United States imposed new sanctions Thursday on Venezuela and Cuba and promised additional penalties against Nicaragua as the Trump administration laid out a hard-line policy toward countries the White House branded a “troika of tyranny.”
Cuba's tobacco planting season began this past week in the central Sancti Spiritus province, the country's second largest tobacco producer, while work to repair the damages caused by Hurricane Michael has commenced.
Cuba said this week it was doubling the amount of land it granted would-be farmers and the lengths of their leases in an effort to increase stagnating agricultural output. The state owns 80% of the land and leases most of that to farmers and cooperatives. The remainder is owned by some 400,000 private family farmers and their cooperatives.
Cuba is planning a series of potentially far-reaching changes, with a new constitution set to recognise the free market and private property, while dividing political powers between a president and a prime minister.
The Cuban government opened on Monday the 3rd Edition of International Convention and Exhibition of Cuban Industry (CubaIndustria 2018), seeking to attract foreign investors to revitalize the country's economy.
A Boeing 737 passenger jet carrying 105 people on a domestic flight in Cuba crashed on Friday shortly after takeoff from Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, officials and news media reported.
With tensions between NATO and Russia rising, the U.S. military is resurrecting a fleet to patrol the Atlantic Ocean and help respond to global contingencies. The U.S. Second Fleet will provide forces along the U.S. coast and in the northern Atlantic Ocean, according to Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, who made the announcement Friday during a change of command ceremony in Norfolk, Virginia.
Miguel Díaz-Canel has been ratified on Thursday by the National Assembly of Cuba as the new president of the Council of State, the country's first leader in practice. The parliament ratified the former vice president with 99.83% of the votes of the deputies present. Diaz-Canel replaces the General Raúl Castro, who retires from power after 12 years at the head of the country. However, the new president clarified that Raúl Castro “will lead the most important decisions” for the country.
An era will end in Communist-dynastic Cuba on Thursday when President Raul Castro retires, handing over the reins to his right hand man Miguel Diaz-Canel, born the year after brothers Fidel and Raul led their 1959 leftist revolution. However after nearly 60 years of Castro rule, the change is not expected to herald sweeping reforms to the island’s state-run economy and one-party system, one of the last in the world.
Cuba is set to undergo a historic shift this week, elevating a relatively unknown Communist Party official to replace retiring President Raúl Castro. But who is Miguel Díaz-Canel? And what does his ascension to the top of Cuba's government mean for a country that has been run by the Castro brothers for nearly 60 years?