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Cuba highlighted Monday that the fact of being founding member of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) proves at the end reason defeats force and principles impose power and money.
Address by Cuba Foreign Minister in Geneva

In his speech at the top-level opening segment of the Seventh HRC Session, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said that after 20 long years of “fighting devils” we end old coercive styles of the group.

The island”s official noted that United States, with several pretexts to legitimate its aggression against Cuba in the former Commission turned “into failed State in this matter, responsible for the most dangerous crimes and violations of human rights.” “That battle has concluded in this way: with the categorical victory of little David,” great in his dignity, against giant Goliat, powerful man with his nuclear weapons and preventive wars,” he noted.

Perez Roque stressed “we will also end one day that criminal blockade imposed to us so we die of hungry and diseases.” “That”s why now and not before,” the island”s foreign minister stated, “we have inked the Human Rights Covenants,” referring to the signing of two texts adopted by Cuba Thursday at the UN main headquarter in New York.

The Cuban diplomatic head reiterated his country” will to cooperate with the HRC works, “with non-discriminatory and universal human rights mechanisms, with the strict respect to our sovereignty.” While five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters are unfairly imprisoned in US jails, that country threatens to bomb over 60 countries and defend asphyxia as a method to extract confessions, the HRC must exist and act, Perez Roque stated.

The Cuban official adopted other reasons to support the UN organization, among them the abuses of outrages committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, the existence of 900 million hungry people and 800 million illiterate persons.

Some 1,000 experts from 50 countries are to attend in this capital Monday the International Meeting of Economists on Globalization and Development Problems, amid a panorama of economic uncertainty and high oil prices.

A source from the organizing committee has confirmed the presence in the event of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and Monsignor Marcelo Sanchez, Bishop Chancellor at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican.

National Association of Economists of Cuba (ANEC) vice president Esther Aguilera also told Prensa Latina that among figures will be 1999 and 2007 Nobel prizewinners in Economy Robert Mundell and Eric Maskin, respectively.

Also included are representatives from 20 international and regional organizations among them UNCTAD, WTO, IMF, ALADI, SELA and ECLAC.

The US recession’s impact on economies of the Latin American and Caribbean countries, and the international situation due to the explosion of the private debt and the real estate sector are among the lectures of the meeting.

After the official opening of the event today, there will be speeches by Orlando Caputo Leiva, from the Studies Center on Transnationalization, Economy and Society of Chile, and Osvaldo Martinez, director of the World Economy Research Center, among other experts.

The ANEC vice president stated that Fidel Castro was the inspirer of this kind of meeting, and recalled how in the 1998 event she stated the need to debate the most urgent problems of the international economy.

Although it is an economists meeting, political scientists, sociologists, jurists and other professionals, from different magnitudes of globalization and development, are looked at integrality.

This concern in an event whose aim is to analyze dynamism of processes in the framework of international economic relations and happenings these news have had between one and another edition of those forums.

The Cuban population decreased by 1,889 in 2007 for the second year in a row, despite a slight increase in the birth rate, the National Statistics Office (ONE) reported.

According to the report “Demographic Indicators. Cuba and its Territories”, published on the ONE website, the Cuban population decreased from 11,239,043 to 11,237,154.

Although the number of births increased in relation to 2006, the combination of deaths and migrants tilted the balance towards a decreasing tendency, according to the ONE.

The ONE’s predictions are not encouraging, as the Cuban population is expected to decrease by 26,000 by 2020.

Meanwhile, demographic aging increased, as 16.2 percent of the Cuban population is over 60 years of age, compared to 15.9 percent in 2006.

After the demographic boom in the 1960s and 1970s, when an average of 250,000 children were born, Cuba’s population began to decrease in the 1990s, and that tendency persists.

According to Cuban demographic authorities, that tendency is similar to the one reported in developed countries, and has resulted from Cubans’ high educational level and the economic crisis that affected the country in the 1990s.

A group of 40 young Uruguayans will travel to Cuba on February 29 to start studies in the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).

In a meeting with Cuban Ambassador to Montevideo Marielena Ruiz Capote, Uruguayan young people are aware of the good living and study conditions in the school.

ELAM receives nearly 10,000 students from 30 countries at present, for free.

Ruiz Capote talked to the future Uruguayan students in Cuba about the study programs and their combination with the work of the public health installations, sports and other activities.

Several mothers of the Uruguayan youth from other years also participated in the meeting, and gave the future students useful advice.

ELAM was created in 1999 by initiative of Cuban President Fidel Castro to contribute to the formation of doctors and specialists from other countries of the region, after the disasters caused by Hurricanes George and Mitch in Central America and the Caribbean in 1998.

Up to now, almost 5,000 young people have graduated from ELAM, selected from families with limited economic resources.

The 10th International Habano Festival will take place next week in this capital with the attendance of professionals and smokers from the world over, many of them already in Cuban soil, indicated industry sources.

Considered one of the most important meetings dealing on tobacco in the planet, this venue -from February 25-29- will gather at least one thousand persons of the five continents interested in habano cigars.

The event features a trade fair, visits to plantations and cigar factories, cigar-tasting and contests. On this occasion there will also be a contest for the Habanos-Armagnac trophy and Habano-sommelier, as well as lectures and debates of great interest.

The past edition attracted 1,600 participants, among them 948 foreignbers for 66 percent of all attendants.

The countries most represented were Spain, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Benelux and France and organizers expect a similar attendance this year from over 50 countries.

Among the topics to be discussed in the event are “The architecture of factories and warehouses, women and the history of the tobacco sector and the Oldest History of Tobacco, among others.

As is usual, the program includes the Distributors Dinner, dedicated this year to Germany and Switzerland and the closing Gala where the Habano Prizes of the Year are