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<p>By U.S. Arrests Cuban Exile Accused in Deadly '76 Airline Bombing MIAMI, May 17 - Immigration officials arrested Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile suspected in a deadly airplane bombing and other attacks, on Tuesday, weeks after he slipped into the United States and shortly after he withdrew an application for political asylum.</p>

A little-noticed change in federal benefit rules has kept scores of older Cuban immigrants from collecting disability checks that are considered one of America's last-ditch social safety nets, according to a pair of public service lawyers. People like Barbara Diaz, who arrived from Cuba five years ago, are left with little or no income, say the lawyers who are trying to address the situation. ''I don't regret coming to this country because it's the best in the world,'' said Diaz, 71. ``But I thought I would have this help, and I don't.'' Diaz was counting on receiving Supplemental Security Income,...

HAVANA (AP) - With shouts of "Viva Fidel," female government supporters interrupted a weekly silent protest on Sunday by the wives of political prisoners after church services on the second anniversary of the crackdown that put 75 activists behind bars. No violence was reported and nobody was injured during the standoff between two opposing groups of women Sunday afternoon after Palm Sunday Mass at the Santa Rita Roman Catholic Church. But tensions ran high during the unusual, noisy confrontation, prompting curious neighbors to leave their homes and for cars along busy Fifth Avenue to slow down for a better look....

FROM FILMMAKER/PHOTOGRAPHER CARLOS M. AGUILAR Dear Cuban Music and History Lovers, I'm so happy that an actress, a songwriter and a producer were three of the Oscar nominated Latinos-Spaniards for the 2004 Academy Award but, we must correct a big mistake amplified in front of hundreds of millions of viewers during last night's gala. Jorge Drexler won the award for best original song for "The Motorcycle Diaries." It's a good film about the early young life of Ernesto Che Guevara before he left his home to destroy other lands in his distorted quest to change the world.

A Castroite state-controlled media organ reports that El Barbudo is incensed about Cuba not having enough doctors in Cuba in this news item here. Oh really? It's enough to make me wonder if he's almost as oblivious to economics as El Supremo. Of course there aren't enough Cuban doctors, Castro! You sent them off to be spies in Venezuela! Cubans have noticed this. And so have Venezuelans! Daniel researched that Misión Barrio Adentro program and found quite a bit of evidence of such shenanigans here. You've got plenty of Cuban doctors, Castro. It's just that when you send them to...

One of hundreds of Mariel Cubans being quietly released from prison by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Roberto Pedroso-Mesa had hoped to return to Florida, where he had lived. But because he had no one to call for bus fare, he was driven from a north Alabama jail to New Orleans. "Immigration brought me here, up to the Immigration building, and they let me go right there," he said through an interpreter Wednesday.But on Thursday, he had a work card — not a permanent "green card," but a temporary card showing it is legal to hire him. So did two...

Val Prieto, at Babalublog, has some fun at the expense of a restaurant in Minneapolis which serves "revolutionary Cuban cuisine" amidst portraits of Che and Fidel. Val writes what getting a real meal is like in Havana... It's a masterpiece of debunking. He floors the guy in that magnificent storytelling way that only he can. >>Revolutionary Cuban cooking!? I wonder if the maitre'd hands everyone a ration card when they walk in the door. Or if they make the cafe cubano like they have been making it in revolutionary Cuba. One thin layer of fresh coffee grounds, one thin layer...

The end of the cold war was cruel to Cuba. The country's trading partners, denied Soviet largesse, dried up. Hard cash ran low. What food the country could grow languished in the fields; trucks didn't have enough gasoline to bring the crops to market. And of course there was the US embargo. What Cubans call "the Special Period" produced one notable success: pharmaceuticals. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, Cuba got so good at making knockoff drugs that a thriving industry took hold. Today the country is the largest medicine exporter in Latin America and has more than 50...

The next time you meet a Cuban, say thank you. I am reading Ann Coulter's new book, How To Talk to a Liberal, when I came to her analysis on the Elián Gonzáles debacle. She devotes an entire chapter to this subject. I wondered why this injustice by the Clinton administration was any more significant than others about which she uses less space. Then I read the point of the chapter and realized why she saw the need to dedicate that much ink to the subject. In 1996, 40% of Cuban-Americans voted for Bill Clinton. In 2000, 77% of Cuban-Americans...

First they tried sailing to freedom in a retrofitted 1951 Chevy. Then it was a floating '59 Chevy pickup truck. Finally, the family of a Cuban migrant who masterminded the escapes in vintage trucks has found freedom. They arrived Wednesday in Costa Rica -- not in a vintage Chevy -- but on a flight paid for by the U.S. government. Luis Grass, 30, a master mechanic dubbed a ''truckonaut'' for his conversions of the classic vehicles into seaworthy escape vessels, was among the 20 migrants taken from the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay to Costa Rica on Wednesday. He...

Are you not inspired and uplifted by the story of Carlos Gutierrez? When Gutierrez was but six years old, he and his family left their home in Havana, Cuba, for a vacation in Miami, unaware that they would never return to their homeland. Fidel Castro and his communists took over the island, confiscated the pineapple exporting business and property of Carlos Gutierrez’s father, and prohibited his family from returning. The Gutierrez family was forced to start anew in an unfamiliar place with an uncertain future. Carlos’s father worked for Heinz and began another business, though it was hit hard by...

FOLKS, THIS IS HOT - NATIONWIDE!!!! SEE BELOW AND SEND TO ALL ON YOUR LISTS! Burlington Coat Factory promotes t-shirts of communist murderer Che Guevara BOYCOTT BURLINGTON COAT FACTORY PROTEST Saturday Dec. 4, 2004 at noon at Burlington Coat Factory stores MIAMI: 11301 NW 12TH Street, Miami, FL 33172 NEW YORK: 707 6th Avenue, NY, NY 10010 LOS ANGELES: 22835 Victory Blvd., WEST HILLS, CA 91307 SAN FRANCISCO: 899 Howard St., San Francisco, CA 94103 WASHINGTON D.C.: 3524 South Jefferson Street Baileys Crossroads, VA 22041 Burlington Coat Factory has become "Burlington Che Factory." The company ran television ads promoting sales...

In front of a large and highly energized crowd, President Bush announced his intention for the United States to bring freedom to the people of Cuba. The President promised to bring pressure to bear in order to ensure that every Cuban has the same freedoms as all Americans. The President's unexpected assertion was welcomed by a large crowd of supporters in a hugely resounding and highly energized way. The response of the largely Cuban-American crowd to the President's declaration of freedom for Cuba culminated with of those in attendance spontaneously and excitedly leaping to their feet and cheering very loudly...

For all of his braggadocio, television star of Democratic election advertisement fame, Hialeah, Florida Mayor Raul Martinez may not be able to deliver the votes of his own city to presidential hopeful John Kerry. With rhetoric that's "getting more vulgar" every day, the Cuban-born mayor seems to be turning the tide against his main man Kerry. "Martinez says we Cuban-American Republicans are walking with blinders on and he has even called us horses," says Hialeah resident Ana V. Amador. "But with our 44,080 versus 17,000 representation, we Republicans are the majority." . . . . . For the entire Canada...

I have an idea about using a scare tactic...a new one or maybe it isn't. Since Castro has come out and supported Kerry and Democrats want the illegal alien vote, then why can't we say that if Kerry gets into office, he will return illegal cubans back to Cuba. I think this might work with illegal Mexicans too because I think Fox (read Mexico's president, not the news channel--for the democrats) has come out in support of Kerry as well. It is only fair because of the scare tactics Democrats use to scare old people and victicrats (thanks for the...

p193 Miami -- It is there that a nutty bunch of Cuban exiles have controlled U.S. foreign policy regarding this insignificant island nation. These Cubans, many of whom were Batista supporters and lived high on the hog while that crook ran the country, seem not to have slept a wink since they grabbed their assets and headed to Florida. And, since 1960, they have insisted on pulling us into their madness. Why is it that in every incident of national torment that has deflated our country for the past three decades-the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, IranContra, our drug abuse epidemic-the list...

Researchers scour Cuban records for clues to Calusa By KRISTEN ZAMBO, klzambo@naplesnews.com March 14, 2004 After years of belief to the contrary, the once mighty Calusa Indians, who lived centuries ago in Southwest Florida, may not be extinct after all. Nicknamed "The Fierce Ones," the Calusa Indians lived in Southwest Florida from around A.D. 100 to the early 1700s, when they were believed to have been killed off by invading Native American tribes, Spanish soldiers and foreign diseases such as smallpox. Their largest settlement in Florida was on Pine Island at Pineland, now the site of the Randell Research Center,...

Eight Cubans Caught on Floating Buick Returned Home; 3 in Limbo The Associated Press Published: Feb 10, 2004 MIAMI (AP) - Eight Cubans who tried to reach the United States in a 1959 Buick converted into a boat were sent back to their homeland Tuesday by the Coast Guard. A judge has not decided what to do with three others who were in the car. The Cuban family of three remained on a Coast Guard cutter at sea while a federal judge in Miami decided whether they have any right to enter the United States. The group of 11 was...

Exile Activist Says Cubans in Floating Buick are Sent Back to Cuba, Car Sunk BY LUISA YANEZ and TERE FIGUERAS lyanez@herald.com/ Feb 4,'04 The '59 Buick converted into a boat and headed to Florida Keys with 11 Cuban migrants onboard has been sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard and those onboard will be taken back to Cuba, according to an exile activist in Key West. The U.S. Coast Guard Wednesday morning refused to comment on the fate of the car, citing a policy not to comment on an ``ongoing mission.'' But Arturo Cobo, who ran the Cuban rafter house in...

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro has praised California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's muscles but wonders how much brain power the former Mr. Universe has. "To judge from the photographs, he has a lot of muscle, but they have not tested him to see how much muscle he has in the brain," the bearded revolutionary quipped during a five-hour speech on Friday evening closing a Latin American social sciences conference. "He way well have more force in the arms than in the brain," Castro, 77, said of the former Austrian body builder who went from B-movie actor to Hollywood star...