Cuba

By Teresa Bo in Americas on January 30th, 2012
People walk beside a mural in Havana, Cuba [Reuters]

By Gabriel Elizondo in Americas on October 11th, 2011
The Massachusetts statesman's presidential ambitions include a plan for his Latin neighbours.

If Mitt Romney becomes president of the United States, he apparently has big plans for Latin America. 

“Neither the Bush administration or the Obama administration really focused on Latin America,” a Romney aide apparently told a conference call of reporters late last week, according to this article in Politico. 

The article quoted an aide who said President Mitt Romney would envision “larger campaigns for economic opportunity in Latin America” and that Latin America would be one of the main regions in the world Romney foreign policy would differ from George Bush or Barack Obama. 

Fair enough.

With that in mind I took great interest when on Friday Romney released his 44-page foreign policy white paper titled: “An American Century - A Strategy to Secure

By Monica Villamizar in Americas on September 12th, 2011

“This is the war that has marked our generation," the commander of the Guantanamo Base said as he spoke to dozens of soldiers ahead of a commemorative run to honour military members killed in the past 10 years since 9/11.

Some soldiers had pictures of the victims taped to their running shirts. The military base in Cuba, like other bases overseas, was on an increased security alert - on the second degree level.

Tags: al-Qaeda, Cuba
By Craig Mauro in Americas on August 1st, 2011



Many will be watching Cuba’s National Assembly meeting on Monday closely to see if the one-party legislature gives final approval to a set of potentially transformative economic changes.
 
This past April, in its first congress in 14 years, the country’s Communist Party proposed several new laws that the legislative body is now considering.

Among the changes on agenda is allowing Cubans to buy and sell real estate for the first time in more than 50 years of communism.

Tags: Cuba, Cubans
By Monica Villamizar in Americas on August 8th, 2010
Picture from AFP

The first military commission trial of the Obama administration is set to get under way here at the sweltering US military base on the island of Cuba.

Along with 37 other journalists, I've been flown here by the Pentagon to observe and report on this military trial. It is my seventh time here. The mood is even more serious and uptight than normal: five colleagues were banned from Guantanamo earlier this year for publishing the name of an interrogator.

Their media organisations fought back and they were re-admitted. We've all been given new rules that expand the already strict procedures we must follow.

It's almost impossible to take a picture outside two or three locations and all television footage is examined frame-by-frame by a censor for "security" reasons. Agreeing to these rules is a condition for being allowed here.

By Teresa Bo in Americas on January 14th, 2010
Photo by Getty Images

I'm writing this on my blackberry as I am driving to Haiti from the Dominican Republic.

Again, nature has destroyed Haiti’s chances of getting back on its feet - or at least, that is what we are being told.

The truth is that natural disasters in Haiti always prove to be more devastating than in the neighboring Dominican Republic or in Cuba. Lack of infrastructure, deforestation and severe poverty are some of the reasons why.

After former priest Jean Bertrand Aristide was removed from office, a UN mission known as MINUSTAH brought in over 7,000 peacekeeping troops to prevent the country from being torn apart by violence.

By Teymoor Nabili in Americas on January 12th, 2010

At least that seems to be the fear that's motivating Representative Gresham Barrett's hysterical proposal to re-introduce the "Stop Terrorists Entry Programme".

Says Barrett:

While President Obama may have declared an end to the War on Terror, it is clear our enemies did not get the message. Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation and the Administration has failed to adapt its national security and immigration policies to counter the renewed resolve of those who seek to harm our citizens…

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on July 17th, 2009

The grainy footage still makes me gasp with astonishment.

The famous black-and-white images of a spindly lunar module setting down on the Moon on July 20th, 1969, represent the improbable trajectory from dream to the reality that was Apollo 11.

It leaves one wondering, even today: How did humans travel so far, in so frail a ship, through such a still, stark void?

An estimated 600 million people watched the live television broadcast of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon that day.

They huddled around flickering TV sets in living rooms and public squares, in offices and schoolrooms. 

I was 12 in 1969, but the memory is vivid.

I remember being allowed to stay up late for the occasion, and the cheering and excitement.

For a kid, it was a marvel to think that “we” - humanity, not just America - had achieved the seemingly impossible.

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on June 24th, 2009

The long and unhappy odyssey of the Guantanamo Uighurs, from China’s Xinjiang Province to Cuba via Afghanistan, is apparently about to end in a remote  archipelago some call a Pacific island Paradise.

The government of Palau, a nation of 20,000 people about two and a half times the size of Washington DC, announced it will accept up to 17 Ethnic Uighur detainees following a request from the United States.

Palau is better known for its coral reefs and lake full of gently pulsating jellyfish than as a power player in international politics.

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