Cuba said this week it will allow some stores to sell food, personal hygiene and other consumer goods in U.S. dollars and will eliminate a 10% tax on the greenback, an effort to rake in more hard currency to purchase goods abroad.
A massive cloud of Saharan dust darkened much of Cuba on Wednesday and began to affect air quality in Florida, sparking warnings to people with respiratory illnesses to stay home. The dust cloud swept across the Atlantic from Africa over the past week, covering the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico since Sunday and hitting south Florida in the United States on Wednesday, authorities there said.
Javier Figueroa, currently head of the Argentine embassy in Cuba has been appointed as the next ambassador in the United Kingdom, and according to Clarin is an expert on Malvinas affairs. His time in Havana coincided with Cristina Fernandez daughter Florencia Kirchner medical internment, which impeded her from travelling back to Argentina.
The United States said on Wednesday it had added Cuba to a blacklist of countries that do not fully cooperate on counterterrorism, denouncing the presence of Colombian leftist guerrillas.
Argentine vice president Cristina Fernandez is back in Buenos Aires from Cuba with her daughter who has been under medical treatment in Havana for a year. The two immediately left for their home where they will comply with the mandatory fourteen day self isolation for any passengers arriving in Argentina from overseas because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Venezuela's state energy firm PDVSA has been shipping more oil this month to close ally Cuba, as tighter U.S. sanctions have worsened fuel shortages on the Caribbean island, according to sources.
An award-winning Cuban dissident who was detained this week announced on Thursday that he has been released without charge but barred from a planned trip to Europe for a meeting on human rights.
A day after Bolivia suspended diplomatic relations with Cuba, Havana accused its interim government of having sought to sabotage bilateral ties ever since it took power last year, partly under pressure from the Trump administration.
Bolivia on Friday announced it was breaking off diplomatic relations with long-time ally Cuba, the latest in a series of foreign policy reversals by the right-wing interim government.
Brazil has decided to suspend its participation in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a leftist regional body established by Venezuela, due to its failure to protect democracy, Brazil's foreign minister said on Thursday.