
Cuba is closing its once powerful Sugar Ministry in favour of a state holding company charged with pulling the sector out of a long decline, official media announced on Thursday.

Cuba authorized auto sales among individuals Wednesday, easing a 50-year-old ban that has helped make the Castro brothers-ruled island a living museum of vintage cars.

Cuba’s official press blasted the “corrupt and corruptors” more specifically “those scoundrels dressed in civil servant responsibilities” because they put at risk the island’s long struggle to make Socialism successful.

Fidel Castro has broken a long silence by granting an interview to a Venezuelan television station, his first since rumors began to spread that the former Cuban leader might be sick or near death. A top Cuban official said Thursday that Fidel is in good health.

Gen. Julio Casas Regueiro, an accountant who fought in Cuba's revolution, then used his training to run the military's lucrative economic enterprises for two decades before becoming defense minister, has died, state television reported. He was 75.

Leaders of the dissident group Ladies in White asked the Catholic Church on Tuesday to intervene before the Cuban government to end what they described as violent acts against them and other human rights activists.

Cuban President Raul Castro is increasingly impatient with the slow implementation of his economic reforms, which he publicly blames mostly on bureaucratic sloth and resistance to change.

Cuban revenue from tourism jumped 13% percent in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2010, the National Statistics Office, or ONE, reported on its Web site.

Cuba will broaden private retail service beyond beauty parlours and barbers in October to include everything from coffee shops to locksmiths, and may even rent space on busy streets, an official told parliament.

Air travel between the United States and Cuba will become easier with the opening of charter flights to the island from an additional nine US cities announced by Cuba authorities on Friday.