The Amazing Hockey Shot That Won a 59-Year-Old Woman a New Truck

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59Year old Brenda Hewett whom has never held a hockey stick in her life makes a hole in one from the far blue line. the hole was the same size as the hockey puck. For making the hole in one she has won a brand new 2012 Ford F-150 from Frenchie's Ford in Massena, NY 13662

Each Chevy Volt Costs Taxpayers $250,000

The New American/ By Bob Adelmann    

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy just released a study showing that by the time all federal and state loans, grants, subsidies, and tax credits are figured in, each Chevy Volt costs taxpayers upwards of $250,000.

James Hohman, the center’s assistant director of fiscal policy, counted a total of 18 government “deals” but didn’t include the fact that one-quarter of Volt’s manufacturer, General Motors, is owned by the federal government.

He counted not only incentives offered directly to GM or to the ultimate buyer, but also those offered to suppliers of parts and technology for the Volt. The Department of Energy, for example, awarded a $106 million grant to GM’s Brownstone plant that assembles the Volt’s batteries. The State of Michigan awarded $106 million to GM to retain jobs in its Hamtramck assembly plant. And Compact Power, the company that makes the Volt’s batteries, received $100 million in “refundable battery credits.”

Some of the subsidies and credits are extended over varying periods of time and some are dependent upon certain production “milestones” being achieved. He counted them all along with subsidies to companies vying to provide batteries for the Volt such as the support provided to A123 Systems. A123 lost the battery contract to Compact Power, but Hohman included their subsidies in his study as well. 

The total of all subsidies, grants and credits is $3 billion: $2.3 billion in federal money and $700 million in Michigan’s money. That’s enough to purchase 75,000 Volts at the current sticker price of $39,000.

A GM spokesman, Gary Martin, responded to Hohman’s study by declaring that there is nothing wrong with government subsidies as everyone else is doing it. In fact, these subsidies for the Volt are “much less than the hundreds of billions of dollars that Japanese and Korean auto and battery manufacturers have received over the years [and these ‘investments’] provided … match the foresight and innovation that other countries are exhibiting.”

Unfortunately, GM has only been able to sell 6,000 of them since they were introduced last December, despite rave reviews from Edmunds and Consumer Guide. According to USNews’ Ranking and Reviews, “The 2012 Chevrolet Volt ranks 1st out of 21 Upscale Midsize Cars…. Reviewers agree that the 2012 Chevrolet Volt is one of the best hybrid cars on the market, thanks to its impressive fuel economy.”

In spite of promises made in September that GM wouldn't have "any problem reaching our goal [of 10,000 units for
the year]" by GM spokesman Rob Peterson, total sales as of December 19 were 5,816, more than 4,000 units short. And this despite purchases by General Electric and other fleet sales to cronies of the Obama administration.

As noted by Michigan State Representative Tom McMillan:

It just goes to show there are certain folks [in Washington and Lansing] who will spend anything to get their vision of what people should do. It’s a glaring example of the failure of central planning trying to force citizens to purchase something they may not want…. They should let the free market make those decisions.

Oposicion o provocacion? Ser opositor inmuniza contra la idiotez?

Si Francisco Chaviano Gonzalez tiene las tan demandadas pruebas que demuestran que Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz, Hector Palacios Ruiz y Rene Gomez Manzano son agentes de la Seguridad del Estado del regimen infiltrados en el movimiento opositor como desde anos se sospecha, debe de presentarlas inmediatamente.

By Tracey Eaton

Entrevista a Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo/ Tracey Eaton

by Tracey Eaton

Castro 2 y la corrupcion: "Solo yo puedo tocar"

Una tarde es todo lo que necesita Castro 2 para dar por efectuado el  Tercer Pleno del Comité Central del Partido.

La democracia de la elite que se autodenomina "vanguardia" de la sociedad cubana nos llega a traves del Granma, que esta  autorizado a informar que en unas 65 mil reuniones en los nucleos del partido y los comites de base de la UJC, se vertieron mas de un millon de opiniones las cuales no estamos autorizados a conocer por no pertenecer a la "vanguardia", las que arrojaron la modificacion de 78 de los 96 objetivos de la proxima Conferencia Nacional del Partido y la incorporacion de otros cinco.

Pero esto va a lo formal del asunto, pues el verdadero objetivo del General-Presidente de guerras de buroes y despachos palaciegos fue sembrar el terror entre esa "vanguardia" que reside fuera de los predios de Punto Cero y Punto Uno. La corrupcion en terminos legal-formales es un estereotipo burgues incompatible con el pensamiento robo-lucionario del Clan de Biran, por lo que la cruzada contra la corrupcion es de hecho una guerra implacable contra todo y todos los que se muestren remisos, inquietos o conflictivos con la marcha programada de los acontecimientos. 

Y para que nadie de por descontado que no tiene una soga alrededor del pescuezo y un pie en el precipicio, "...la corrupcion es hoy equivalente a la contrarrevolucion..."

After a week US left: Baghdad Blast Wave

Castro to American-Kubiches: "Bring more and more we're winning"

"Untouchables": Indian outcast millionaire mulls caste, riches

AP reports:

As far back as he can remember, people told Hari Kishan Pippal that he was unclean, with a filthiness that had tainted his family for centuries. Teachers forced him to sit apart from other students. Employers sometimes didn't bother to pay him.
Pippal is a dalit, a member of the outcast community once known as untouchables. Born at the bottom of Hinduism's complex social ladder, that meant he could not eat with people from higher castes or drink from their wells. He was not supposed to aspire to a life beyond that of his father, an illiterate cobbler. Years later, he still won't repeat the slurs that people called him.
Now, though, people call him something else.
They call him rich.

Saurabh Das / AP

Hari Kishan Pippal speaks in his office in Agra, India.

Saurabh Das / AP

Hari Kishan Pippal inspects shoes at his shoe factory in Agra.

Saurabh Das / AP

Hari Kishan Pippal poses for a photograph inside his
Heritage Hospital, one of the largest private medical
facilities in the north Indian city of Agra.

Saurabh Das / AP

Hari Kishan Pippal sits for a photograph with his family at
his home in Agra, India.

Saurabh Das / AP

Hari Kishan Pippal sits with his granddaughter at his home
in Agra, India.

Saurabh Das / AP

Hari Kishan Pippal talks on his mobile phone as his wife
watches television in their bedroom at their home in Agra,
India.

Full story here >>

Chen Wei: "The governance of democracy must win, autocracy must die"

Chen Wei

msnbc.com news services/

BEIJING — A Chinese court sentenced a veteran democracy activist Friday to nine years' imprisonment for inciting subversion, after he wrote four essays arguing for democracy.

The sentence given to Chen Wei is thought to be the most severe punishment handed down in a crackdown on dissent this year.

He was convicted of "inciting subversion of state power" over the essays, which he wrote and published online, said one of his lawyers.

Chen was one of hundreds of dissidents, rights activists and protest organizers swept up in a crackdown on dissent from earlier this year, when the ruling Communist Party sought to stifle potential protests inspired by anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world.

Attorney Liang Xiaojun said the trial at a court in the city of Suining in southwestern China lasted about two and a half hours and that the sentence was handed down 30 minutes after the trial concluded.

"We pleaded not guilty. He only wrote a few essays. We presented a full defense of the case, but we were interrupted often, and none of what we said was accepted by the court," Liang said.

Liang said that after the sentence was handed down, Chen said: "I protest, I am innocent. The governance of democracy must win, autocracy must die."

'What's wrong' with free speech? Chen's wife Wang Xiaoyan denounced the punishment.

"He is innocent and the punishment was too harsh. The court did not allow him to defend himself and he was completely deprived of his right to free speech," Wang said by phone from Suining. "What's wrong with a person freely expressing his ideas?"

Chen was among those who signed the "Charter 08" manifesto for democratic reform that was co-written by Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Two other dissidents from Sichuan detained at about the same as Chen — Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao — have been released.

Chen, 42, previously served time for participating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, where he was attending college.

In 1994, Chen was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for "counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement," according to the court indictment for his subversion charge.

Friday's sentence handed down to Chen appears to be the heaviest penalty meted out in relation to this year's crackdown, said Wang Songlian, a researcher with the Hong Kong-based advocacy group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders. More >>

Cruickshank: Occupy is only part of what's needed

AMERICAblog/ By Gaius Publius

I've been operating at the 15,000 foot level lately, discussing constitutional coups and rule of law (one of which we have, and one of which we'd like to have).

But there are many layers below that. One is the presidential layer — whom to vote for, whether to primary Obama or support him, whether to push for a 3rd party challenge or not. (I'll have more on that shortly.)

The layer below that — the organizing layer — is Robert Cruickshank's specialty. He's a California-based organizer who understands winning coalitions and how to get things done at the state and local level.

He's recently written about the Occupy Movement, what its effect has been and what steps are needed next. The whole article is well thought out (and is being studied in a number of quarters).

Cruickshank's bottom line is that to really fix the country, we need an "inside game" and an "outside game" (not his language, though the meaning is the same).

While the whole piece should be read (it's clear and not that long), I'd like to point you to this. In arguing that office-holders are needed to implement policy, he says this:

[I]t is those who are best organized who will prevail even if street action leads to major political change.

That is the key lesson of history. In February 1917 a mass movement took to the streets of the Russian Empire and overthrew the tsar. But because they were the best organized, it was the Bolsheviks who ultimately prevailed, even though most Russians seemed to prefer a more moderate and democratic outcome. In February 1979 a mass movement that had been in the streets of Iran for nearly a year finally toppled the shah. Many of the leaders of that movement wanted Iran to become a western-style liberal democracy. What they got was the Islamic Republic, because the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers were by far the best organized group in the country.

In February 2011 a mass movement took to the streets of Egypt and overthrew Hosni Mubarak. But because they were the best organized, it was the Muslim Brotherhood that won the fall elections and is now poised to govern Egypt. The people of Tahrir Square are struggling to maintain their vision of the revolution and are finding that taking to the streets is a tactic that can work at times, but isn’t enough to produce long-term change. If it were, the occupations of Syntagma Square would have stopped Greece from imploding on austerity, and would have brought down the neo-Thatcherism of the Cameron-Clegg government in the UK.

Progressives were not wrong to care about winning elections and making sure the right people were in government. That matters a great deal. Who controls the levers of government, whose ideas prevail in a campaign, which ballot initiatives win and lose, which budgets get cut and which budgets get increased – all of these things are crucially important. And ultimately, if we are going to take our money back from the 1%, it’s going to require governmental action.

What progressives were wrong to do was to make electoral organizing such a central focus of their work, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

This makes two points. One, that office-holders — for example, Darcy Burner, whom he endorses — are needed. (I'd add Ilya Sheyman in Illinois as well, and will offer a full list in due course.)

But the other point is about cadre revolutions. Cruickshank is not the first to note that Lenin didn't topple the Czar, he toppled the movement that toppled the Czar. (My thoughts here.)

His question is important — if the Occupy Movement does destabilize the regime (or "elite establishment" if that term is more comforting), who will pick up the pieces?

Cruickshank's answer is exactly right: the most organized group will win the round after that.

Touched by a Wild Mountain Gorilla

Krugman: Will China’s bubble break?

JFunk via Shutterstock/Salon

AMERICAblog/ Paul Krugman on the current situation in China:

Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated “shadow banking” neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting — and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.

Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I’m talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn’t need this right now.

Krugman notes that consumer demand is weak in China (35% of GDP, about half our level) and getting weaker; the rest being made up in trade. But they, like us have a real estate-driven boom in investment spending. The trick is to know how much, since number coming out of China are generally fudged to look better than they are.

The problem is that even these fudged numbers don't give the Professor a good feeling:

The obvious question is, with consumer demand relatively weak, what motivated all that investment? And the answer, to an important extent, is that it depended on an ever-inflating real estate bubble. Real estate investment has roughly doubled as a share of G.D.P. since 2000, accounting directly for more than half of the overall rise in investment. ... Do we actually know that real estate was a bubble? It exhibited all the signs: not just rising prices, but also the kind of speculative fever all too familiar from our own experiences just a few years back — think coastal Florida.

Krugman asks how much damage the bursting Chinese bubble will do to the world economy. He considers both sides of the question — China's undemocratic government is freer to act than our own, but everything coming out of China sounds like famous last words. Then concludes: "it’s impossible not to be worried".

Jerarcas del Partido Comunista se reunen con representantes de los Hermanso Musulmanes

ABC.es/

El Cairo, 22 dic (EFE).- El vicepresidente del Partido Libertad y Justicia (PLJ), emanado del movimiento islamista egipcio Hermanos Musulmanes, Esam el Arian, se reunió hoy con un alto cargo del Partido Comunista (PC) cubano.

Según un comunicado, El Arian se entrevistó con el responsable de Relaciones Exteriores del PC, Gerardo Suárez Alférez, y con el embajador cubano en El Cairo, Otto Vaillant Farías.

El dirigente comunista felicitó al pueblo egipcio y al PLJ por la Revolución del 25 de enero, que obligó al presidente Hosni Mubarak a renunciar al poder en febrero de este año, y por la celebración de elecciones parlamentarias.

Además, manifestó el deseo de Cuba de mantener fuertes y sólidos lazos con Egipto.

Por su parte, El Arian destacó que las relaciones entre los dos países son importantes en todos los ámbitos, especialmente en el de la lucha contra el analfabetismo y la sanidad, áreas en las que -subrayó- Cuba se distingue.

El Partido Libertad y Justicia lidera por el momento los resultados provisionales de las elecciones a la cámara baja del Parlamento egipcio, cuya segunda etapa culminó este jueves.

FedEx Guy Throwing Over the Fence a Computer Monitor [Video]

Pulp Fascism: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

PJ Media/

The original title of the massive bestseller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was “Men Who Hate Women.” Its author, Stieg Larsson, intended to leave his fortune to the Communist Party when he died in 2004 (though a mistake in his will prevented that from happening). If you are unfamiliar with the story (which was, along with the rest of the trilogy, made into a successful series of Swedish films released in the U.S. last year), put your expectations for subtlety at the level marked “undergraduate.” This series of potboilers, like The Silence of the Lambs, involves a serial killer, sadism, women in peril, a secret cell where awful things happen to captured victims, and an unusual crime-solving partnership between a man and a woman. What it doesn’t offer is the slightest instance of plausibility, psychological depth, or even clever dialogue. And as directed by David Fincher, the Hollywood version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo isn’t far from being rated X.

The young woman of the title, played by Rooney Mara (who is best known for having played the exasperated girlfriend of Mark Zuckerberg at the beginning of Fincher’s last movie, The Social Network), is a mohawked, multiple-pierced (even, as we learn, in her nipples) Swedish punk computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander. At the start of the film, she is hired to investigate Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a crusading journalist who has just lost a major libel lawsuit against a corporate giant who, like all capitalists in the film, obviously came by his fortune dishonestly.

Salander has a history of antisocial behavior and petty crime, so she can only access a trust fund meant to support her if she can prove she is an upstanding citizen to a court-appointed guardian who naturally takes the opportunity to tell the girl she can’t have the money unless she provides oral sex to him. Whether it would be wise to ask a violent and hostile person to perform this task against her will is one of many legitimate questions the movie simply ignores in its quest to provide an ever more-revolting series of gruesome images. This scene is only the first of what will turn out to be three unbelievably sick and lurid encounters between the pair, but don’t worry: Lisbeth is capable of defending herself. More >>

What Happens Next in North Korea?

PJ Media/ by Richard Fernandez

Bruce Cumings, the University of Chicago academic who is the “left’s leading scholar of Korean history,” believes that “North Korea is a misunderstood land.” He thinks the terrible state of the northern half of the peninsula is at least partly America’s fault and no one can escape the “significant responsibility that all Americans share for the garrison state that emerged on the ashes of our truly terrible destruction of the North half a century ago.”

The problem with that assertion is summarized in a graph of per capita GDP in the Washington Post which shows that the divergence of the two Koreas actually occurred in the early 1970s. Prior to that time “the two countries were roughly comparable — in fact, AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt argues that, at the time of Mao Zedong’s death, North Korea’s workers were more productive and better educated than China.”

Self-inflicted

So you can forget the effects of the Korean War. The disaster in the North was entirely self inflicted; it was a catastrophe written and directed in Pyongyang by the Kim family.

Somehow they managed to take things from bad to worse. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post notes the second inflection point, in 1994, took place after Kim Jong Il succeeded from his brutal father. The Dear Leader managed to fix nothing and add more wreckage of his own. The North Korean economy, already in a flat dive, nosed over like a dive bomber without speed brakes and has been descending at full tilt ever since. The Spearhead argues that North Korea’s dynastic mode of Communism may be partly to blame as the Kims found some way to combine the worst aspects of Communism with all the shortcomings of  hereditary decadence into a form of governance from hell. To bolster the point, it presents a series of portraits which appear to show a process of reverse evolution, like ape emerging from man.

The following pictures demonstrate a clear progression from manly alpha conqueror to effete omega descendant. One can see something of the family resemblance down the line, but Kim Jong-un, the latest scion of the Kim dynasty, is a sorry specimen compared to grandfather Kim Il-sung.

Given this unfortunate regression, the suggestion is that the North Koreans might see yet another inflection point with the accession of Kim Jung Un, the latest in the royal line. More >>

How Dictators Keep Control

Discovery News/ THE GIST

• Dictators like the late Kim Jong-Il control people through fear and deprivation.
• Control over information is also key in keeping a tight grip.

Mourners pray in front of the big portrait of late Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung (unseen) near the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Corbis/ITAR-TASS

Images of North Korean women (and some men) weeping inconsolably at news of the death of strongman Kim Jong-Il was perhaps not surprising in a country where obedience is expected and much of the society, experts say, followed their "Dear Leader" because it has been in their collective best interest to do so.

But how do dictators like Kim -- or Saddam Hussein, or Hitler or Stalin for that matter -- maintain power over their people?

Psychologists and sociologists who study terrorism say dictators are able to spread fear among their people, and place themselves as their only salvation. Manufacturing an external threat, like Jews to Hitler's Germany, or the entire West for Kim, help keep the society off balance and collectively paranoid as well. 

"Our behavior is still affected by what went on thousands of years ago," LoCicero said. "It's easier to understand why it's adaptive and common for people to bond to powerful leaders. In Darwinian evolution, the people who bonded with the leader survived. That instinct got passed along."

LoCicero has studied terrorist leadership and victims of terrorism from all five continents. She says that in some cultures, it's important to show respect to leaders, whether it's North Korea's Kim family of dictators or just the local schoolteacher.

"It would be embarrassing to a family or individual if they didn't show a great deal of respect," she said.

Dictators are also able to rule with more practical tools, such as fear and control of information, according to Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University.

Post has studied the personalities of both Hussein and Kim for several decades, and jokes that his field of dictator scholarship may soon be obsolete.

"I've lost a lot of my old friends," he said. "But we still have (Iranian leader Mahmoud) Ahmadenijad."

Post said that in both Iraq and North Korea, dictators tightly controlled the flow of information. That control was upended in the past two years during the "Arab spring" revolts that swept away despots in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and some of the Gulf states, revolts that were encouraged in large part by information spread by cell phones and social media.

"Controlling information and controlling dissent are part of what goes into maintaining a totalitarian state," Post said.

In North Korea, Kim and his policies were responsible for a famine that led to the deaths of 1 to 2 million people, Post said. When food finally arrived, the message from state media was that it was a tribute to his leadership.

Dictators also exploit a well-known instinct for most people to seek protection from a strong leader, according to Alice LoCicero, a Cambridge, Mass.-based clinical psychologist and researcher on leadership and terrorism. More >>

Dale un celular a un chino y mira lo que hace

The Glazov Gang - Putin's Power

The Glazov Gang: The Invented People

Posted by Frontpagemag.com

Rubén Blades - "País Portatil"

Seguramente Ruben no se inspiro en el NeoKaxtrizmo del Querido Lider Raul Castro, pero sin proponerselo directamente, refleja como en toda obra de arte autentica, la hipocrecia y el cinismo de los robo-lucionarios de Biran.

In Russia, lost generation of science

The Washington Post/ By Will Englund

PUSHCHINO, Russia — For the past decade, Russia has been pouring money into scientific research, trying to make up for the collapse of the 1990s, but innovation is losing out to exhaustion, corruption and cronyism.
In a rut and out of favor, the labs are barely wheezing here at Pushchino, once one of the brimming engines of Soviet science, a special closed city devoted to prestigious biological research. The government has turned its focus to newer ventures.

But the result has been like a great deal else in this country: expensive, flashy and largely hollow. Shot through with back-scratching and favoritism, the government’s science program has tripled its spending in the past 10 years — and achieved very little. The number of papers published in scientific journals is the same as it was in 2000 and as it was in 1990, even while the rest of the world’s output has exploded.

The impact could extend even to the United States, which depends on Russian rockets, troubled by engineering failures, to carry astronauts to the international space station.

Twenty years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, a generation of scientists has been lost, young scientists say, and another is on the way out. Many are lining up to escape abroad, just as in the dark, poverty-stricken 1990s.

Science had prestige and plenty of support in the U.S.S.R. The Soviets wielded a formidable nuclear arsenal, put the first satellite into space, then the first man into space. Dedicated biologists nurtured what may have been the world’s foremost seed bank, ensuring its survival even through the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad. Nine Nobel Prizes for physics and one for chemistry acknowledged Soviet achievements. More >>

Frank Delgado - "La Otra Orilla"

El boom de los "Cubañoles"

ABC.es/ Soledad Álvarez

La Habana, 22 dic (EFE).- A punto de concluir el plazo para acogerse a la llamada Ley de Nietos, 66.000 cubanos han recibido ya pasaporte español y se calcula que podrían sobrepasar los 180.000 cuando se resuelvan todas las solicitudes de nacionalidad en trámite, según informaron a Efe fuentes consulares españolas.

El próximo 27 de diciembre es la fecha tope para que nietos de emigrados puedan optar a la nacionalidad española, una puerta que abrió la Ley de Memoria Histórica y que en Cuba ha supuesto una sostenida avalancha de solicitudes y largas colas diarias ante el Consulado de La Habana desde que la disposición entró en vigor a finales de 2008.

Hasta el momento se han concedido 66.000 pasaportes pero, pasado ese plazo, la administración consular seguirá trabajando en el examen y resolución de las solicitudes pendientes: a primeros de diciembre ascendían a 110.000 y se espera recibir unas 15.000 más en los últimos días de vigencia de la norma.

Teniendo en cuenta que el porcentaje de denegaciones está en torno al cuatro por ciento, el número de nuevos españoles en Cuba será de entre 180.000 y 190.000 (cerca del 1,7% de la población de la isla) cuando finalice todo el proceso, según estima el cónsul general de España en La Habana, Tomás Rodríguez-Pantoja.

Eso sin contar con el "efecto multiplicador" que tiene la ley ya que esos nuevos ciudadanos españoles pueden también pedir la nacionalidad para sus hijos si son menores de edad.

Antes de la entrada en vigor de la Ley de Nietos la colonia española en Cuba era de unas 28.000 personas.

Recuperar la nacionalidad de los abuelos españoles se ha convertido en los últimos tres años en un "boom" en la isla porque muchos cubanos ven en el nuevo pasaporte más facilidades para viajar al exterior o simplemente para emigrar.

El fenómeno llegó incluso a la música: "Oye mi hermano cómo es esto/ ya nadie quiere ser cubano/ y todo el mundo anda buscando como cosa buena a sus antepasados (...) Están logrando los ibéricos lo que los gringos no lograron/ Tal vez para el año que viene ya seamos súbditos del rey Juan Carlos", ironiza "Cubañolito", una canción del grupo "Buena Fe" y Frank Delgado.

La ciudadanía española no otorga a los cubanos ningún derecho adicional dentro de la isla, porque Cuba no reconoce la doble nacionalidad y, hasta el momento, para salir del país y regresar deben hacerlo con pasaporte cubano y los permisos que exigen las autoridades, según explicó el cónsul.

Sea como sea, muchos cubanos apuran los últimos días de vigencia de la Ley de Nietos y esperan pacientes las largas colas ante el Consulado para presentar sus papeles y solicitar el pasaporte.

"Me metí en esto porque quiero ir a España, visitar a unos amigos que tengo por allá, compartir, conocer y trabajar si puedo", relató a Efe Félix, cuyo abuelo nació en Canarias, donde a este habanero de 43 años le quedan familiares con quien mantiene comunicación.

"Un primo mío ya terminó los trámites y viajó hace poco. Yo pienso ir en cuanto pueda, cuando planifique mi vida en Cuba. Tengo un hijo menor que también podría acogerse a esto", explicó Félix.

Otros piensan en emigrar como Liuba, de 35 años, que quiere irse a España, donde ya vive su madre, con su esposo y su hija de seis años, dispuestos a trabajar "en lo que sea".

En esas colas no faltan incluso cubanos bisnietos de españoles que intentan acogerse a la ley, aunque esa opción no se contempla: María, economista de 42 años quiere de todos modos probar suerte porque ve en el pasaporte español "un camino abierto para el futuro".

La aplicación de la Ley de Nietos ha destapado en Cuba situaciones polémicas como el caso de los descendientes de abuelas españolas que tras emigrar se casaron con extranjeros: con ello perdían su nacionalidad de origen de acuerdo al código civil español de 1954.

Esa discriminación preconstitucional ha impedido ahora a los nietos de aquellas emigradas (no así a los de exiliadas por la Guerra Civil o la dictadura franquista) acceder a la nacionalidad, como denuncia desde hace tres años Jorge Félix Medina, cubano de 39 años, con abuela canaria, y que ha apelado, sin éxito, ante instancias españolas como el Defensor del Pueblo, la Presidencia del Gobierno o el Instituto de la Mujer.

A lo largo del proceso, el Consulado español también se ha tenido que enfrentar a situaciones fraudulentas como falsificación de documentos o "mercadeo" con las citas para presentar las solicitudes, entre otros.

La "Princesa" Mariela Castro estrena blog

Garrincha

Punt de Vista

La hija del dictador Raúl Castro Mariela Castro, directora del CENESEX, ha estrenado blog. Castro se inicia con dos posts: uno sobre su viaje a Holanda y la visita al Barrio Rojo y otro sobre una reunión en el Parlamento cubano sobre la no discriminación. Mariela Castro arrancó hace poco en Twitter. En su primer día en esta red social dirigió insultos contra los críticos al régimen castrista, a quienes llamó "parásitos". Desde entonces, y tras múltiples críticas, ha reducido sus intervenciones y ha tenido que contener sus irrefrenables ganas de acallar a los que la replican. Está claro que eso es nuevo para un Castro...

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Nota: El sitio de la heredera NO admite comentarios demostrando palbablemente el temor al intercambio de criterios.

Were circumstances of Kim Jong-il's death fabricated?

Kns / AFP - Getty Images

This undated picture, released from North Korea's official 
Korean Central News Agency on Dec.17, 2011, shows 
North Korean lreader Kim Jong Il (C), accompanied by 
his son Kim Jong Un (2nd-L), inspecting the Kwangbok 
Area Supermarket just before opening in Pyongyang. It is
said to be the elder Kim's last public appearance.

By msnbc.com staff and news services

The official report said that North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il died on a train at 8:30 on Saturday morning after suffering a heart attack during a "high intensity field inspection." State media reported his death on Monday.

Now, North Korea experts in South Korea are calling into question that account, saying North Korea likely made it all up, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper website.

Among the details they say don't make sense:

• Freezing weather: Kim was known for a nocturnal lifestyle and rarely got up before noon, and would have unlikely risen early in 20-degree temperatures for a field inspection.
• Train didn't move: South Korea's intelligence director testified that Kim's special train - equipped with four hospital cars - did not move out of the station the entire weekend.
• Witnesses: Kim always traveled with a large entourage, but the news of his death was kept secret for 50 hours.

Citing South Korean sources, the newspaper speculates Kim most likely died at home.

American team to Cuba for baseball and med supplies

Uploaded by WOODTV8

The Lakers will be only the second team from the United States to play against a Cuban team in Cuba when they travel to the island for a four-game series.

Al Montoya: First Cuban-American in NHL as NY Islanders' Goalie

Patch.com/

Al Montoya is proud to be a Cuban-American--the first to play in the National Hockey League--but his sports upbringing is definitely classic All-American.

The Glenview native, now a goalie with the New York Islanders, played a little bit of everything growing up. He might have soccer practice in the afternoon, then after a quick break Montoya would don the padding of a goalie to play at Loyola Academy in the evening, having started his on-ice career with the Glenview Stars youth program and coach Myles Gottainer.

Somehow he squeezed in a youth baseball career and freshman football at Loyola. If he wasn’t toughened by both the physical contact and managing his hectic schedule, nothing would have done it.

In the end, he developed the mindset of a goalie – all armored up with pads and a facemask. You have pucks flying at 100 mph-plus and bodies desperate to score, crashing into you.

“My athleticism was a little bit above the kids my age level,” Montoya, now 26, said in a recent wide-ranging phone interview from Long Island, where the Islanders are based in Uniondale.

“I always kind of shouldered it, wanted it. I wanted that pressure, I wanted (to be) that last line of defense when there was going to be a mistake made, I have the opportunity to (stop) it. I had that from an early age.

Trading football for hockey

“After my freshman year, I said enough for enough. I started skipping football practice to concentrate on hockey. That’s how I wanted to make a living. Football was enjoyable, but I always wanted to be involved in the play. There’s too much of a lull in that game. That’s why I love it (fast-paced hockey action).”

Montoya had a No. 1 booster in mother Irene Silva.

“My mom always told me to have confidence in myself, never gave me a hard time about hockey,” he said. “It took her 10 years to learn the game. It was simple in that I didn’t have to hear from a parent instructing me on hockey. I could just go to the rink, have fun and enjoy my game.”

Behind every top pro is a mom who was a combo chauffeur-public relations person. Silva is all of that – and more. As a longtime internist with a practice in Chicago, Silva could minister to both physical and mental hurts of her son. And, he’s come out better than anyone could have ever expected.

“Al was an incredible soccer player,” Silva said. “He was a superstar in sports. He was born with an incredible gift. One season he was on three soccer teams and hockey. In baseball, he was a catcher. I never worried about injuries except football. We’d be at ice rinks before 5 a.m.”

In Islander games through Sunday, Montoya was 6-5-3 with a 2.43 goals-against average and .918 save percentage. But those stats numbers might be secondary to the continued thread of his all-American story – that of immigrants coming here for freedom, and the pride of the dual identity of the old and new countries.

Family left Cuba after Bay of Pigs

Silva emigrated with father Manuel Silva after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba. As landowners, the Silvas had to leave their possessions behind and start over here, in classic style. Each new ethnic group coming over marks a first in their profession. For Montoya, it’s playing hockey.

“I’m extremely proud to be the first Cuban-American to play in the National Hockey League,” he said. “Whatever I can do to spread the word throughout the Hispanic community is a little thing I can do. It really makes you feel good about yourself you’re doing something for them.

“Just being able to talk to people is great. I’ve done quite a few interviews in Spanish this year. People had never been to a game ‘till they saw me on Univision.”

Montoya was one of four boys, speaking Spanish in a home near Glenview’s ice rink.

“Their Cuban roots, they’re very proud,” said Silva. But she’s equally proud of oldest son David, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Al is No. 2 in the pecking order, followed by twins Marcos and Carlos Montoya.

Al Montoya already has lost two games to his hometown Blackhawks. Their top scorers have his undying respect. But he’s taught himself to not hang crepe over losses and wash them out of his memory quickly.

“When you play the Blackhawks, there are no secrets,” he said. “You respect the whole team. No matter who you are, first line, fourth line, you have a hard shot.  No secret who the studs are. There are so many games, if there’s a guy I’m concerned about, I’ll ask an older guy who might have played with him. I try to stay fresh.

"For me, it’s keeping it simple. You know they have all those weapons. My job is to take care of that first guy. They’re creative, they’re going to make those extra passes other teams don’t make.

“It’s (success) focusing on the now. Who knows what’s next?”

Animada compra-venta de casas en Cuba, con más de 360 en 20 días

50,000 cuc/ Casa 5 cuartos, 2 baños, con sala, comedor, cocina, azotea libre, portal, garaje, puntal alto, telefono, gas de la calle, agua las 24 horas, hall, puerta calle, tanque instalado. E 665 e/ 27 y 29 en Ciudad Habana, Plaza, Vedado

LA HABANA — Más de 360 viviendas fueron vendidas en Cuba en los primeros 20 días de entrar en vigor la autorización de compra-venta anunciada por el presidente Raúl Castro, informaron el martes fuentes oficiales.

"Hasta el 30 de noviembre último se habían efectuado 364 compraventas, 1.579 donaciones y 409 permutas (cambios de viviendas), a partir de la puesta en práctica" del decreto el 10 de noviembre, dijo Oris Fernández, presidenta del Instituto Nacional de la Vivienda (INV), ante una comisión del Parlamento, informó la Agencia de Información Nacional (AIN).

La normativa autoriza a cada cubano a poseer una sola vivienda para su uso cotidiano y otra en playas o sitios de recreo.

La legislación forma parte de las reformas aprobadas en abril por el VI Congreso del Partido Comunista (único) para dinamizar la maltrecha economía de la isla y reducir un déficit habitacional estimado en medio millón de viviendas.

Las reformas económicas, incluida la legalización del trabajo privado y la compraventa de automóviles, han sido puestas en vigor gradualmente por el presidente Raúl Castro después de que su hermano Fidel le cediera el poder en 2006 por graves problemas de salud.

Según Fernández, 45.900 personas concurrieron a las 149 oficinas del INV en todo el país para la actualización del título de propiedad y su inscripción en el registro de la propiedad, requisitos para la venta.

Los precios de venta son fijados por los interesados, que realizan la operación ante un notario, pagando al fisco los correspondientes impuestos por la operación.

Pero en las ofertas públicas, realizadas en el sitio digital www.revolico.com, los precios van desde 7.000 dólares por pequeños apartamentos en provincias, hasta 350.000 en grandes casas en La Habana.

El salario medio en Cuba es de unos 20 dólares mensuales.  Mas >>

Kim Jong-Un to share power

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mTor: A New Path to Longevity

Scientific American/

In 2009 scientists discovered that a drug called rapamycin could significantly extend life span in mice, doing so by interfering with the activity of a protein called mammalian TOR, or mTOR.
The finding is the most compelling evidence to date that mammalian aging can be slowed pharmaceutically, and it galvanized interest in mTOR’s role in the aging process.
The result also highlighted a mystery: Why would suppressing cellular growth and replication—oneeffect of interfering with mTOR—extend life span?
Research into that question could lead to medicines that postpone or mitigate aging-related disorders—from Alzheimer’s disease to cancer to heart failure—and perhaps even extend how long humans can live.

Maria Conchita Alonso Slams "Communist" Sean Penn

 

Credit: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic; Tony Barson/WireImage.com

Seeing red!
Cuban-born, Venezuelan-raised actress Maria Conchita Alonso hasn't held back with former costar Sean Penn -- publicly sparring with the outspoken star for his political views.

In 2010, the 54-year-old actress wrote an open letter bashing Penn (with whom she costarred in the 1988 film Colors) for his support of socialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. (Penn, 51, praised Chavez for his help in Haiti during an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. He also met privately with Chavez in Venezuela in 2007.)

On Sunday, the former costars had a screaming match at LAX Airport. She later revealed in a radio interview to WMAL, "I said, 'You are a communist, Sean Penn.' He said, 'You are a pig!' So I said, 'And you are a communist a**hole! Is it great to live the way you do as a communist?

Alonso admitted to WMAL she wanted to apologize "for calling Sean Penn an a**hole. He is an intelligent man."
"But if someone calls me a pig, I am not going to turn the other cheek," she said. "But I don't regret calling him a communist.

Read more: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/maria-conchita-alonso-slams-communist-sean-penn-20112012#ixzz1hCcAAkdf

Rafael Hernandez sobre la transmutacion del Kaxtrizmo en NeoKaxtrizmo

Entrevista de In-mundo Garcia al intelectual organico del regimen, ex investigador del defenestrenado Centro de Estudios America y director de la revista Temas Rafael Hernandez sobre los Cambios en Cuba

Whoopi Goldberg on Communism: ‘On Paper It Makes Perfect Sense’

BreitbartTV

O.W.S. Activist: ‘Police Rank and File are Professional Class Traitors’, But We Should Attempt to USe Them Against the ’1%ers’

From Big Government, by Trevor Loudon

An Occupy Wall Street activist and veteran of the Trotskyist International Socialist Organization, Pham Binh,  has written a widely circulated article, which explains how socialists should attempt  to  manipulate rank and file police officers against society’s so called rulers – the “1%ers”.

According to Pham Binh;

Occupy is a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-merge the socialist and working-class movements and create a viable broad-based party of radicals, two prospects that have not been on the cards in the United States since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Occupy is broader in terms of active participants and public support and, most importantly, is far more militant and defiant. Tens of thousands of people are willing to brave arrest and police brutality. ..

Binh goes onto outline how some of the numerous Marxist sects operating inside the O.W.S.  movement have attempted to inflame hatred against the police;

One of the socialist left’s most consistent criticisms of Occupy has concerned the issue of the police. PSL’s Liberation News ran an article entitled, “Are the police forces part of the 99% or tools of the 1%?” The Internationalist Group attributed the predominance of whites at OWS to its “line” on the police: “A main reason why there are relatively few black and Latino participants in Occupy Wall Street is this positive attitude toward the police, who day-in and day-out persecute the oppressed.”

Socialist Worker correspondent Danny Lucia concluded an article entitled “Officer not-at-all-friendly” this way: I’ll ask the same question now to all those chanting and blogging about the police being part of the 99 percent. When you chant and blog support for the cops, when you publicly speculate that maybe deep down the cops really like you, how does that make you appear to your darker-skinned comrades in the movement who have no doubts about how the police feel about them?
The New York City ISO even held a public meeting on the topic: “Our Enemies in Blue: Why the Police Are Not Part of the 99%.”
Socialists are duty-bound to object to politics, strategy, tactics and slogans we believe harm or impede movements of the oppressed and exploited. On this point there can be no debate.

Binh then goes onto explain that Marxist hatred of police was so intense and blindly ideological, that numerous criminal incidents, including rape and lesser sexual assaults were ignored;

However, the socialist left’s objections on this issue are not rooted in the needs of the uprising but in our desire to “teach” Occupy Marxist orthodoxy. According to the socialist left, OWS was and is too friendly to the police, when, in reality, OWS had the opposite problem: hostility to the NYPD was so strong that incidents of groping, sexual assaults and rapes that began almost from day one of the occupation went unreported  for weeks. This practice changed as the incidents escalated and occupiers realised it could not be handled “internally”,

None of the socialist publications acknowledged or seemed to be aware of this development within Occupy, nor did they offer any practical guidance on what to do about the sexual assaults that plagued occupations across the country.

Binh sees a problem with the socialist left’s analysis of the police as unequivocally part of the ‘1%” .  Binh’s approach is more sophisticated – in his view, the police are BOTH part of the “1%”, AND the “99%”.

To comrade Binh, this new analysis has implications;

The socialist left objects to the inclusion of the rank and file of the police force in what Occupy calls “the 99%” by which the uprising means everyone outside the wealthiest 1% who destroyed the economy, paid themselves and rigged the political system. These objections have been framed in a problematic way; the issues have been mixed up and, as a result, Occupy’s “friendliness” towards the police in the face of repression appears to be stupidity, insanity, or both.
No act of police violence will “finally settle the debate” about whether the police are part of the 99% because there is no debate, at least within Occupy. The police rank and file are part of the 99%. They are the part of the 99% that keep the rest of the 99% in line at the behest of the 1%. The police rank and file are professional class traitors. Shouting “you are the 99%!” at them drives that point home far better than calling them “pigs” or “our enemies in blue”.
To argue that the police are “not part of the 99%” means to argue that they are somehow part of the 1%, a radically and demonstrably false notion. This explains why the socialist left’s argument on this issue has gained zero ground within Occupy despite all the beatings, arrests, abuse and brutality.

More >>

Canadian-developed #HIV vaccine approved for human studies

thestar.com/ By Megan Ogilvie Health Reporter

After two decades of research, a group of Canadian scientists has won approval to start testing an experimental HIV vaccine on humans.

The vaccine, developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario, has received a green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for clinical human trials.

Beginning in January, the vaccine will be given to 40 healthy people with HIV to test its safety.

Dr. Chil-Yong Kang, professor of virology at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario, called the FDA approval a “milestone.”

“We started the basic science research two decades ago,” Kang said. “The vaccine development, we started 10 years ago. This is incredible for us to get to this stage of development.”

Kang said the vaccine, called SAV001, is the first preventative HIV vaccine approved for clinical trials to use a killed whole HIV-1 virus to activate the immune response in humans.

The strategy has been used before to develop successful vaccines for influenza, polio, rabies and hepatitis A. Kang said these past successes for other viral diseases provide hope the Canadian-developed vaccine will work against HIV.

The human immunodeficiency virus used in the vaccine has been genetically altered to render it non-pathogenic, or unable to cause disease. Kang and his research team then further inactivated the virus using chemicals and radiation.

“In the past, people did not use this strategy (using a killed whole HIV virus) because people did not know how to make a safer virus and people did not know how to make large quantities of it,” Kang said. “Now we have solved those problems by the genetic engineering of the virus.”

According to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, there are 30 HIV vaccines currently being tested in phase 1 clinical trials around the world.

Many of these vaccines have largely focused on using one specific component of the human immunodeficiency virus to trigger an immune response. Other vaccines have used other viral vectors to create a vaccine. Right now, there is no effective HIV vaccine.

Dr. Jonathan Angel, president of the Canadian Association for HIV Research, whose research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, said it is exciting that a Canadian scientist’s work has progressed from the basic research level to a vaccine approved for human clinical trials, meeting the rigorous criteria of the FDA.

But he also cautioned that developing an effective HIV vaccine remains a daunting task because HIV is a complex virus that scientists do not yet completely understand.

Should the SAV001 be proven safe, the vaccine will enter the second phase of clinical trials, in which it will be tested on 600 HIV-negative volunteers at high risk for HIV infection. Researchers will measure the volunteers’ immune response to the vaccine.

The third and final phase would enroll 6,000 HIV-negative volunteers at high risk for the disease. The participants, half of whom would be vaccinated and half un-vaccinated, would be tracked for three years to see how many in each group became infected with HIV.

Kang and his team received funding from Sumagen Canada, a company created in 2008 to support the development of the vaccine and a subsidiary of a Korean-based pharmaceutical venture company.

Is Castro Defrauding Medicare?

Capitol Hill Cubans

From The Hill:
By the time authorities busted a fake AIDS clinic in Miami, it had bilked Medicare of more than $4.5 million (2.8 million pounds). Still, the man behind the scheme remained far ahead of the agents pursuing him.

Michel De Jesus Huarte, a 40-year-old Cuban-American, hadn't simply avoided arrest. He had hatched a plan to steal millions more from Medicare by forming at least 29 other shell companies - paper-only firms with no real operations. Each time, he would keep his name out of any corporate records. Other people - some paid by Huarte, some whose identities had been stolen - would be listed in incorporation papers.

The shells functioned as a vital tool to hide the Medicare deceit - and not only for Huarte. Hundreds of others have used the veil of corporate secrecy to help steal hundreds of millions of dollars from one of the nation's largest social service program, a Reuters investigation has found [...]

To disguise Huarte's role, "straw owners" were paid as much as $200,000 to put their names on Florida incorporation records and bank accounts. In return, some straw owners agreed to "flee to Cuba to avoid law enforcement detection or capture," according to the indictment.

Grassley asks HHS to probe whether Castro regime is defrauding Medicare
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) grilled federal officials Wednesday about the Cuban government's possible ties to rampant Medicare fraud in south Florida.

Grassley asked Health and Human Services officials testifying before the Senate Finance Committee whether they were aware of any evidence that Cuba might be involved in fraud schemes against the government program.

He asked HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson to look into any evidence that Cuban officials have been "facilitating" Medicare fraud and to get back to him after coordinating with the Justice and State departments.

Levinson said he'd "have to get back to you on the particulars."

"We wouldn't comment on any particular case in a public forum," Levinson told The Hill after the hearing.

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services released a list of the Top 10 healthcare fraud fugitives, who have defrauded the government of $124 million combined. Seven of the 10 fugitives were of Cuban origin, and six of those are now believed to be hiding on the island.
During the hearing, Grassley referenced a report from the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami raising questions about the involvement of Fidel Castro's regime.

The report paraphrases a "high-level former intelligence official with the Cuban Government" as saying that there are "strong indications that the Cuban Government is directing some of these Medicare frauds as part of a desperate attempt to obtain hard currency."

"The source notes that the Cuban Government is also assisting (while not directing) other instances of Medicare fraud — providing perpetrators with information with which to commit fraud," wrote the report's author, research associate Vanessa Lopez. "The former Cuban official goes on to say that, in the instances where the Cuban Government is not directing or facilitating the fraud, it does provide Cuba as a place for fugitives to flee. This gives the Castro regime a convenient and care-free way to raise hard currency."

Furthermore, according to this source, "any fugitive in Cuba needs to pay astronomically large sums of money to the Cuban Government in order to enter and remain in the country."

Some Cuban-American groups have begun to ask for a congressional probe of Cuba's potential ties to Medicare fraud.

Grassley stopped short of that Wednesday, but his comments raised the level of attention a notch.

"I'm just now getting into this, so I don't really know what the next step is," Grassley told The Hill. "But at least there's one step going on now in regard to the written response that I got from [HHS]."

Los Guardianes de Chávez [Documental]

Cuba offshore oil rig set to arrive in Trinidad

News wires 

A Chinese-built drilling rig that will be used in Cuba's new push into offshore oil exploration is set to arrive in Trinidad and Tobago in the coming days where it will be inspected by officials, the US Coast Guard said on Tuesday according to a report. 

Communist-ruled Cuba hopes the oil project, which is slated to begin next year, can breathe new life into its troubled economy, Reuters reported.
But the venture has aroused opposition in neighboring Florida, a Cuban exile stronghold, where officials worry any drilling for oil poses environmental risks, the news wire said.
In an effort to allay US concerns, Spain's Repsol YPF, the leader of a three-company consortium spearheading the exploration, invited American authorities to inspect the rig before it arrives in Cuba.
The massive Scarabeo 9 rig is expected to pull into Trinidad and Tobago waters around Christmas and officials from the US Coast Guard and Interior Department will conduct the inspection during the first full week of January, Coast Guard Rear Admiral William Baumgartner told reporters.
The inspection will last three to four days, with the rig set to sail for Cuba a week after it is completed. US officials "should be able to inspect everything on the rig that's possible," Baumgartner said.
Trinidad and Tobago is the headquarters of Repsol's Caribbean operations.
Once the rig arrives in Cuba, Baumgartner said, it will be used at a well site north of Havana, some 12 miles (19 kilometres) off the Cuban coast.
Cuba has largely been tight-lipped about its offshore exploration plans.
The project has sparked calls for the United States to cooperate with Havana to avert any possible environmental accident similar to the massive BP oil spill in the US Gulf of Mexico last year. More >>

Falleció el pelotero cubano Raúl Reyes Barbón, gloria del béisbol y oficial del MININT

Lo recuerdo perfectamente, ese domingo yo estaba en el Latino y la expectativa era tremenda que fuera a dar el 4to cuando vino a batear en el 9no inning. Por cierto, un reconocido experto en beisbol cubano me comenta que Raul Reyes era oficial de caso del Ministerio del Interior.

---------------------------------------------------------

La Habana, 20 dic.- El pelotero cubano, líder de bateo, Raúl Reyes Barbón murió este domingo en La Habana, según reportaron medios locales.

El diario Juventud Rebelde dijo hoy que Reyes Barbón fue el primero que conectó tres jonrones en un partido de los campeonatos instituidos después de 1959, el 28 de enero de 1968 para los Industriales frente a los Azucareros en el Estadio Latinoamericano. Esa marca está vigente todavía, aunque otros cuatro hombres han logrado igualarla después: Evenecer Godínez, Doelsis Linares, Michel Enríquez y Alexei Bell.

Raúl Reyes fue líder en jonrones (10) durante la IX Serie Nacional, lo que le dio acceso al equipo Cuba en el campeonato mundial de 1970, celebrado en Colombia, donde los cubanos lograron el oro. También bateó durante el Mundial de La Habana, última ocasión en que formó parte del equipo Cuba.

Tras tomar parte en 10 series nacionales como jugador, Reyes dirigió a Metropolitanos durante cuatro años (1985-1989), con 96 triunfos y 94 derrotas.

Su mejor resultado como mentor fue en la serie Selectiva de 1988, cuando alcanzó el segundo lugar con Ciudad de La Habana, detrás de la novena de Pinar del Río, que contaba en los 80 con grandes jugadores. (Tomado de Cubadebate).

O'Reilly asks Mitt, 'is obama a socialist?'

Parlamentarios cubanos "piden" revisar el sistema penal

La Habana, 20 dic (EFE).- La Comisión de Asuntos Constitucionales y Jurídicos de la Asamblea Nacional de Cuba pidió hoy una revisión del sistema de justicia penal y la "actualización" de los trámites judiciales en la isla, informaron medios oficiales.

Esa comisión parlamentaria solicitó a la Asamblea que "recomiende" a la Fiscalía General y al Tribunal Supremo un análisis integral del sistema penal que se realice en conjunto con el Ministerio del Interior, según indicó la agencia cubana Prensa Latina.

La fuente advierte que el objetivo del análisis sería "perfeccionar" el sistema penal con procedimientos "que permitan discernir los hechos graves en aras de concentrar en los mismos toda la fuerza del poder sancionador del Estado".

Por su parte, la estatal Agencia de Información Nacional señaló que los diputados convinieron en "la necesidad de actualizar procedimientos y trámites judiciales, con vistas a hacerlos más eficientes y menos gravosos".

En ese sentido, resaltó la propuesta de "descongestionar el modelo de actuación ante delitos de menor gravedad (...) en función de resolverlos de forma rápida".  Mas >>