Cuba rejects ‘covert’
US program that sought
to groom new political activists on the island ADVERTISING Cuba rejects ‘covert’
US program that sought
to groom new political activists on the island WASHINGTON — The Cuban government on Tuesday called on
Cuba rejects ‘covert’
US program that sought
to groom new political activists on the island
WASHINGTON — The Cuban government on Tuesday called on Washington to halt hostile “covert” operations against it in the wake of the recent disclosure that an Obama administration program secretly sent young Latin Americans to Cuba on politically motivated missions.
A top Cuban diplomatic official, Josefina Vidal, said an Associated Press investigation this week reveals that the U.S. government “has not desisted in its hostile and interventionist plans against Cuba, which seek to create destabilizing situations to provoke changes in our political order.”
Vidal demanded the U.S. “cease, once and for all, all its subversive, illegal and covert actions against Cuba” in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. She noted the U.S. government has “shamelessly acknowledged” running the program.
The project, funded and overseen by the U.S. Agency for International Development, deployed nearly a dozen young people from Latin America to Cuba to recruit political activists under the guise of health and civic projects. AP’s investigation found the operation put the foreigners in danger not long after an American contractor was arrested in the communist island nation for doing secretive work.
The Obama administration this week defended its use of an HIV-prevention workshop for its Cuban democracy-promotion efforts, but disputed that the project was a front for political purposes. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the program “enabled support for Cuban civil society, while providing a secondary benefit of addressing the desires Cubans express for information and training about HIV prevention.”
Residents huddle in dark, chilly bomb shelter as fighting closes in on
major Ukrainian city
DONETSK, Ukraine — For the people huddled in a dank and chilly bomb shelter Tuesday, the question of who was responsible was less important than the fact of their misery.
Two journalists from The Associated Press joined Donetsk residents who spent the night in the shelter as fighting between government forces and separatist insurgents closed in on the outskirts of the largest rebel-held city.
The rebels accuse Ukrainian forces of conducting a brutal bombing campaign against Donetsk; the government denies using artillery against residential neighborhoods. Either way, many Donetsk residents have been spending their nights underground in the hopes that they’ll be safer.
The people wrapping themselves in blankets Tuesday said it mattered little who was responsible for the bombing. Some glumly read newspapers to pass the time, and one read a poem she wrote about her neighborhood’s ordeal.
“Bombs and rockets; how much more can we take?” Galina Dudkina recited. “Empty streets, the cries of dogs, the meowing of cats that were left behind.”
In newly released tapes, Richard Nixon tells
one-time aide of fall from grace in his own words
YORBA LINDA, Calif. — Almost a decade after Richard Nixon resigned, the disgraced former president sat down with his one-time aide and told the tale of his fall from grace in his own words.
For three decades, that version of one of the nation’s largest and most-dissected political scandals largely gathered dust — until this week.
Starting Tuesday, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, portions of the tapes will be published each day by the Nixon Presidential Library &Museum and the private Richard Nixon Foundation. The postings begin with Nixon recalling the day he decided to resign and end Saturday — the date of his last day in office — with the 37th president discussing his final day at the White House, when he signed the resignation agreement, gave a short speech and boarded a helicopter for San Clemente, California.
The segments were culled from more than 30 hours of interviews that Nixon did with former aide Frank Gannon in 1983. The sections on Watergate aired publicly once, on CBS News, before gathering dust at the University of Georgia for more than 30 years.
“This is as close to what anybody is going to experience sitting down and having a beer with Nixon, sitting down with him in his living room,” said Gannon, now a writer and historian in Washington, D.C.
By wire sources
