From: NY Transfer News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 23:55:58 -0400 (EDT)
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Subject: [CubaNews] RHC News Update-17 August 2001 (delayed)
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
Radio Havana Cuba - News Update (Delayed) - 17 August 2001
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*FIDEL GREETS YOUTH FESTIVAL DELEGATES RETURNING FROM ALGERIA
*AL SHARPTON RELEASED FROM PRISON AFTER SERVING 90-DAY SENTENCE
*GENERAL WHO WAS FIDEL'S COMRADE IN ARMS BURIED IN HAVANA
*CUBAN SCIENTISTS SUSPECT U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN ATTACK ON HONEY INDUSTRY
*REGIONAL EXPERTS PRAISE CUBA'S SUCCESS AGAINST DENGUE AND MALARIA
*U.S. ORGANIZATIONS BLAST WASHINGTON'S THREAT TO BOYCOTT DURBAN CONFERENCE
*UN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP FOCUSES ON GLOBALIZATION, RACISM, INDIGENOUS RIGHTS
.
*FIDEL GREETS YOUTH FESTIVAL DELEGATES RETURNING FROM ALGERIA
Havana, August 17 (RHC)-Cuban president Fidel Castro was at Havana's main
airport Thursday night to welcome back the delegates to the 15th World
Festival of Youth and Students that has just ended in Algeria.
In a short speech, the island's leader congratulated the country's
representatives for their energy, enthusiasm and cheerfulness and said he
was happy to learn that the festivals will continue in the future. There had
been concern prior to the last festival in Havana, that there was a lack of
vigor and motivation to continue celebrating the gathering every four years.
However, the spirit of the Havana event carried over into the Algerian one
and the future of the World Youth and Students Festival looks very bright.
Fidel Castro told the multi-national delegation to take a rest from their
hard work, and spend time with their families telling anecdotes of their
trip. He shook the hand of every single one of the 150 delegates that
disembarked on this second flight of the total of 750 Cuban delegates
returning from the festival. The first group of some 300 delegates arrived a
few hours before. The remaining delegates are expected back on Friday.
The Cuban delegation contained a total of 57 nationalities represented by
foreign students studying in Cuba. Its very composition was seen as a
further indication of Cuba's strong internationalist perspective.
*GENERAL WHO WAS FIDEL'S COMRADE IN ARMS BURIED IN HAVANA
Havana, August 17 (RHC)-One of Cuba's best-known combatants, who fought
with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra Mountains and was one of the
founders of today's Communist Party of Cuba, has died.
General Raul Menendez Tomassevich was also a member of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party for 25 years and a member of parliament through 1993.
He formed the Frank Pais Second Eastern Front, which helped to solidify the
revolutionary base of the 26th July Movement in the eastern half of the
country.
He was buried with full honors on Friday afternoon in Havana's main cemetery
in the Armed Forces Mausoleum.
*CUBAN SCIENTISTS SUSPECT U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN ATTACK ON HONEY INDUSTRY
Habana, August 17 (RHC)--Cuban bee experts are concerned that an insect
that is infecting the island's beehives may be another manifestation of the
biological war that the United States has carried out against Cuba over the
past four decades.
The infestation began in the western part of the country, which has led
scientists to believe that it was artificially introduced onto the island.
Any natural occurrence would begin in the east, spreading westwards,
reported experts.
Over the years, the United States has been found to have introduced African
Swine Fever to Cuba with the resulting slaughter of half a million pigs in
1971 and 1980. Attacks on sugar cane and tobacco followed in 1978 and 1979,
terminating in a strike on the population itself. Declassified CIA files
prove what Cuban health authorities suspected all along: that Hemorrhagic
Dengue Fever was introduced onto the island in 1981 resulting in the deaths
of 158 people, 101 of them children. The dengue fever strain was of an
Asian kind and not endemic to the region, which made Cuban scientists
immediately suspicious.
Cuba's honey industry is gaining in importance with some 6,700 tonnes
produced in 1999 and in excess of 8,000 tonnes expected this year. In 1996
another similar infestation of the same insect forced the destruction of
16,000 hives and caused the loss of $2 million. At that time Cuban
authorities did not suspect U.S. involvement as the infestation had begun in
the eastern part of the island.
*REGIONAL EXPERTS PRAISE CUBA'S SUCCESS AGAINST DENGUE AND MALARIA
Habana, August 17 (RHC)--The success of Cuba in its eradication of a recent
outbreak of dengue fever on the island is a good example of the
effectiveness of the nation's public health program, announced an
Argentinean researcher Friday.
Hector Masu, a specialist at the Center for the Control of Disease
Vectors in Buenos Aires, said that Cuba's health system was a model from
which the world should learn. He was on the island to attend a forum on
dengue as a threat to the Third World. He commented to the press that there
is a lot that can be done to combat both dengue and malaria. He cited the
example of Brazil which, thanks to Cuban products, has managed to reduce
infections in the Amazon by a full 70%.
Michael Nathan, attending the forum for the World Health Organization also
praised the biotechnological advances that have enabled Cuba to combat such
diseases. Peruvian expert Edith Balbin agreed, saying that Cuba was to be
thanked for the windows it opens in tackling sectors of vital importance to
the stability of nations.
A representative of the Cuban biotechnology firm, LABIOFAM, Jos� Antonio
Fraga Castro, reported that the Pan-American Health Organization had
distributed Cuban products across the region to control epidemics of dengue
and other such infections.
*U.S. ORGANIZATIONS BLAST WASHINGTON'S THREAT TO BOYCOTT DURBAN CONFERENCE
New York, August 17 (RHC)--A coalition of 180 human and civil rights
groups in the United States have demanded that Washington participate in the
upcoming International Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.
At United Nations headquarters Thursday in New York, Wade Henderson,
executive secretary of the coalition Civil Rights Leadership Conference,
said Washington's absence from the gathering would demonstrate that the
United States gives less importance than other nations to the debate on
racial discrimination.
Henderson termed as hypocritical Washington's opposition to including
reparations for slavery and colonialism in the Durban agenda, pointing to
the US government's staunch defense of compensation for the victims of the
holocaust and for the Japanese-Americans interned in concentration camps
during World War II.
He said the US NGOs will be in Durban with or without Washington, and that
they will make public a report on what he called the chronic racism in the
United States against African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics and Indians. The
press conference at UN headquarters coincided with a massive demonstration
in Pretoria in front of the US embassy, where thousands protested
Washington's attitude regarding the international gathering to begin on
August 31.
*UN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP FOCUSES ON GLOBALIZATION, RACISM, INDIGENOUS RIGHTS
Geneva, August 17 (RHC)--On Friday, the United Nations Subcommission for the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights wrapped up its annual gathering,
which this year focused primarily on the effects of globalization,
indigenous populations and the upcoming International Conference Against
Racism.
Subcommission president David Weissbrodt said that for the first time the UN
agency debated the repercussions of globalization in the context of human
rights. Weissbrodt said the subcommission experts have called on UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights and other world body agencies to request
observer status before the World Trade Organization as a means to closely
follow how the liberalization of international trade and services affects
human rights.
The subcommission also expressed concern over the activities of
transnational firms, establishing a mechanism to keep close watch on those
activities and on the application of sanctions and reparations when those
activities violate human rights.
Regarding indigenous populations, the UN agency recommended an international
conference on the issue in the year 2003, calling on governments to carry
out activities to sensitize public opinion concerning the plight of this
sector.
And with respect to the International Conference Against Racism, the United
Nations Subcommission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights came
out in favor of placing high on the event's agenda what it called the
massive and flagrant human rights violations during the colonial period and
wars of conquest.
*AL SHARPTON RELEASED FROM PRISON AFTER SERVING 90-DAY SENTENCE
New York, August 17 (RHC)--US civil rights leader the Reverend Al Sharpton
today was released from prison after serving a 90-day sentence for
participating in a civil disobedience campaign in Vieques.
His first words to several hundred supporters in New York were "no justice,
no peace," vowing to return to Vieques to protest US military exercises on
the Puerto Rican island-municipality.
Sharpton lost 30 pounds as a result of a hunger strike to protest what many
called an excessive prison sentence for him and others who peacefully
demonstrated. Earlier this week the Mayor of Vieques, Damaso Serrano, was
sentenced to 120 days in prison for his participation in civil disobedience
campaigns in Vieques.
(c) 2001 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved.
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