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The US president, Barack Obama, shook hands with his Cuban opposite number, Raul Castro, at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela The handshake between the two historic enemies came as they attended a ceremony in Johannesburg to celebrate the late South African leader's ability to foster reconciliation. The gesture - which comes despite half a century of hostilities - came as Mr Obama made his way to a podium to deliver a speech. It is only the second time ever that a US president has shaken the hands of a Cuban Communist leader. President Bill Clinton was the first to...

A decade later, however, there are new photos of a nearly grown-up Elian Gonzalez - and they present a very different kind of propaganda image. The new pictures show a serious-looking 16-year-old sporting a closely cropped haircut, wearing an olive-green military school uniform with red shoulder patches, as he attends a Young Communist Union meeting. The Cuban government press released the images under the none-too-subtle headline "Young Elian Gonzalez defends his revolution in the youth congress." Since winning Elian's return to Cuba in 2000, the Castro regime has closely tracked the boy and his father. (Indeed, Cuban State Security has...

MIAMI Dec 10, 2006 (AP)— A congresswoman says a video clip showing her calling for Fidel Castro's assassination footage is fake, though she adds that she wouldn't mourn the Cuban leader's death. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., appears in the 28-second clip being circulated on the Internet by the makers of a new British documentary, "638 Ways to Kill Castro." In it, she says: "I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro and any leader who is oppressing the people." However, the Havana-born lawmaker, recently tapped to become the top Republican on the House International Relations Committee, says the...

Hundreds of Cuban dissidents chanted "freedom, freedom" and "down with Fidel Castro" at the start of a gathering of pro-democracy campaigners held near Havana.But the opening of the convention, held in an orchard, was overshadowed by a wave of arrests and the expulsion of visiting European parliamentarians and journalists, as President Castro's secret police acted against the island's first multi-party democracy conference. Five European legislators, with several journalists and human rights activists from the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy, were seized. At least six Poles were believed to be in Cuban jails. Among those expelled was Karel Schwarzenberg, formerly an...

Castro takes over Spanish Embassy cultural center By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ Associated Press HAVANA - Fidel Castro's communist government took the first major step in its anti-Europe campaign Saturday, taking control of the Spanish Embassy's cultural center -- a showcase of Iberian tradition that Havana says was used to nurture the opposition. The Foreign Ministry announcement came two days after Castro led hundreds of thousands of people on marches outside the Spanish and Italian embassies in the capital to protest European alignment with U.S. policies supporting pro-democracy dissidents. Havana was responding to the 15-member European Union's announcement last week that it...