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From: NY Transfer News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 03:00:40 -0400 (EDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [CubaNews] NY Transfer's RHC News Update-15 August 2001
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 15 August 2001
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*THOUSANDS OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS GRADUATE ON TUESDAY
*CUBAN PRESIDENT RECEIVES RUSSIAN ENVOY
*SANTIAGO DE CUBA PRAISED FOR SURGICAL ADVANCES
*CUBAN FISHING FLEET UPGRADED
*MEXICO: INDIGENOUS ACTIVISTS OUTRAGED BY CONTROVERSIAL LAW ON INDIGENOUS
*ARGENTINA REFUSES TO EXTRADITE NOTORIOUS TORTURER AND ASSASSIN
*DISSIDENT ARGENTINE RESIGNS FROM PARLIAMENTARY ANTI-CORRUPTION COMMISSION
*Viewpoint: RACISM - U.S. WANTS TO BURY THE PAST, IGNORE THE FUTURE
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*THOUSANDS OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS GRADUATE ON TUESDAY
Havana, August 15 (RHC)--More than 3,600 graduates of medicine received
their degrees in a ceremony performed at the Jos� Mart� Tribune here in
Havana Tuesday night.
Cuban President Fidel Castro was present to hand out those diplomas for the
doctors, nurses, dentists and technicians who had achieved the highest
grades. The doctors will now go on to a mandatory two-year program under
supervision at a family doctor's office, before choosing whether to become a
full family physicians or to go into a specialty or research. The nurses
will go to family doctors' offices and neighborhood clinics, known in Cuba
as polyclinics.
Cuba has one of the highest concentrations of doctors and nurses to
inhabitants in the world.
*CUBAN PRESIDENT RECEIVES RUSSIAN ENVOY
Havana, August 15 (RHC)--Cuban President Fidel Castro received the personal
envoy of Russian premier, Vladimir Putin, Tuesday, at the close of the
Russian's visit to the island.
Alexander Voloshin, who serves as the head of the Russian presidential
administration in Moscow, gave the Cuban leader a message of congratulations
on the occasion of his 75th birthday on August 13. The special envoy had
previously met with Defense Minister Raul Castro, to whom he gave the
Russian award named the "Order of Friendship," as well as Vice President
Carlos Lage during a tour of cultural, historic and economic sites of the
capital.
The Russian thanked his hosts for the hospitality and attention he had
received during his very pleasant visit.
*SANTIAGO DE CUBA PRAISED FOR SURGICAL ADVANCES
Santiago de Cuba, August 15 (RHC)--The Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba
has been praised for its advances in minally invasive surgery by Dr Armando
Lopez Perez, Professor of General Surgery at the country's Higher Institute
of Medical Sciences.
The technique is being increasingly used by Cuban surgeons to avoid general
anesthetics and large incisions with their resulting trauma to the human
body. Instead, local anesthetics are used in less-invasive procedures,
involving small incisions and advanced precision equipment such as lasers
and imaging monitors, along with electro-coagulants. Using this technique,
abdominal incisions rarely exceed two centimeters, thereby reducing
post-operative pain and making more rapid recuperation possible.
Santiago de Cuba uses some 15 different types of minimal-access surgery in
operations on the stomach, esophagus, intestines, lungs and liver, as well
as on ulcers and in gynecology. Such operations, which are free to Cubans,
cost from $2,000 to $30,000 in the United States.
*CUBAN FISHING FLEET UPGRADED
Havana, August 15 (RHC)--A total of 255 new fishing boats have been added
to Cuba's fishing fleet as part of the island's program to replace its
obsolete vessels, reports Cuba's daily Granma.
The new boats were all built in Cuba, and are made of fiberglass and special
plastics, requiring less maintenance than their predecessors and are also
more durable and cheaper to build. The new vessels are lighter in weight,
requiring less ballast and are thus able to sail in shallow water.
Seafood, especially lobster and shrimp, is one of Cuba's main exports, along
with sugar, nickel and tobacco. Cuba's excellent fresh seafood supply is
also an important asset to the tourist industry, the island's chief source
of income.
*MEXICO: INDIGENOUS ACTIVISTS OUTRAGED BY CONTROVERSIAL LAW ON INDIGENOUS
Mexico City, August 15 (RHC)--Indigenous activists throughout Mexico have
reacted with outrage to the government's implementation of controversial
legislation on indigenous rights and culture.
An amended version of the law, negotiated in 1996 between the Zapatista
National Liberation Army and members of the Congressional Chiapas Peace
Commission, was rejected early this year by all of Mexico's indigenous
ethnic groups, by nine state legislatures and by the left-of-center Party of
the Democratic Revolution.
The law was approved on Tuesday, however, by 17 of Mexico's 31 states,
allowing President Vicente Fox to give his seal of approval. Amendments to
the legislation inclined more towards individual rights and national
sovereignty, as opposed to the rights of indigenous communities to govern
themselves in accordance with their customs.
The Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center, headed by renowned Bishop
Samuel Ruiz, stated that implementation of the law indefinitely postpones
peace and the true recognition of Mexico's indigenous culture, and threatens
more violence and social degradation, calling the move a historic error. The
nine Mexican state legislatures that rejected the law include Chiapas,
Oaxaca and Guerrero, containing the bulk of the country's indigenous
population.
Mexico's National Indigenous Congress, a group of more than 50 indigenous
organizations throughout the country, is planning to gather in Mexico City
on August 22 and 23 to define a plan of protest action. The Zapatistas have
yet to issue a public statement.
*ARGENTINA REFUSES TO EXTRADITE NOTORIOUS TORTURER AND ASSASSIN
Buenos Aires, August 15 (RHC)--In a move that has surprised no one,
authorities in Argentina have refused to extradite one of the most ferocious
assassins and torturers of the country's former military dictatorship.
Alfredo Astiz, known as "the blond angel of death," has been released from
detention following the Argentine foreign ministry's official denial of
extradition requests from Italy and France. A federal judge ordered his
arrest in early July following an extradition request from Italy in the case
of three Italian citizens forcibly disappeared by the Argentine
dictatorship.
Italian judicial authorities say he will be tried in absentia, as he was in
France in 1990 -- making him the first agent of the Argentine dictatorship
to be tried abroad. Following Italy's petition, France again requested
Astiz's extradition in the case of two French nuns who were tortured and
disappeared.
Judicial authorities in Spain have also requested his detention, while
Sweden has opened an investigation into Astiz in the forced disappearance of
a young Swedish woman. During the Carlos Menem administration, Astiz was
discharged from the navy and spent a brief period in military detention for
having publicly justified the dictatorship's repression.
In a 1998 interview with a local weekly magazine, Astiz said he felt no
remorse for what he had done, and said that he is the person in Argentina
"best prepared" to assassinate a politician or a journalist. On several
occasions he has been physically attacked on the streets by people who
recognized him -- some of them his former victims.
*DISSIDENT ARGENTINE RESIGNS FROM PARLIAMENTARY ANTI-CORRUPTION COMMISSION
Buenos Aires, August 15 (RHC)--Dissident Argentine legislator Elisa Carrio
has resigned as head of a parliamentary anti-corruption commission whose
explosive preliminary report has been severely questioned by the government
and its allies.
Carrio, considered the most popular political leader in Argentina, presented
the preliminary report last Friday. It implicates high-ranking members of
President Fernando de la Rua's administration, and members of the former
Carlos Menem government, in money laundering, capital flight, financial
speculation that artificially sky-rocketed the country's foreign debt and
irregularities in privatizations.
According to the report, the irregular operations were carried out by local
firms and financial institutions in the United States, Uruguay, Panama and
the Bahamas, involving various Latin American dictators and a Syrian arms
dealer, among others. The investigation had its origin in a US Senate report
on money-laundering involving the US entity Citicorp and a phantom bank in
the Bahamas belonging to Argentine banker Raul Moneta.
Carrio has not only been criticized by the Fernando de la Rua administration
-- which she recently said would try to sweep the scandal under the rug --
but also by most of the members of the parliamentary investigative
commission. She also noted that Argentine media have centered their debate
of the report more on her style of work than on the abundant information
made public.
Carrio, a dissident Argentine House Deputy from the president's Radical
Civic Action Party who has founded her own political organization and plans
to participate in the 2003 presidential race, said she will nevertheless
continue forming part of the parliamentary commission.
*Viewpoint: RACISM - U.S. WANTS TO BURY THE PAST, IGNORE THE FUTURE
The United Nations commission on racial discrimination, which has denounced
the Bush Administration for its threat to boycott the coming international
conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, has also condemned the U.S.
for its history of discrimination, which continues to this day.
The commission of 18 international experts has demanded an end to excessive
police violence especially toward African Americans and Latinos. It also
condemns the death penalty and its enormous bias against young, black males
in the United States. Some 54% of prisoners on death row are from minorities
whereas they represent only 20% of the population as a whole.
Washington is threatening to boycott the Durban conference for two reasons.
One, because it refuses to condemn Israel for its overt racist policies
against the people of Palestine, and two, because it wants nothing to do
with demands for slavery reparations that some African nations are
considering making against nations that profited the most from the colonial
slave trade.
The truth is that -- unlike the UN Security Council and Human Rights
Commission, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund
-- Washington has neither the buying power nor the political power to
control what takes place in Durban. And nothing could be worse for the
"global cop" than to find itself in the dock, standing accused of some of
the worst crimes against humanity, past and present.
(c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.
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