Cubans hung flags and decorated the "Anti-imperialist Tribunal" stage for a concert within earshot of the US mission in Havana, all to celebrate the 80th birthday of Fidel Castro -- nowhere to be seen in 12 days.
Castro, who turns 80 today, handed over power provisionally after undergoing intestinal surgery to his brother, Raul, 11 days ago. Neither has been seen since.
Yet the birthday party goes on, although Fidel Castro, the country's comandante for 48 years, asked that the celebration be postponed while he recovers.
Cuban officials have insisted regularly over the past week that Castro is recuperating from surgery, and that life in the only Communist country in the Americas was "completely normal," as they did again on Friday.
Castro himself has always answered questions of who would lead a post-Castro Cuba by saying that the revolution would go on with him or without him. Cuba is not peppered with his portraits and statues, as if to say Cuba is something more than Castro.
That, despite wishes of Cuban exiles in Miami, who launched spontaneous street celebrations on news that Castro was ill, but which have since died out.
US officials told Cubans in Miami and in Cuba to stay put and wait to see what comes next, for fear of conflict in Cuba or of mass immigration into the US.
In the US, the "empire" just 150km to the north of the Caribbean island's shores, the top US diplomat for the Americas, Tom Shannon, stressed the need for a "consistent policy" toward Cuba.
"We might be at a moment of great change. We might see the regime hardening, as it attempts to assert its control," Shannon said in Washington on Friday.
The regime that has been in place since Castro marched his bearded revolutionaries into Havana on New Year's Day in 1959 desperately wants normality, and plans for today's birthday celebration a nationwide "cane mobilization," recalling the earliest days of the revolution, when idealistic young men and women cut sugarcane for the good of all.
Castro has asked his birthday be moved back to Dec. 2, the 50th anniversary of his return from exile in Mexico aboard the boat Granma, to topple US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
RSS