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Fifty-three years ago, my father had a meeting on the other side of town in Havana where we lived at the time. Cuba was in turmoil and opposition to Castro was widespread as more and more people saw communists in positions of responsibility. At mid-morning, my dad called my mom and told her that something was happening in Cuba. Our phone kept ringing as friends and neighbors spread the news. Humberto Fontova recalls the events of that day: ""Freedom is our goal!" roared commander Pepe San Roman to the men assembled before him 48 years ago this week. “Cuba is...

Dmitry Tymchuk (Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine) Brothers and sisters, Here’s the Summary for April 17, 2014. The bad news: 1. Putin has now stepped into the astral plane. We shouldn’t expect his return. Today his “straight line” – is a protocol of feverish delirium. Just take his story about eastern Ukraine as “New Russia with roots related to Russia” as an example. And his story that the Russian military in easterm Ukraine is nothing but “nonsense?” This Kremlin storyteller likewise prophesied while foaming at the mouth in March that there were no Russian troops in Crimea. And...

The vice-principal of a South Korean high school who accompanied hundreds of pupils on a ferry that capsized has committed suicide, police said on Friday, as hopes faded of finding any of the 268 missing alive. The Sewol, carrying 475 passengers and crew, capsized on Wednesday on a journey from the port of Incheon to the southern holiday island of Jeju. Kang Min-gyu, 52, had been missing since Thursday. He appeared to have hanged himself with his belt from a tree outside a gym in the port city of Jindo where relatives of the people missing on the ship, mostly...

According to the information of the resistance, today, 17 April, Druzhkovka, Donetsk region, the extremists and the Russian special forces blocked a convoy of Ukrainian law-enforcers. In particular, the Group of the Ukrainian security services, peredvigavšaâsâ convoy, at 22.30 was stopped by traffic police and blocked a group of extremists of up to 500 people. As emissaries of the Informational resistance ", were in this group and the Russian military personnel. The unit was headed by Russian officer-notorious IGOR STRELKOV, who introduced himself as "Colonel of the ARMED FORCES of the RUSSIAN FEDERATION of the "special group"-"Crimea". Other members of...

The agreements reached between Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union in Geneva on the vacation of roads, streets and squares in Ukraine do not concern the protesters on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kyiv, Acting Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deschytsia has said.

Move comes after UN watchdog finds that Islamic Republic complied with terms of international nuclear deal

Leaflets calling on Jews in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk to register themselves with pro-Russian separatists may not be the work of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, Jewish groups have said. According to the World Jewish Congress, 17,000 Jews live in the city. The leaflets were handed out by several Balaclava clad men carrying a Russian flag earlier this week as well as being found plastered to buildings near a synagogue. They ordered all Jews aged 16 and older to register with the separatists, pay a $50 fee and report all motor vehicles and real estate in their possession....

Canadian police confirmed an arrest has been made in the Netherlands in the case of a Canadian teenager who was blackmailed to expose herself in front of a webcam. The 15-year-old later committed suicide after detailing her harassment on a YouTube video watched by millions around the world. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Insp. Paulette Freill said Thursday a suspect was arrested in the Netherlands and charged with extortion, luring and criminal harassment and possession of child pornography for the purpose of distribution. Police did not release the name of the 35-year-old man and declined to release specifics of the case...

Police say a high school vice principal who had been rescued from a sinking South Korean ferry has been found hanging from a tree. ((snip)) A police officer says the vice principal, identified only by his surname Kang, was found dead on the island of Jindo where rescued passengers have taken shelter.

President Obama is right. He told Major Garrett of CBS this week that "Mr. Putin's decisions aren't just bad for Ukraine. Over the long term, they're going to be bad for Russia." I believe that Putin's adventures in Russia's "near abroad" are a mistake. Indeed, they are part of a whole tapestry of wrongheadedness. It's also bad for the Kremlin to crush dissent, censor the news and hobble the economy by handing it over to oligarchs and a kleptocratic bureaucracy. Putin's scapegoating and demonizing of gays isn't only morally wrong, it's not in Russia's long-term interests either. That Putin prefers...

Britain's Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has conscripted the services of American campaigns professional David Axelrod, otherwise known as the architect behind President Barack Obama's U.S. election victory in 2008. The appointment of Axelrod to the Labour team is the latest in a long line of foreign consultants brought in to try and help Ed Miliband's team on the run up to the UK General Election in May 2015. Axelrod follows in the footsteps of 69-year-old U.S. community organiser Arnie Graf, who embarrassed Labour by claiming he was working for them, rather than consulting for them, without a UK work...

Last week, masked men in camouflage garb with no insignia, dressed and equipped like Russian special forces, started taking over police stations and other government buildings in the Donets basin in Eastern Ukraine. They appeared to be working in tandem with local militias in defying the Ukrainian government. This week, the Ukrainian government has responded by sending in military forces to counter these actions. There has been shooting and violence. But Ukraine's military doesn't seem capable of asserting control. So Vladimir Putin's Russia, with some 40,000 troops massed just outside Ukraine, seems to have taken effective control of a significant...

...Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday again vigorously denied Western claims that Russian forces were operating in eastern Ukraine. But he also finally confirmed what had long been suspected and that he had repeatedly denied: that the well-armed forces with no insignia on their uniforms that took control of Crimea last month were in fact Russian troops.

MOSCOW — Russia's economy has been hit hard by the turmoil in neighboring Ukraine, Kremlin officials said Wednesday, as pro-Russia separatists battled to take over more territory in Ukraine's east — and potentially add to Moscow's economic burden. Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region last month and the instability it created in Russian financial markets were cited by government officials for record capital flight and sharply downgraded growth forecasts for the country. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that instead of projected 2.5% growth this year, Russia's economy might show no growth at all.

Russia should not be concerned about NATO expansion, as they are not going to do anything rather than some symbolic financial gestures, Jeffrey F. Addicott, Director of Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in Texas told RIA Novosti. “Putin understands that NATO is largely a paper tiger,” Addicott said, adding that the alliance is now more in a defensive mode. “The Russian leader also realizes that their signals to send out some additional ships here and there, or do some additional flights really mean nothing.” Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for almost four hours to...

Sanctions imposed against Russia are working as a deterrent, President Barack Obama and other White House senior administration officials said Wednesday in a detailed defense and explanation of the U.S. response to the escalating crisis in Ukraine. And new sanctions could be imposed as early as Friday, with key Putin allies, institutions and top oligarchs among the targets, other senior administration officials said.

The Russian leader blames American hypocrisy for the deterioration between the two nations, which have reached they lowest point since the end of the Cold War. President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that trust between Russia and the United States had been damaged before the crisis in Ukraine, but added that he wanted to restore their cooperation and had no interest in pushing his country behind a Soviet-style Iron Curtain. "To a certain extent trust has been lost, but we do not think we are to blame," Putin said in a televised phone-in with the nation. He said it was...

UNMISS said in a statement that "the armed mob forced entry into the site and opened fire on the internally displaced persons sheltering inside the base". Its forces returned fire -- first firing warning shots and then taking part in a ferocious gun battle -- before the fighters retreated, it added. The civilians had fled into the base weeks ago amid brutal ethnic massacres in the world's newest nation. Information Minister Michael Makuei said that a "huge number" of gunmen had come seeking revenge for the rebel capture of the oil town of Bentiu two days ago hoping to kill...

Berlin (AFP) - The German government rejected Wednesday a call by two newspapers to remove Russian tanks from a World War II memorial in central Berlin in protest against spiralling tensions in Ukraine. The top-selling daily Bild and local tabloid B.Z. launched a petition drive Tuesday to urge parliament to send a message to Moscow against last month's annexation of Crimean peninsula and the military build-up on Ukraine's eastern border. However Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy spokesman Georg Streiter quashed the bid Wednesday, noting that Berlin had signed a 1990 treaty with Russia pledging to "respect, maintain and care for" the...

Slavyansk (Ukraine) (AFP) - It's a welcome more suited for rock stars and matinee idols, not necessarily black-masked soldiers in camouflage here to protect a rebellion. "You're our heroes! We love you!" the crowd clamours, smartphones in hand to capture history in this eastern Ukrainian town of Slavyansk with a population of 140,000, pro-Moscow Russian speakers in their vast majority. Slavyansk is now part of a Kiev-ruled Ukraine in name only. Since Saturday, pro-Russian insurgents have controlled every political lever in town: the town hall, the police station and even the secret service headquarters, taking any weapons still left for...