Raul Castro warns US against threats
HAVANA (AP):
Acting president Raul Castro says Cuba remains open to normalised relations, but warned the U.S. government that it will get nowhere with threats or pressure.
In his first comments since assuming power, Castro also said in Friday's Communist Party newspaper that he mobilised tens of thousands of troops in response to aggressive U.S. acts including stepped-up radio and television broadcasts to the island and an US$80 million (€62 million) plan to hasten the end of the Castros' rule.
"Some of the empire's war hawks thought that the moment had come to destroy the Revolution this past July 31," the day Fidel Castro's illness was announced, Raul Castro said. "We could not rule out the risk of somebody going crazy, or even crazier, within the U.S. government."
The 75-year-old Defense Minister also said his 80-year-old brother Fidel is undergoing a "satisfactory and gradual recovery" from intestinal surgery.
IDB says no loan to hire police official
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP):
The Inter-American Development Bank has said that funds from a US$20 million (€15.6 million) loan to boost Guyana's infrastructure cannot be used to pay former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik to oversee reforms to the country's police force.
President Bharrat Jagdeo, who is running for re-election on Aug. 28, said last week the bank agreed to fund Kerik's services with a portion of the loan.
But on Friday, the bank said in a statement that "none of our current bank operations in Guyana is financing the consulting services of Bernard Kerik either as an individual or as part of a consulting firm."
Shortly afterward, presidential spokesman Robert Persaud said no final decision had been made on hiring Kerik, adding, "We are not ruling Mr. Kerik in or out of the picture."
Jagdeo had announced that Kerik, who visited the violence-wracked South American nation last week, would help overhaul Guyana's police force if the ruling People's Progressive Party wins a fourth consecutive five-year term.
Hundreds protest Alcoa aluminum smelter
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (AP):
A former Trinidadian attorney-general has invoked the struggle of U.S. civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as he called on the government to block the building of a proposed aluminum smelter in the Caribbean country.
Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj told an audience of some 250 protesters, who gathered in the capital of Port-of-Spain to protest a planned-for US$1.5 billion (€1.17 billion) aluminum smelter in southwest Trinidad, that he was compelled to rally against the project because it would harm the environment.
"I must stand up and fight for the people as Dr. King did," said Maharaj, who is well-known in the twin-island Caribbean nation for his provocative remarks.
Organisers of Cuban smuggling ring charged
MIAMI (AP):
Five men described as organisers of Cuban migrant smuggling trips have been charged in a 44-count indictment that federal prosecutors said demonstrated a new, more aggressive effort to root out higher-ups in smuggling networks.
"This indictment focuses on those who organised, coordinated, arranged and financed these trips," U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said Friday.
The five men, who are all Cuban nationals, were arrested Thursday in the Miami area and made their initial court appearances Friday in Key West. It was not immediately clear whether any of the five had lawyers to represent them. The men were scheduled to return to court for a bond hearing Aug. 25.
