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Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro has died aged 90, state TV announces This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

Fidel Castro appears in public for first time in over a year BY DANIEL TROTTA (Reuters) - Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, 88, appeared in public "full of vitality" for the first time in more than a year on Monday, greeting a delegation of Venezuelans, official media reported on Saturday. It was his first known appearance outside his home since Cuba in December agreed to normalize relations with the United States, Castro's longtime adversary. Official media showed images of a seated Castro shaking hands with the visiting Venezuelans through the window of his vehicle, wearing a baseball cap and a...

For a few days there it appeared that if a resident of Indiana had chosen to refrain from commerce with another person and was sued for discrimination, this resident could have found legal recourse to defend himself against the suit. This legal recourse was made possible by the passage on March 26th of IndianaÂ’s Religious Freedom and Restoration Act. Such was the media hysteria and attendant calls for economic sanctions against Indiana, however, that a few days later the RFRA was drastically amended. During the four days of hysteria, however, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill...

In early December, President Barack Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba after more than five decades of a misguided policy which my uncle, John F. Kennedy, and my father, Robert F. Kennedy, had been responsible for enforcing after the U.S. embargo against the country was first implemented in October 1960 by the Eisenhower administration. The move has raised hopes in many quarters – not only in the United States but around the world – that the embargo itself is now destined to disappear. This does not detract from the fact that Cuba is still a dictatorship. The...

US Mission in Havana to Become Embassy Amid Thaw HAVANA — Dec 27, 2014 By PETER ORSI A half-century after Washington severed relations with Cuba, the United States' seven-story mission looms over Havana's seaside Malecon boulevard as the largest diplomatic outpost in the country. Cuban guards stand at close intervals on the street outside, and islanders line up by the thousands each year for a shot at a coveted visa. The gleaming U.S. Interests Section suddenly is poised to become an even more important presence in Cuba as the two countries negotiate the first phase of their historic detente -...

Now where have we previously heard Senator Rand Paul’s cliché-fest that constitutes his rebuttal to Senator Marco Rubio on Cuba sanctions? Well, from The Council on Foreign Relations to the New York Times and from Hillary Clinton to The Congressional Black Caucus—and that’s for starters. And oh, we also heard it repeatedly from every single one of the KGB-trained Cuban spies convicted by U.S. juries recently. “The embargo is Castro’s best friend,” Clinton chanted to an extremely friendly audience at the Council on Foreign Relations back in June while citing and promoting her book Hard Choices. The sanctions give “Castro...

Following the return of Alan Gross to the U.S., Sen. Ted Cruz slammed the “Obama, Clinton, Kerry foreign policy,” saying the Castro brothers are “state sponsors of terrorism” and that President Barack Obama “does not understand the difference between our friends and our enemies.”Cruz, one of three Cuban American members of the upper chamber in Congress, also called the normalization of relations between the two nations “a tragic mistake” made the comments to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto Wednesday afternoon. TED CRUZ: “This is yet another manifestation of the failures of the Obama, Clinton, Kerry foreign policy. For six years we followed...

Former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, has died. In an announcement today, a spokesman stated that he “departed… in the presence of his family.” “He is now resting, he is now at peace. Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a father,” he added. Mandela was 95.

Elian Gonzalez, the object of a 1999-2000 custody squabble involving Washington, Havana and family members on both sides of the Florida Strait, holds a piece of U.S. legislation directly responsible for what he endured then, Cuban official media said Monday. "They were very sad times for me, which marked me for my whole life. I was never given the chance to have a moment to think about my mother, who as a result of that (U.S.) Cuban Adjustment Act died at sea," the now-19-year-old Gonzalez said last weekend during a Union of Young Communists event. ~snip~ The 1966 Cuban Adjustment...

Fidel Castro shares at least one belief with the majority of Americans: He is convinced that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was not the work of a lone gunman, but was the culmination of a broad conspiracy. According to a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in Dallas 50 years ago. But Castro suspects that Oswald might not have been involved in the assassination at all.

Philadelphia city council members have approved a resolution that calls for socialist historian Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” to be taught in public high schools. The resolution was backed by council members Jim Kenny and Jannie Blackwell, who believe that Zinn’s far-left socialist vision of American history is currently missing from high school textbooks. “Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ emphasizes the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history; not simply the version retold by those powerful enough to ensure history remembers their actions...

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro has published an article applauding a Russian-backed proposal to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. … Castro also lauds Russia as a “brave country” that “stayed firm before the unusual pretension of the government of the United States, threatening to launch an overwhelming attack against the Syrian defenses.” …

On September 11, 1973 the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet slapped Fidel Castro so smartly that his Stalinist regime (and its dutiful U.S. Media minions) are still sniveling and sniffling and wiping away tears of shock, pain and humiliation. True to form, The New York Times leads the sniveling. They just published an article decrying the Chilean “tragedy” (i.e. Chile saving itself from Castroism with a military coup and today the richest and freest nation in Latin America.) The article’s author Ariel Dorfman is a former advisor to Chile’s Marxist president and Castro acolyte Salvador Allende. This same...

There is perhaps no worse political disaster for the government of Cuba than the death of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. After the Soviet Union collapsed and ceased to subsidize the Castro regime, the government of Cuba went through a very difficult period. That is, until President Chávez picked up the tab. While the real amount of the subsidy is unknown, Venezuela does send more than 115,000 barrels of oil a day to the refinery at Cienfuegos and pays for tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and sports trainers who are deployed all over Latin America. The true amount is...

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and his state of health is so precarious that he has trouble feeding, speaking and recognizing people, said a Venezuelan physician who assured El Nuevo Herald that he has access to firsthand sources and information. “He suffered an embolic stroke and recognizes absolutely no one,” said José Marquina, a respected doctor who in the past has claimed to have direct information about the illness affecting President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. “The people with a condition of this nature have difficulty eating and, of course, they end up with total deficit in...

Cuba's iconic revolutionary Fidel Castro warned that the world was on an "inexorable" march into the abyss this year because of climate change and the threat of nuclear war. In an article published Thursday -- Castro's first since November 2011 -- the 85-year-old retired leader also took aim at the United States and at gas shale "fracking," a new source of fossil fuels condemned by environmentalists. He did not, however, address rumors of his death, which were denied by an official Cuban blogger after they surfaced on Twitter earlier this week. "Many dangers threaten us, but two of them, nuclear...

Buddy of mine just heard it on a Dominican radio station Can anyone confirm this?

...Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far left and far right: that the shadowy Bilderberg Group has become a kind of global government... The 84-year-old former Cuban president published an article Wednesday that used three of the only eight pages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma to quote — largely verbatim — from a 2006 book by Lithuanian-born writer Daniel Estulin. ..."The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club," argues that the international group largely runs the world. It has held a secretive annual forum of prominent politicians, thinkers and businessmen since it was founded in 1954 at...

Did you know that deep down inside (when he’s not silencing his opposition, supporting the FARC, sponsoring drug trafficking, and courting Hezbollah and almost every other enemy of the West) Hugo Chavez is a good, admirable man? Yup, he is—according to Leftist filmmaker Oliver Stone. The filmmaker, along with the upcoming release of his “Wall Street” sequel, has a new documentary called “South of the Border” that praises Chavez, Castro, their allies, and highlights other South American leaders. But, apparently the Venezuelan people aren’t as hot on the near-dictator as Stone is: The documentary is bombing in the country. Personally,...

Three times last week CNBC aired an hour-long special titled “Escape from Havana. “  “Between 1960 and 1962, more than 14,000 Cuban children were secretly flown to the United States to escape Fidel Castro, “reads the catchy CNBC teaser.  “Today, many of the Pedro Pans have thrived in America… Each has walked a long road and fought to overcome profound obstacles on their way to the American dream.  In our documentary, you’ll meet a big-city mayor, an accomplished author, a singer, an activist, a professor, and a business leader. They were all part of a secret and improbable plan to...