; that the North Korean crewmen in detention are happy campers (air conditioning, clothes, food, cigarettes, time for soccer every day); and that while the crew have spoken to investigators they have declined to sign statements.

·         An “updating” of Cuba’s criminal justice procedures took effect October 1 and was explained by officials on a Mesa Redonda program.  Relatively minor offenses that had been handled in provincial courts will now be heard in municipal courts.  For certain minor offenses prosecutors will have discretion to impose administrative penalties (fines) rather than go to court to seek a prison sentence, although a defendant can insist on a court trial if he wishes.  The impact seems to be a streamlining and a shift of caseload to lower courts and, depending on how prosecutors use their discretion, lesser penalties for minor criminal offenses.

·         Canadian professor Steven Kimber makes the case for the Cuban Five in the Washington Post.

·         AP on the clash between el exilio and more recent Cuban immigrants.

·         Who’s investing in Cuba?  A smart B-School student figures it out at the bar at the Hotel Nacional.

·         Granma on the art of base stealing through the years.

·         EFE: The family of Oswaldo Paya, now living in Florida, acquires Spanish citizenship.

·         AP: A ceremony in the Colon cemetery in Havana to commemorate the terrorist downing of the Cubana airliner in Barbados in 1976.

·         In the National Interest, a look at the past and the future of Cuba’s intelligence services, “punching above their weight.”  The authors link to this interesting U.S. assessment (pdf): “Cuban Subversive Activities in Latin America, 1959-1968.”

·         In an advice column for Congress, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson owns up to his bumbling in Havana in 2011.

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.

Odds and ends

• Juventud Rebelde: There are now 436,432 Cubans working in the small entrepreneurial sector, nine percent more than were working last November.  18 percent of that number are employees, mainly in food service and transportation businesses.

• Reuters: 46,662 Cubans emigrated in 2012, the most since 1994.

• In Havana Times, Emilio Morales of the Havana Consulting Group estimates the economic impact of the half-million U.S. visitors to Cuba each year.

• In the Herald, columnist Fabiola Santiago writes that it is wrong for the United States to be granting larger numbers of visas for Cubans to visit or immigrate to the United States at a time when the Cuban government is engaged in misdeeds.  It’s hard to find a clearer argument in favor of punishing the people for their government’s actions.  Ugly.  She doesn’t mention ditching the sacrosanct Cuban Adjustment Act.

• Buy a fake birth certifícate for $10,000 or more, get yourself a bad sunburn, and present yourself as a Cuban – CNN on how non-Cubans fake Cuban citizenship to gain admission to the United States.

• CNN: Alan Gross was examined by U.S. doctors who traveled to Havana last month.  Background from last fall here.

• Internet monitor Renesys says that the Internet is getting faster in Cuba as satellite links are increasingly replaced by undersea cable connections.  (If you read the report, “latency” refers to speed of connection between a user in Cuba and a point outside Cuba; lower latency means higher speed.)

• Reuters on slugger Jose Daniel Abreu of Cienfuegos, who left Cuba and seems headed to the big leagues.  More from USA Today.

• This letter to the Economist from Stephen Purvis, the British businessman released from jail in Cuba, is well worth reading.  Note his observation that more are in jail than have been reported, and that there seems to be a particular risk for those who don’t come from Brazil, China, or Venezuela, i.e. those whose investments are not part of a government-to-government assistance program.

• AP: Some munitions are turning up in the Panamanian search of the seized North Korean freighter.  Panama’s work is done, CNN reports, and UN offials are now examining the cargo.

• Florida International University is digitizing interviews from its oral history project and has posted two about Operation Peter Pan: with Monsignor Brian Walsh and James Baker, director of an American school in Havana, both from 1997.

• Cuban American trumpet virtuoso Arturo Sandoval will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Odds and ends

• Your tax dollars at work: American Express pays a $5.2 million fine because its offices overseas sold airline tickets from third countries to Cuba – 14,000 tickets over six years.  AP notes that the Cuban government has complained about this and other fines, including one against an Italian bank for transactions it made between 2004 and 2008, before President Obama took office.

• Former players for the Industriales, the Havana baseball club, plan to play two games in Miami to celebrate the team’s 50^th anniversary.  The games will be part of a reunion celebration, with former players from Cuba coming to join others who now live in the United States.  Florida International University agreed to allow the use of its ballfield, but cancelled meekly at the last minute due to “contractual” reasons.  Pathetic.  The U.S. organizers are determined to find another venue but the dates and the event itself are in doubt.  (AP, El Nuevo Herald)  Attorney Jose Palli sums it all up in Diario las Americas.

• Dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, in El Nuevo, argues that Cuba should join NATO someday.

• In Juventud Rebelde, Fidel Castro writes a letter to the foreign delegations visiting Cuba for the celebration of the 60^th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks.  He gives a long account of the events of 60 years ago.  He also makes brief reference to the North Korean ship detained in Panama: “In recent days slander has been attempted against our Revolution, trying to present the chief of state and government of Cuba as tricking the United Nations and other chiefs of state, imputing two-faced conduct.”

• The International Court of Arbitration issued a $17 million judgment in favor of Chilean businessman Max Marambio, who ran a food company in Cuba, was accused of corruption in 2010, and was convicted in absentia in a Cuban court.

• For the record, here are the statements issued at the end of the U.S.-Cuba migration talks that took place in Washington earlier this month: the Cuban and the U.S. statement.  The migration accords provide for periodic talks to discuss migration issues and the functioning of the accords.

• Reuters: Just-published data on 2012 farm production show mixed results that are not enough to reduce food import costs significantly.  Looking at the data, production of root vegetables was up 4.5 percent over 2009, plantains up 32 percent, garden vegetables down 17 percent, grains up 15 percent, beans up 15 percent, citrus down 51 percent.  Sugar production remains low by historical standards at 1.4 million tons, but that amount is grown on one third the land in sugar production a decade ago and the yield per acre, while lower than that of the 1980’s, is higher than at any time in the past 20 years.