Cuba's failure to encourage more foreign investment is crippling its economic performance and putting its goal of sustainable growth in danger unless changes are made, local experts and diplomats said this week.
The 24-year-old daughter of Cuban Vice President Marino Murillo, sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to ruler Raul Castro, defected earlier this month and is now living in Tampa, Florida, according to Miami’s El Nuevo Heraldo.
Cuba adopted a new tax code this week and said it would loosen regulations on some state companies while turning others into cooperatives, as one of the world's last Soviet-style economies moves in a more market-friendly direction.
Cuban police arrested dozens of dissidents Tuesday at a funeral for political activist Oswaldo Paya and after his daughter's vow to seek justice over his sudden death in a road accident.
President Raúl Castro's daughter is scheduled to visit California next week to speak at a conference of experts on Latin America during a rare US trip by a member of Cuba's ruling family.
Cuba will move nearly 50% of the state's economic activity to the non-state sector a senior Communist party official said, the latest signal the island is headed toward a mixed economy.
Bells rang from Roman Catholic churches throughout Havana on Friday to remember the death of Jesus Christ as Cubans celebrated a holiday on Good Friday for the first time in more than half a century.
Pope Benedict urged Cubans to search for authentic freedom and met with revolutionary icon Fidel Castro as he wrapped up a visit in which he said Cuba must change.
Pope Benedict urged Cubans to build a better, renewed and open society on Monday and pressed the Castro brothers regime to give the Catholic Church more liberties to help the country as it faced an uncertain future.
Cuba said it was unacceptable that it will not be invited to an upcoming hemispheric summit in Colombia and blamed the United States for insisting that Cuba be excluded.