CARACAS, October 31

     “THE BATTLE OF IDEALS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE TOTAL DISAPPEARANCE OF THE IMPERIALIST SYSTEM,” THE CUBAN DICTATOR SAID IN CARACAS

    Without illusions, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro awaits the next resident of the White House, who will be de tenth since he assumed power in Cuba 40 years ago (Visit Forty-One Years of Unfulfilled Promises…).  Castro insisted that it doesn't matter who wins the U.S. presidential election, “we are prepared to challenge him because we are convinced that nobody can defeat the revolution.”  He also said both candidates will continue and increment the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. “Neither of them interests me in the least,'' Castro said” . . . I don't expect anything from either of them, and I am not interested in any of them,” he repeated.

    Republican or democrat, he said, if the next president wanted to change his policy towards Cuba, it must be unilaterally. If the Cuban-American relations normalize, as it has happened in China and Vietnam, “the battle of ideals will continue until de total disappearance of the imperialist system,” he emphasized. “We do not care who might become the head of that superpower government that has imposed to the world its hegemonic and dominant power,” Castro said.

    Castro promised to resist U.S. pressure no matter who wins, and suggested the embargo can't last forever. With Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush seeking Cuban-American votes, Castro said: “We're not stupid . . . . We’re ready to fight whoever it is.''


CARACAS, October 31

    FIDEL CASTRO SIGNS OIL-ASSISTANCE PACT

    Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez signed a deal on Monday under which the South American oil exporter will finance about $150 million of Cuba's annual oil import bill. Under the so-called Caracas Energy Agreement, Venezuela will supply Cuba with 53,000 barrels per day, worth about $580 million per year, and finance up to a quarter of the cost. The deal also allows for unspecified additional Venezuelan oil exports in barter for Cuban goods and services. Venezuela will charge two percent interest on the 15-year debt, with two years' grace. 

    Opposition politicians and some media have criticized the visit, arguing that Castro is a "dictator" and should not be welcomed as a hero.


HAVANA, October 30

    AGAIN, CUBA CRITICIZES U.S. EMBARGO CHANGE SIGNED BY CLINTON

    Cuba on Sunday again strongly rejected the law that modifies the four-decades-old U.S. trade embargo against the island to allow food and medicine sales, saying the new legislation was unworkable and insulting.  "We totally reject this measure," Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage told reporters a day after President Bill Clinton signed into law the bill approved by Congress.

    Cuba had said it would not buy a single aspirin or grain of wheat from the United States under these conditions. "It's not possible to do trade like this; it's just trade in one direction," Lage said. "We wouldn't trade with the United States or anyone else in conditions (like these) that hurt the dignity of our country and its people," he added.

    Lage noted that even Clinton had complained that the block on financing in the new law made it "virtually impossible" for small U.S. farmers to make food sales to Cuba. Lage, noting Clinton's public reservations, said: "Just imagine what kind of measure this is when even the president doesn't agree with it and he still signs it."


HAVANA, October 30

    FIRST CASUALTIES OF DENGUE

    The first three deaths caused by dengue were reported yesterday from Havana. As reported before by CAMCO, the government denies the existence of dengue, a mosquito-borne disease that can cause severe illness and even death. Now it was been reported that fumigation has been increased in the neighborhood of Cayo Hueso in the municipality of Central Havana. This neighborhood joins Boyeros, Marianao, Cerro, La Lisa y La Playa in their efforts to eliminate de disease. It has been reported that three persons had already died in Havana but the governmental press has not reported the fatalities.

    Residents of Havana are increasingly expressing their concern that the government is hiding the real effects of the disease.


CARABOBO, October 30

    CUBAN DICTATOR FIDEL CASTRO AND PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ SANG A DUET

    Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sang a duet on Sunday during Chávez’s radio show in which they celebrated a shared passion for leftist revolution. From a makeshift studio at the 19th century independence battleground of Carabobo, the two Latin American radicals sang a homage to Venezuela on the fourth day of Castro's five-day state visit to the oil exporting country

    “I have confidence in you,'' Castro told Chávez. ``At this moment, in this country, you have no substitute.''
    
    Both dressed in combat fatigues, the two recounted tales of the Venezuelan independence struggle.  "The only way we can successfully face up to the challenges of neoliberalism is to unite in the search of economic and social development and of justice for our people, avoiding new colonialisms," Chavez said in the four-and-a-half hour show.  "That is the essence of our revolution," he added.


CARACAS, October 29

    CUBAN DICTATOR’S CONCERNS FOR VENEZUELA

    Saying he was stunned by the problems of rural Venezuela, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro urged Venezuelans to rally behind President Hugo Chavez's efforts to change the society.  Elected in 1998, Chavez has deepened ties with Cuba, and his close friendship with Castro has made the United States - and some Venezuelans - uneasy.

    In Venezuela's countryside, there were doubts about Castro’s visit. Angelo Gilotti, whose farm was chosen for a Castro visit because of its bumper corn crop this year, said he was secretly relieved when the stop was canceled because of logistical problems. “ I probably would never have gotten a U.S. visa again,'' he said.

    Castro last week warned Venezuela's Congress to beware of a U.S. backlash against Chavez. He also endorsed Chavez's hope of forming an ``axis of power,'' using Venezuela's position as one of the world's biggest oil producers to counter the influence of wealthier countries. “This country is in the best of conditions to fight for the unity of Latin America ... so that the giant from the north does not swallow us one by one,'' Castro declared Saturday.


CARACAS, October 29

    THE CUBAN DICTATOR ALERTS CHAVEZ ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS

    Cuba dictator Fidel Castro, on a five-day visit to sign a petroleum assistance pact with oil-producing Venezuela, praised Chavez Friday as a leader in the tradition of his own Cuban revolution and urged Venezuelans to protect him.

    “There is no doubt that his enemies here and abroad will try to eliminate him,'' Castro said in a speech to Congress that was boycotted by lawmakers who oppose Chavez. Castro, 74, suggested that his own days as a revolutionary are coming to an end, but that the 46-year-old Chavez's are just beginning.

    “I have realized a large part of my dreams'' since seizing power in 1959, Castro said. “I am not like Chavez - a young leader, full of life, who has ahead of him great work to accomplish. He must be careful.''


WASHINGTON, D.C., October 29

    PRESIDENT CLINTON SIGNS BILL SOFTENING CUBA EMBARGO

    President Clinton signed a law Saturday that eases the four-decade-old U.S. embargo on Cuba to allow sales of food and medicine to the island, but opposition from Havana may delay sales.  Cuba says it will not buy a single pill or a kernel of U.S. grain because of tourism and financing restrictions written into the legislation. Prospects were clouded further by a renewed dispute over Cuban assets frozen in U.S. banks.

    Clinton also complained about the provisions, saying they would make it "virtually impossible for family farmers to arrange the financing that enables such sales to take place" and would impose new restrictions on "our efforts to foster people to people contacts and bring reform in Cuba."

    "Nonetheless, I decided that on balance this bill advances the interests of the American people," Clinton told reporters at the White House after signing the legislation, part of a $78 billion agriculture funding package (See below  CAMCO’s previously published reports on this issue).


CARACAS, October 27

    CASTRO COMPARES VENEZUELA “REVOLUTION” TO CUBA

    Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, starting a state visit to Venezuela last Thursday, compared President Hugo Chavez's left-leaning "social revolution" to the early days of his own rule four decades ago. Castro arrived at the seaside Simon Bolivar International Airport to a hero's welcome from Chavez, who has snubbed a 38-year U.S. embargo of Cuba by offering to sign an oil supply deal with the energy-starved Caribbean island next week.

    Under the terms of the oil deal, Venezuela will supply around 100,000 barrels a day direct to Cuba, circumventing third parties. The sales, currently worth $1 billion annually, will receive up to 25 percent financing from the Venezuelan state and can be repaid in kind.”

    The opposition-controlled media and some politicians have condemned what they call Castro's authoritarian regime, denounced the island's human rights record and called for popular protests.  A few hundred Venezuelans protested Castro's visit in the capital of Caracas, some burning pictures of Chavez and the Cuban leader, in a demonstration organized by opposition-led unions.


CARACAS, October 27

    VENEZUELAN DOCTORS PROTEST NEW OIL DEAL

    President Chávez has said Cuba will be allowed to repay  the oil  he is given to Cuba in barter with products or even medical services provided by Cuban doctors unable to find work at home. That suggestion has drawn sharp criticism from Venezuelan doctors, who complain of low salaries and lack of government investment in hospitals, clinics and medical training programs.

    “From a numerical point of view, it is absolutely irrational to send oil to someone who is going to pay by sending us doctors,'' said Jesús Méndez Quijada, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation. ``If they want to give the oil away for free, then they shouldn't use that as an excuse.''

    One of the first groups to protest was the Institutional Military Front, an association of retired military officers that said Castro was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Venezuelan soldiers in the counter-guerrilla campaign. “ His coming here makes no sense,'' said José Rafael Huizi Clavier, a leader of the group. ``Castro cannot be an example of democracy and human rights for anyone.''


ARTEMISA, October 27

    SHORTAGE OF WATER (CAMCO’s Department of Engineers)

    For a week now residents of Artemisa have had water available for only five hours a day while in some areas of town the water is wasted wholesale. There is a leak at the corner of 52 and Tren Streets which has flooded the area to several inches in depth and local water officials have not addressed the problem.

    Residents in the Bi-Plants district have refused to pay the bill for water service, claiming they don't have an adequate supply. They also complained that the driver of a water supply tank truck was trying to sell them 55-gallon drums of water at 20 pesos.


    WASHINGTON, D.C., October 25

    SOLUTION TO CUBA PHONE CHARGE SOUGHT

     The new decision to place a ten percent surcharge on phone calls to and from the United States has Clinton Administration officials, members of Congress and phone company lawyers desperately seeking a solution to the dilemma created by Cuba: The Cuban government  will cut direct telephone communications with the United States if Washington tries to block the tax, or freeze or confiscates the funds raised by the tax.

   AT&T, WorldCom and other telephone carriers that provide services to the island are facing a difficult challenge because they cannot pay the surcharge without breaking the Helms-Burton law that limits trade between the two countries.

    REACTIONS ON THE CUBAN DICTATOR'S THREATS TO CUT OFF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN CUBA AND THE USA

    A spokesman for the State Department: “It is unfortunate that while the world continues trying to open to Cuba, the government of the island is taking steps to terminate telephone call between families”.

    A spokesman for Cuba's national phone company, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones S.A. (ETECSA), a Cuban-Italian joint venture: ETECSA and the American carriers will apply the ten percent tax on all phone calls from Cuba to the United States and vice versa.

    Congressman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: “Cuban President Fidel Castro is using the surcharge to test the Clinton administration’s resolve, which has been promoting increasing people-to-people contacts between the two countries…This is incredible…He can’t do it.”

    Mark Thiessen, a spokesman for U.S. Jesse Helms: “Fidel Castro murdered American citizens and now he wants the Cuban American community to pay for the bullets…This is a death tax from Fidel Castro and it is the price of appeasing a terrorist regime... We’re examining our options.”

    Nancy Segerdahl, a spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Connie Mack: “This is a clear indication of the threat that freedom poses to Castro, and the freedom of speech is the most symbolic form of freedom…Castro’s threat to limit and stifle speech once again reminds us who he is and why the world would be better off when we are rid of him.”

     Dennis Hays, CANF Executive Vice President: "What this amounts to is a flat out extortion of money from American citizens and residents through an illegal tax on phone calls…Castro is like a criminal trying to tax the public to pay the fines for his egregious offenses. "The President (Clinton) should make it clear that the United States believes in the rule of law, even if Castro again demonstrates that he does not,"


HAVANA, October 25

    TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT ENDORSED FROM INSIDE CUBA (CAMCO's Director for Communications)

    Two days after his release from prison on Oct.21, 2000, Elizardo Sampedro, well-known Cuban opposition leader, has released a manifest naming a new government inside Cuba in accordance with the Cuban 1940 Constitution (before Castro and communism). Sampedro, well known for his opposition to the Batista government used to be an officer in Cuba's Revolutionary Army under Castro, years back. There are more than 50 signatures in the document addressed to the International Community of Nations and titled "Liberty First". The manifest names José Morell-Romero, and elderly Cuban lawyer as President, now residing in Tampa, Florida, who, according to the 1940 Constitution, is the legal, constitutional and democratic substitute. He proposes an election for a new constitution and immediately after a democratic general election. All to be done in a period not exceeding 18 months.


LONDON, October 25

    SIX BRITONS DETAINED IN CUBA

     Britain Foreign Office said on Tuesday that Cuba's detention of six Britons, five men and one woman, was unacceptable and threatened to call in the Cuban charge d'affaires for urgent talks if access to the group was denied. The government has been pressing the Cuban authorities for access to the six since the British embassy in Havana was informed of their detention on October 10.

    "It is unacceptable that six British nationals are being held in Cuba without explanation and without access. Our charge d’affaires in Havana has demanded that we be given immediate access,” said a spokesman from the Foreign Office.


WASHINGTON, D.C., October 24 

    DR. BENEDI DENOUNCES CUBA’S MURDERS, TORTURES AND PERSECUTIONS

    Dr. Claudio Benedí, a distinguished diplomat of the Cuban exile community, has denounced before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) that in Cuba, up to this month of October 2000, persecutions, physical and moral tortures, murders and executions by firing squads have increased.

    “The totalitarian communist regime has imprisoned 720 opponents since year 1999 until October, 2000,” Dr. Benedí said. The new offensive in violation of human rights in Cuba has increased since February 15 until October of this year 2000, and it threatens to become widespread.

    Dr. Benedí emphasizes that last July, in the commemoration of the anniversary of the revolution, the communist leader himself, in his totalitarian stage, in breaking all diplomatic customs and closing a new cycle of deceitful, sophisticated and malignant falsehood and simulation towards the United States (whom he is attempting to deceit once more), reiterated what nobody should forget: That the totalitarian communist regime makes no concession or opening, that the dead penalty would continue to be applied to those who conspire or in any manner fight against the communist regime, since there cannot be, nor can be tolerated, dissidents or opponents (he euphemistically calls his regime “a socialist system").


HAVANA, October 24

    CUBA WILL RETALIATE AGAINST A NEW LEGISLATION

    Cuban dictator Fidel Castro imposed a ten percent tax on every minute of all phone calls between the United States and Cuba and warned on Monday all phone links could be cut if Washington tries to block or counter the tax. Castro said the 10 percent phone tax would remain in place "until the complete return, with corresponding interest, of the Cuban funds illegally frozen in the United States."  Under the new measures, Cuba's national phone company, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones S.A. (ETECSA), a Cuban-Italian joint venture, was to retain the additional funds generated by the tax.

    According to Cuban sources, the tax was introduced in response to legislation passed earlier this month by the U.S. Senate. The bill would make Cuban funds frozen in the United States available to pay compensation to the families of Cuban-American pilots killed when their planes were shot down by a Cuban MIG fighter in 1996. The U.S. legislation targeted frozen funds due to Cuba's phone company for phone services between the two countries between 1966 and 1994. These are estimated by Havana to total more than $120 million.


NEW YORK, October 24

    ECONOMISTS BELIEVE NEW LEGISLATION WILL PUSH CUBA TO THE ECONOMIC ABYSS

    The U.S. government says it is passing a bill that eases sanctions against Cuba, however, economists say the legislation could actually push the communist government further into the economic abyss.

    The U.S. Senate last week approved a partial lifting of 38-year old sanctions, allowing U.S. companies to sell food and medicine to Cuba. But the legislation bans U.S. financing of these sales as well as U.S. tourism. These clauses effectively negate Cuba's ability to buy U.S. goods and block the circulation of much needed U.S. dollars. Since the bill also wrote into law a ban on American tourism to Cuba, the island may lose a very important source of foreign income.

    If, for instance, Cuba wants to buy grain from the United States, it would have to borrow the money to fund the purchase. Typically for countries like Cuba, the source of a loan would be an official U.S. agency like the Agriculture Export Bank or a U.S. commercial bank. But the new legislation that President Bill Clinton has promised to sign into law bars these entities from loaning to Cuba. So the Caribbean nation would have to go someplace else.


HAVANA, October 24

    CUBA MAY CUT PHONE LINKS WITH THE USA

    Cuba warned yesterday that it could cut off all telephone communications with the United States if the U.S. government seizes $58 million in Cuban funds from AT&T accounts frozen since the 1960s.  “The government of Cuba reserves the right to adopt the measures it judges pertinent, including cutting off all direct and indirect telephone communications between Cuba and the United States,'' the government said in a front page editorial in the Communist Party daily Granma.

    Cuba has cut direct telephone communications between the two countries in the past, but in recent years has allowed for indirect communications routed through third countries, such as Canada. The cutting of all direct and indirect telecommunications links would make telephone communications between the two countries impossible.


JERUSALEM, October 23

    ISRAEL REJECTS U.N. CONDEMNATION SPONSORED BY CUBA

    Israel strongly rejected on Saturday a resolution approved by the U.N. General Assembly condemning it for using "excessive force" against Palestinians during a wave of clashes that have been the bloodiest in years. The resolution was presented by Palestinian delegates and sponsored by Cuba and Arab and Islamic nations.

    The resolution demands that Israel prevent "illegal acts of violence by Israeli settlers." Israel's foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the resolution, which it labeled as "completely one sided."

    The foreign ministry also complained that the United Nations had turned a blind eye to the lynching of two Israeli soldiers under Palestinian police protection and the desecration of Jewish holy sites by Palestinian mobs earlier this month.


CARACAS, October 23

    CHAVEZ INSISTS THAT CUBA WILL PAY OIL WITH DOCTORS

    The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, announced on Sunday that the energy agreement that will be signed this week with the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro would establish the delivery of petroleum in exchange for medical care in the island to Venezuelans--obviously, Cuba does not have the money to pay for the Venezuelan oil. “We will sign the agreement. The Cuban Government is offering a good agreement. Venezuelans will go to Havana to be operated, to save their lives, and we will pay Cuba with oil supplies'', Chávez indicated during his weekly radio program `` Aló, President ''.  

    This statement contradicts a Cuban government's recent declaration that “Cuba has never offered to Venezuela medical services as payment for petroleum or any other product ''. The declaration, published in the communist paper Granma, also mentioned that  “we want to clearly establish that Cuba doesn't trade goods in exchange for the services of its doctors...''  

    Chávez, on the other hand, emphatically said that he will go ahead with the agreement because “it is beneficial'', even with the opposition of the Venezuelan sanitary sector that denounced last week that Chavez wanted to eliminate the nation’s doctors to import Cuban physicians and, in addition, give away the strategic Venezuelan product.


PINAR DEL RIO, October 23

    NEW RESERVOIR PROVIDES CONTAMINATED WATER (CAMCO’S Department of Engineers)

    The water supplied from the new reservoir to the town of Consolación del Norte has a high index of impurities and organic matter. The poor quality of the water is due to lack of planning in the construction of the reservoir: it has only one outlet which, because of its position, draws sediment and overwhelms the treatment plant downstream.

    Now it seems the only way to correct the problem is to draw the water level down to install a new, higher, outlet, but the cost would exceed the available resources, at least for this year, authorities say.


LA HABANA, October 23

    POLYCLINIC CONVERTED TO HOSTEL (CAMCO’S Department of Engineers)

    The polyclinic "9th of April" in Old Havana has been closed to be remodeled and reopened as a hostel for foreign tourists. The new facility will be called Hostel San Miguel. The patients formerly assigned to the "9th of April" have been reassigned to the nearby "Tomás Romay" polyclinic, causing long delays and crowding there, according to patients.

    Patients complain that the measure responds to the government’s drive to bring in hard currency at any cost, even, as they say, at the expense of the average Cuban.


CARACAS, October 22 

    CHAVEZ HELPING AGAIN THE CUBAN DICTATOR

     Last week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed an agreement with ten Caribbean and Central American countries to supply them with 80,000 barrels a day of crude. It is expected that more nations, including Cuba and Barbados, will sign the one-year deal at the end of the month.

     Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is due to arrive in Venezuela on October 26 on a four-day visit, during which he will sign the accord. Chavez has said that he will accept Cuban medical aid in return for oil. This will be the first regional oil supply agreement for Communist Cuba after it was rejected from the 1980 San Jose Pact under which Mexico and Venezuela supply 160,000 barrels a day to Central America and the Caribbean.  Mexico had previously declined Chavez's invitation to include Cuba in the San Jose Pact.


Washington, D.C., October 22

    THE EMBARGO IS AGING, BUT CASTRO CONTINUES IN POWER

  When the United States first imposed the embargo on trade with Cuba during Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's second year in office, few thought the measure would be in effect for long. But four decades have passed, and it remains even though it has been somewhat weakened by legislation that received final approval this week in Congress.

   Forty years ago, President Eisenhower, responding to perceived provocations by Cuba, approved a ban on most exports to Cuba. President Eisenhower's action against Cuba, as in every presidential campaign for the last forty-one years, was taken at the height of the election contest of 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. Eisenhower hoped the measure would help Nixon, his vice-president.

    The embargo-easing legislation Congress approved this week was so watered down that Cuba is dismissing the measure as irrelevant. “We will not buy not one aspirin, nor a gram of rice, nor wheat or corn, nor anything under these conditions,'' said Carlos Lage, vice president of Cuba's ruling Council of State and the man described as architect of the communist country's economy over the past decade.


CAIRO, October 21
    FRESH CLASHES FLARED BETWEEN PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELIS

     Arab leaders opened a summit to back the Palestinians today as fresh clashes flared in the Gaza Strip after the collapse of a U.S.-brokered agreement to end Israeli-Palestinian violence.  Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denounced in an opening address what he called Israel's belligerent attitude towards the Palestinians, but said the Arabs had a historic duty "to attempt once again to salvage the peace process."

   Mubarak acknowledged that all Arabs were "angry and full of resentment" after three weeks of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in which 118 people, all but eight of them Arabs, have been killed. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah called on Arab leaders to donate $1 billion to support the Intifada (uprising).

    Meanwhile at the United Nations, the General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning Israel for "excessive force" against Palestinian civilians and illegal violence by Jewish settlers during the latest flare-up.  Ninety-two countries voted in favor, six against and 46 abstained in last night's vote on a resolution drawn up by Palestinian delegates and sponsored by Arab and Islamic states and Cuba. Israel dismissed the motion as "completely one-sided."


HAVANA, October 21

    FUMIGATION IN HAVANA CONTINUES

    Yesterday, Cuban health ministry workers fumigated the entrance of a building in Old Havana for dengue, a mosquito-borne disease that can cause severe illness and even death.

    While other Caribbean and Central American countries have reported numerous cases of the disease this year, authorities say there is no dengue in Cuba. The fumigation is a precaution, a government spokesman said.  However, as reported previously by CAMCOÇs Department of Engineers on these pages of LATEST NEWS, extensive fumigation in the province of Havana began several weeks ago in Boyeros, Marianao, La Lisa y La Playa. Neighbors are expressing their concern that the government is hiding the real motivation for the continued fumigation.


HAVANA, October 21

   ISRAELI FIRM SUPPORTS THE CUBAN DICTATOR

    Despite Cuba’s hostility against Israel throughout the years, even manning Arab war tanks on previous Arab-Israeli wars, an Israeli firm whose citrus business in Cuba has made it the target of U.S. sanctions said it was negotiating a new venture to build a high-tech industrial park in Cuba. "We are in the final stages ... the goal is to sign by December 31," Sergio Meisler, managing director of the Tel Aviv-based Group BM.

    BM has operated in Cuba for some eight years and runs the island's biggest citrus plantation, handling more than 70 percent of annual Cuban citrus exports. In 1997, executives from the Israeli firm, including Meisler, were barred from the United states by U.S. sanctions imposed under the 1996 Helms-Burton Law. This law seeks to penalize those foreign firms that invest in expropriated formerly U.S.-owned properties in Cuba. In a separate real estate joint venture with another Cuban partner, BM has already constructed two modern office blocks in western Havana, part of a 10-year, $ 200 million project to build a major business center in the capital.

HAVANA, October 19

   CUBA DENOUNCES AGAIN THE NEW CHANGES ON THE EMBARGO

    Waving huge placards with portraits of Abraham Lincoln, hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched Wednesday in front of the American Interest Section, to denounce U.S. legislation that the Cuban government says does little to ease American trade sanctions imposed on the island.

    Wearing his traditional olive green uniform with his now-familiar white athletic shoes for marching, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro led a crowd that the government estimated at 800,000. 

    Cuba insists the legislation passed by the House last week and now the Senate will toughen rather than ease the nearly four-decade embargo. Because the legislation will bar the U.S. government and banks from financing the food sales, Cuba will have to pay cash or get credit from a third country.

    "In practice, it will be totally impossible to buy food and medicine from the United States,'' read an editorial published Monday in a state newspaper. In protest, ``our country will not buy a single cent of food or medicine from the United States,'' it said.


WASHINGTON, D.C., October 19

    SENATE APPROVES FARM AID

    The Senate on Wednesday approved the $78 billion agricultural spending bill 86-8 despite misgivings by many lawmakers about whether the Cuba and drug-import measures will do much good. Clinton has agreed to sign the legislation.

    The bill would allow sales of food to Cuba for the first time in about 40 years. The move is largely symbolic because the legislation bars the federal government or U.S. banks from financing the shipments. At the insistence of Cuba's critics in the House, the bill also would prevent Clinton or his successor from easing restrictions on travel to Cuba.

    Even before the Senate vote, hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched in Havana in protest of the legislation. The Communist Party daily Granma called the bill a ``gross lie that the genocidal blockade has been softened.''


HAVANA, October 18

    CUBA AGAIN THREATENS THE UNITED STATES 

    With threats and warnings that United States would pay a high human and political cost, if one day "it adopted the absurd decision" of solving its dispute with Cuba "by means of the employment of weapons", the Cuban government scheduled a giant protest today in front of the Office of Interests of United States in Havana. 

    "The fight would not never cease until the total liberation of the country no matter the type of war that it could be imposed on us", the Granma affirmed in an extensive editorial published in its front page on Tuesday. 

    Granma criticized the legislation approved last week by Congress that authorizes the use Cuban State frozen funds in United States to pay to family of the pilots of “Brothers to the Rescue,” murdered by Cuban fighters in international waters on February 24 1996. "The arbitrary and brutal amendment will receive an appropriate answer ", Granma underlined.


HAVANA, October 17

    DENGUE IN THE HAVANA PROVINCE

    The Cuban Ministry of Public Health has been forced to mobilize the services of Hygiene and Epidemiology in municipalities of the capital because of increasing appearance of massive focuses of the mosquito Aedes aegyptis.

    Almost 700 focuses have been reported in the municipality of October 10. This zone is considered in a very high state of epidemic alert.   But, according to some sources, Boyeros, Cerro, Marianao and La Lisa Beach are also in a phase of urgency because the authorities have already detected dengue cases in those areas.

    The insalubrities generalized in the capital of the island conspire against the system of health and it is a source for the proliferation of vectors and transmission of infectious and contagious illnesses.


HAVANA, October 17

    ANOTHER PROTEST AGAINST THE USA

    The Cuban dictator called for a huge street protest in the streets of Havana this Wednesday against moves in the U.S. Congress it contends will strengthen rather than ease sanctions against the communist island.

    “In practice, it will be totally impossible to buy food and medicine from the United States'' under the financing restrictions, said the Granma in its editorial page.  Neither the federal government nor U.S. banks can finance the food sales, so Cuba would have to pay cash or get credit from a third country.

    Among Havana's biggest complaints about the bill are the tightened restrictions on U.S. travel to the island. Most U.S. citizens already are effectively barred from visiting Cuba because of spending restrictions under the trade embargo. Wednesday's march, Granma said, will also be ``a protest for the gross violation of the constitutional rights of Americans to visit and know Cuba.”


HAVANA, October 16

     FUMIGATION PROVOKES WONDER AMONG RESIDENTS OF BOYEROS (CAMCO's Department of Engineers)

    A fumigation campaign in Boyeros municipality, south of the city of Havana, has left residents wondering; they don't recall seeing such an intensive effort before.

    The fumigation campaign, according to public health officials, is aimed at the Aedes aegyptii mosquito, a vector for dengue and yellow fever. So far, it has involved small planes, army trucks and men on foot with fumigation equipment on backpacks, say residents. The effort encompasses areas where the mosquitoes might breed outdoors and inside buildings and houses.

    There have been numerous reports of Aedes mosquitoes breeding in several areas of Cuba in recent weeks. This, however, is the first time the Public Health Ministry undertakes a campaign of this magnitude in at least ten years, say residents.


SANTIAGO DE CUBA, October 16

    POTHOLES REPAIRED FOR RAUL’S VISIT (CAMCO's Department of Engineers)

    Public works crews in the Sagua de Tánamo municipality repaired the potholes in 25 miles (40 kilometers) of roadway in two days. The reason? A visit by Army General Raúl Castro, brother of Communist Party leader Fidel Castro.

    Workers involved in the repairs say the work was sub-standard. "In a few days, the potholes will be back," said one.

    Another, who asked not to be identified, said "Eleven tons of asphalt were used to make the local officials look good with the higher ups in Havana.