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Twenty-five Cuban municipalities reported zero infant mortality rates in 2006, making for a current national rate of 5.3 percent.

The National Statistics Department of the Ministry of Health, which previously reported on the national infant mortality rate, said in a new report that those 25 municipalities have a population of over 800,000 inhabitants each.

According to the same source, the western province of Matanzas registered the best results since 6 of its 14 municipalities reported no death among under one-year old live births last year.

In Cuba, children are also protected since they are born without risk of contracting 13 preventable diseases, through immunization programs which have the benefits of a vaccines created by Cuban scientists.

The VaMengoc-BC anti-meningococcal vaccine is another of the achievements reached by the Cuban science in favour of children.

Famous US writer Gore Vidal warned Tuesday that President George W. Bush could end as did Richard Nixon, with an obligatory resignation.

Vidal, 81, is visiting Cuba at the head of a large delegation of US intellectuals, historians and politicians.

“We hope he will end up like Nixon, resigning the presidency,” the author said in an exchange with professors and students at the University of Havana, adding “it s not impossible.”

Comparing the present US leader with Richard Nixon (1969-1974), who was forced to leave the White House due to the Watergate scandal, Vidal said, “When a building begins to fall to pieces it is very difficult to stop its collapse.”

The author of 24 novels, considered the most elegant writer of his generation in the United States, has also been called the most lucid intellectual in his country.

“Everyone who listens to this president in the United States knows he is a liar,”Vidal affirmed, saying “it is frightening to have to constantly listen to a man repeating and repeating I m a president in a time of war. ”

“Of all human vices, the worst is to lie,” noting that at the beginning of the 20th Century it was possible to get rid of a crazy president through a referendum.

“When the people do not understand what the emperor is saying, what the government is saying, there is no communication,” declared the writer who has always been interested in how his country functions.

“It give me pleasure to be in a place full of hope,” he told the Cuban audience and said that in the United States “the people do not have the basic understanding of what they have lost there has been a coup and the Republic has died.”

Cuba alerted some countries are carrying out actions that violate some of the rules included in the UN Convention on Laws of the Sea.

“We are drawing attention to the violation of the Convention principles with practices by some States, such as the Security Proposal against Proliferation of Arms of Mass Destruction,” Cuba´s acting Ambassador to UN Ileana Nuñez pointed out.

The practical implementation of that initiative would disregard “acknowledged norms on the interception of ships and different maritime spaces,” the diplomat said at the UN headquarters Thursday.

Any activity linked to biological diversity in non-jurisdictional areas should abide by the Convention standards as well, Muñoz sustained.

Cuba makes special emphasis on the need to reinforce international cooperation among all parties involved in the management of seas and oceans, she remarked.

French social activist Danielle Mitterand, now president of the Foundation of Memory, will take part in a colloquium on the life and work of Cuban President Fidel Castro as part of his belated birthday celebration.

Alfredo Vera, Guayasamin Foundation s International Affairs director, said that Mitterand will be present for the tribute this cultural organization will organize on the occasion of Fidel Castro s 80th birthday.

The widow of former French President Francois Mitterand agreed to take part in the colloquium “Memory and Future: Cuba and Fidel” together with a concert and a pictorial exhibit.

Vera noted that a wish of the late Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamin, a close friend of Fidel Castro s, would come true from November 28 to December 1.

“An embrace from Guayasamin for Fidel,” with original works by the artist will be part of the program along with the concert “All the voices, all” by singers and musicians from various countries.

According to a note from the Guayasamin Foundation, the presence of Fidel Castro will depend on his state of health, but official sources in Cuba said he is doing fine in his recovery.

Spains Communist Party (PCC) and its general secretary Francisco Frutos reiterated solidarity with the antiterrorist Cuban Five on Wednesday, who have been imprisoned in the United States since 1998.

Frutos criticized the manipulation of US legislation by the President George W. Bush administration, converting them into fascist laws.
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