AGRICULTURE-CUBA: Restructuring in Rural Mountain Areas

Cuban authorities are focusing on coffee, cacao, stockbreeding, poultry, and forests in a plan to more efficiently exploit the country's mountainous regions and improve living conditions, through a restructuring of agricultural activities.

HEALTH-CUBA: Medical Crusade to the Developing World

Cuba's socialist government has sent thousands of health professionals on a crusade to other developing countries, with high points like the 10,000 doctors actively in service in Venezuela. But complaints have been heard back home over the months-long absence of healthcare specialists.

ENERGY-CUBA: Offshore Oil Reserves Found, but Deemed Commercially Unviable

Economists in Cuba reacted cautiously but without losing their sense of optimism Thursday to the first news from a Spanish company drilling in Cuba's jurisdictional waters in the Gulf of Mexico, which reported that the oil found is of ''high quality'', although the first well is not considered commercially viable.

ENERGY-CUBA: Dreaming of the Oil Boom

The possible discovery of large oil deposits in Cuban territorial waters in the Gulf of Mexico has sparked a storm of informal conjecture in the country, in stark contrast with the government's silence.

CUBA: Moderate Dissidents Seek Gradual Change Without Foreign Influence

A coalition of moderate dissidents in Cuba is proposing an alternative ''transition to democracy'' that would be gradual, smooth, and ''without the influence of foreign powers.''

ENVIRONMENT-CUBA: Learning to Live with Drought

The comings and goings of tanker trucks and the urgent extension of water pipelines give away the fact that the drought - which already has taken a heavy toll on the Cuban countryside - has also settled in the island's cities.

Learning to Live with Drought

In May, not one province in Cuba saw more than 60 percent of the historic average of rainfall. The government is taking emergency measures.

DEVELOPMENT-CUBA: Drought Drives Up Risk of Food Insecurity

The predominant colours in the countryside of the eastern Cuban province of Camagüey are yellow and brown. The livestock have no fresh grass to eat and the cracked earth is gasping for water, which is neither falling from the sky nor reaching the homes of local residents.

HEALTH-CUBA: Tobacco a Harmful Addiction with a Long Tradition

In Cuba, where the Taino Indians had tobacco in hand as they received Christopher Columbus, thousands of people die of lung cancer every year, and there is a high percentage of smokers despite government anti-smoking campaigns.

CUBA-AFRICA: Decades of Assistance and Cooperation

Dozens of countries in Africa benefit from medical or other assistance programmes from Cuba, and in four decades this socialist island nation has helped train around 30,000 young people from that continent in a number of specialties.

RIGHTS-CUBA: Dissident Allowed to Travel with Open-Ended Itinerary

A leading Cuban dissident, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, was heading to Spain late Wednesday with an open-ended itinerary and guarantees from the government that he will be able to travel ''without limitations,'' his daughter Patricia Gutiérrez told IPS.

CUBA: Fewer Blackouts, but Water Shortage Still Hurts

The residents of the Cuban capital received some good news and bad news from the government: there will be fewer of those exasperating electrical blackouts, but a severe water shortage, which has already hit the island's eastern provinces hard, now threatens Havana.

ECONOMY-CUBA: The Outlook Is Still Grim

A sugar harvest of less than three million tons, soaring oil prices, persistent drought and a tightening of the four-decade U.S. embargo paint an especially grim outlook for the Cuban economy.

AGRICULTURE-CUBA: Prolonged Drought, Gaunt Cattle

''Nobody remembers anything like this,'' Florencio Ortiz, who lives in the eastern Cuban province of Camagüey, 670 km east of Havana, told IPS by telephone.

ECONOMY-CUBA: Joint Venture Produces Guayaberas in Africa

A Cuban-Namibian joint venture is bringing the loose-fitting guayabera shirt, worn by men in Cuba and much of the rest of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, Colombia and Venezuela, to the African market.

ENERGY: Cuba Stakes Its Bets on Diversification

Almost 100 years old, Cuba's oldest hydropower dam is still functioning with its original equipment, and is a boon for a small neighbouring town that remains lit up when there is a nationwide power outage.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ THEATRE-LATIN AMERICA: Cuba Hosts Tradition and Modernity

"Theatre May", convened by the governmental Casa de las Am?ricas cultural centre, has reaffirmed Cuba as an atypical forum, with the tradition and modernity of the Latin American stage, drawing a dozen theatre troupes from across the region.

CUBA: Castro Draws Huge Crowds Despite Unpopular Measures

The government of Fidel Castro put to the test its capacity to draw Cubans onto the streets Friday to protest Washington's latest tightening of the four-decade embargo.

CUBA: Anxiety Over New Price Hikes, Restrictions on Sales

Cubans reacted with surprise and worry to the announcement Tuesday of new economic measures by the government of Fidel Castro, which include restrictions on sales of all but the most basic items, and price hikes.

CUBA: Opposition Groups Slam Bush Administration Initiative

The new U.S. plan to ''hasten a transition to democracy'' in Cuba has met with more opposition than support among the Cuban people, and even from the very dissidents it is designed to back.

CUBA: Dissidents Unimpressed by New U.S. Measures

New U.S. policy prescriptions aimed at ''hastening'' a transition to democracy in Cuba were received with scepticism or even outright disapproval by dissidents, while the government of Fidel Castro threatened to file a complaint in international forums.