Florida Orchestra announces cultural exchange program with Cuba

<p style="text-align: justify;">By John Fleming, Times Performing Arts Critic. Posted: May 31, 2011 06:03 PM. ST. PETERSBURG The Florida Orchestra has announced a multi-year cultural exchange with Cuba. It is scheduled to begin Sept. 26-29, when a wind quintet made up of principal players from the orchestra will perform a concert and give master classes in Havana. This will be the first in a series of exchanges between the Florida Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, with the ultimate goal of the full orchestra performing in Cuba as early as the 2012-13 season. It would be the first visit by a U.S. orchestra to Cuba since 1999, when the Milwaukee Symphony played there. Read More

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Note to Liu Xiang, David Oliver: Dayron Robles is back

<p style="text-align: justify;">By Phil Minshull, Special to Universal Sports. OSTRAVA -- It's difficult to describe the 110m world record holder as the forgotten man of his event and, to be fair to Liu Xiang and David Oliver, Dayron Robles may have been out of sight for a long time over the last two years but he was probably never out of their particular minds.However, the Cuban has definitely bobbed back onto the radar screens of athletics fans at-large in the last few days.Robles equalled the 2011 world-lead of 13.07, clocked on home soil in Shanghai by the 2004 Olympic Games champion Liu, in the Dutch town of Hengelo on Sunday and then returned to Ostrava on Tuesday night. Read More

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Venezuela’s Chavez to visit Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba

<p style="text-align: justify;">Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appeared in public Tuesday after several weeks nursing a bad knee, and immediately announced trips to Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba for next week. "I'm fine, my knee is well on its way to recovery," Chavez told official VTV television news, surrounded by his cabinet ministers. Chavez said he has been resting since May 9, when his injury forced him to postpone trips to the three Latin American countries. Read More

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Cuba's Carlos Varela and Jackson Browne bond over the power of music

<p style="text-align: justify;">Olivia Bendres. A couple of frontline singer-songwriters, an Oscar-winning actor and assorted other hangers-on, a Havana hotel room. Oh, and a bottle of rum.That was the scene one mid-'90s evening when Jackson Browne met his Cuban counterpart, Carlos Varela, sparking a mutual-admiration society that has grown through the years, bringing about a North American concert tour this month by Varela, presented by and, most likely, featuring some guest appearances by Browne. Read More

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Brazil offering Cuba to help digitize court system

<p style="text-align: justify;">Brazil is offering to help Cuba digitize its court documents, Brazilian federal supreme court President Ari Pargendler said in a meeting with the Cuban ambassador in Brasilia, according to Prensa Latina.Pargendler will be visiting Havana June 4-8, where he will meet Cuban high court President Rubén Remigio Ferro, among others. Ferro had visited Brazil in November. Read More

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Angola, Cuba sign cooperation protocol to train art teachers

<p style="text-align: justify;">LUANDA, May 31 (NNN-ANGOP) -- Cuban teachers of art will train Angolan teachers under a co-operation protocol in the field of culture signed here between the two countries.Speaking to the press about the signing of the protocol Monday, Angolan Culture Minister Rosa Cruz e Silva, said the work of Cuban teachers in relation to Angolan teachers had a broad agenda which must be implemented. Read More

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Oil matters more than communism

<p style="text-align: justify;">Volkhonsky Boris. May 31, 2011 15:23 Moscow Time. A recent discovery of a vast oil field off Cuban shores has given rise to a wave of controversial reactions from the US. The capacity of the deep water oil field is estimated as being between 5 and 20 billion barrels, which in any case will turn Cuba from an oil importing country into an oil exporter.One part of the American establishment reacted rather nervously, and the Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ileana Ros-Lehtinen even initiated a bill aimed at deterring oil-and-gas exploration off Cuba’s coast. Read More

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Gibara Port: a Not Very Well-known Story

<p style="text-align: justify;">By Jose Abreu Cardet / radioangulo.icrt.cu / Tuesday, 31 May 2011 10:39. Today's Gibara is not an important port but in the past it was Holguin city's the only way out by sea. When visiting the beautiful town of Gibara, it all seems that time has stopped, we are overwhelmed by the strange feeling that that view of the tile roofed houses that go climbing the hills never changed a bit. However, the opening of its port is tinged by an exciting but forgotten story. Read More

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From Cuba, progress that U.S. refuses to see

<p style="text-align: justify;">By DeWayne Wickham.Jony Jones: Has hopes for change.Shortly before I arrived in Cuba's capital, the U.S. secretary of State dined with six former Latin American presidents in Washington to discuss what it will take to fix what's broken in America's relations with its hemispheric neighbors. For half a century, a major stumbling block to this repair job has been the United States' obsessive efforts to topple Cuba's communist government.Soon after I got here, I had dinner with Jones at La Moneda Cubana, a new, privately owned restaurant in the old colonial section of this city. Read More

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From Hollywood to Havana: Artists give movie posters a Cuban twist

<p style="text-align: justify;">By Nuala Calvi, for CNN. May 31, 2011 -- Updated 1426 GMT (2226 HKT) London, England (CNN) -- There are no pictures of A-list actors or screaming quotes from five-star reviews -- but the simple, bold designs of Cuban movie posters instantly catch the eye.Printed as silkscreens in a diminutive 20x30 inch format, using just three or four colors, the handmade posters rely on the artists' ability to capture the essence of each film in the most striking and intriguing way possible. Read More

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