Cuba | featured news

A river of people flows through the old colonial fortress, and the antics of clowns and music blasting from loudspeakers are interrupted only when an announcer summons the parents of a lost child. It's a festival all right, but a festival of books.

A Cuban government-run website has begun translating into Spanish and posting online leaked U.S. government cables that discuss the island nation.

A state airliner filled with Cubans and travelers from Europe and Latin America crashed and burst into flames in a mountainous area after declaring an emergency and losing contact with air traffic controllers, the island's worst air disaster in more than 20 years.

A Syrian man who was held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has sued Defense Secretary Robert Gates and former military officers, seeking compensation for alleged torture and inhumane treatment during his nine years of detention.

Cubans will be allowed to work for themselves in 178 activities in the private sector and even hire employees, according to guidelines published Friday as the communist government moves quickly to shed half a million state jobs and provide alternatives for workers.

Cuban announced today it's laying off at least half a million state workers and allowing more private sector jobs as the communist nation's economy struggles to recover.

Fidel Castro said on Friday his recent comment that communist-led Cuba's economic model does not work was badly understood and that what he really meant was that capitalism does not work.

Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears of global nuclear war.

A lively and healthy-looking Fidel Castro appealed to President Barack Obama to prevent a global nuclear war in an emphatic speech Saturday that marked his first official government appearance since emergency surgery four years ago.

It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."