Cuba

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel for the first time is offering some self-criticism while saying that government shortcomings in handling shortages and other problems played a role in this week’s protests.

But in a televised address Wednesday night he also called on Cubans to not act with hate — a reference to the violence that occurred at some of the rare street demonstrations in which protesters voiced grievances over high prices, food shortages and power outages, while some people also called for a change in the government.

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban police are out in force on the country’s streets as the president is accusing Cuban Americans of using social media to spur a rare outpouring of weekend protests over high prices and food shortages.

The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades as a consequence of U.S. sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration.

HAVANA (AP) — Thousands of Cubans marched on Havana’s Malecon promenade and elsewhere on the island Sunday to protest food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus crisis, in one of biggest anti-government demonstrations in memory.

Many young people took part in the afternoon protest in the capital, which disrupted traffic until police moved in after several hours and broke up the march when a few protesters threw rocks.

HAVANA (AP) — Tropical Storm Elsa swept across a mostly rural section of western Cuba with strong rain and winds Monday, then moved into the Florida Straits for a possible close brush with the lower Florida Keys and the Dry Tortugas on Tuesday.

The storm made landfall in Cuba on Monday afternoon near Cienega de Zapata, a natural park with few inhabitants. It headed northwestward across the island, passing Havana just to the east.

HAVANA (AP) — Tropical Storm Elsa swept along Cuba’s southern coast early Monday, and forecasters said it could make landfall on the island’s central shore by midafternoon.

By Sunday, Cuban officials had evacuated 180,000 people as a precaution against the possibility of heavy flooding from a storm that already battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. Most of those evacuated stayed at relatives’ homes, others went to government shelters, and hundreds living in mountainous areas took refuge in caves prepared for emergencies.

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba prepared to evacuate people along the island’s southern region on Sunday amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.

The government opened shelters and moved to protect sugarcane and cocoa crops ahead of the storm, whose next target was Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County where the high-rise condominium building collapsed last week.

HAVANA, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's banking system stopped accepting cash deposits in U.S. dollars starting Monday, a measure announced by the government 10 days ago to tackle the impact of new sanctions imposed on the island as part of the long-running U.S. trade embargo.

The move was necessary since Cuban banks were barred more than a year ago from making U.S. dollar deposits at international banks, the Central Bank of Cuba said in a statement.

HAVANA, June 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Cuba’s Soberana 2 vaccine candidate has shown 62 per cent efficacy with just two of its three doses, state-run biopharmaceutical corporation BioCubaFarma said, citing preliminary data from late-phase trials.

Cuba, whose biotech sector has exported vaccines for decades, has five vaccine candidates in clinical trials, of which two – Soberana 2 and Abdala – are in late-phase trials.

HAVANA, May 30 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — Health authorities of Cuba and Argentina ratified their mutual commitment to strengthening cooperative relations in biotechnology to improve the quality of life of people in both countries, it was announced.

Cuba’s Health Minister José Ángel Portal and his Argentine counterpart Carla Vizzotti Friday signed a letter of intent to collaborate in anti-covid-19 vaccination in the two countries as well as in other parts of Latin America.

(Reuters) --- Amnesty International named one of Cuba's leading dissidents a "prisoner of conscience" on Friday, saying state security appeared to have him under supervision and incommunicado at the hospital where authorities admitted him nearly three weeks ago.

Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, 33, had been staging a hunger and thirst strike for seven days at his home in Old Havana to protest what he called state harassment when health officials transferred him to hospital on May 2.