Radio Havana Cuba-13 March 2002 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 13 March 2002 . *45th ANNIVERSARY OF ASSAULTS ON PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, RADIO RELOJ STUDIO *CUBAN VICE PRESIDENT CARLOS LAGE VISITS ALGERIA AND GERMANY *SECOND-HAND BICYCLES FROM CANADA TAKE TO THE STREETS OF HAVANA *YOUNG PERUVIANS ARRIVE IN CUBA TO BEGIN MEDICAL STUDIES *UN SECURITY COUNCIL ENDORSES PALESTINIAN STATE FOR THE FIRST TIME *ZIMBABWE: MUGABE WINS OVERWHELMING VICTORY IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS *NICARAGUA: CORRUPTION CHARGES CONTINUE TO DOG ARNALDO ALEMAN *ARGENTINA: RECORD LAYOFFS AS NATIONAL CURRENCY PLUMMETS *RUSSIAN LAWMAKERS UP IN ARMS OVER WASHINGTON'S MILITARISM *AFRICAN-AMERICANS RECEIVE MUCH POORER MEDICAL CARE THAN WHITES - STUDY *Viewpoint: LUXURIES AND RIGHTS - THE MONTERREY CONFERENCE . *45th ANNIVERSARY OF ASSAULTS ON PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, RADIO RELOJ STUDIO Havana, March 13 (RHC)--Today, March 13th, marks the 45th anniversary of the assault on the Presidential Palace and Radio Reloj -- important actions in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship. On March 13th, 1957, a group of students -- led by Jose Antonio Echeverria, president of the Federation of University Students and leader of the Revolutionary Directorate -- attacked the Presidential Palace with the intention of killing dictator Fulgencio Batista. While the mission failed and Batista fled the Presidential Palace through a secret exit, the event became a decisive turning point for the revolutionary movement. In the coordinated action, students attacked the dictator's residence and, at exactly the same time, rushed the studios of Radio Reloj to announce that Batista had been killed. Jose Antonio Echeverria personally took over the radio station to make the announcement. Minutes later, after leaving the studios of Radio Reloj, the student leader was killed by police bullets as he was heading toward the university. Following the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in 1959, the Presidential Palace was turned into the Museum of the Revolution. *CUBAN VICE PRESIDENT CARLOS LAGE VISITS ALGERIA AND GERMANY Algiers, March 13 (RHC)--Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage on Wednesday arrived in the Algerian capital -- the first stop on a trip that includes Germany. During his two-day stay in Algiers, the Cuban vice president and his accompanying delegation will meet with government officials and review bilateral accords between the two countries. Speaking with reporters upon his arrival, Carlos Lage described Cuba's relations with Algeria as "excellent." On Saturday, the Cuban delegation will travel to Germany, where they will attend Berlin's International Tourism Fair. Carlos Lage said that the German tourism gathering is one of the most important in the world and will offer an ideal opportunity for business people to make multilateral contacts. The fair also provides an exhibition site to display new products and services in tourism, as well as promote international vacation destinations. The Cuban vice president emphasized that the Berlin Tourism Fair will allow travel agencies and other related businesses on the island to advertise the opportunities that Cuba offers -- noting that tourism in Cuba is now the Number One earner of hard currency. *SECOND-HAND BICYCLES FROM CANADA TAKE TO THE STREETS OF HAVANA Havana, March 13 (RHC)--A Canadian organization is opening a bicycle shop in the Cuban capital this week -- selling second-hand bicycles to Cubans at relatively inexpensive prices. The Canadian group "Bicycles Across Borders," based in Toronto, will open its shop in Old Havana. According to Nancy Reddy, coordinator of the project, the used bicycles will sell for 20 U.S. dollars and half of all proceeds will be donated to Old Havana's renovation program. Reddy told reporters that some 1000 bicycles are already here in the Cuban capital and are being repaired -- putting them into top shape. "Bicycles Across Borders" is financed by the Canadian government, as well as trade union organizations and private contributions. The coordinator of the project said it is hoped that the group will be self-sufficient within two years, thanks to another aspect of the business: renting bicycles to tourists on a daily or weekly basis. The Canadian group will also train area residents in bicycle repair. At least 50 Cubans have already signed up and are beginning to take classes. *YOUNG PERUVIANS ARRIVE IN CUBA TO BEGIN MEDICAL STUDIES Havana, March 13 (RHC)--Fifty young Peruvians have arrived in Havana, where they will study medicine and then return to their communities as doctors. According to Gerardo Ayzona, director of the National Institute of Educational Scholarships, the medical students were chosen from some of the poorest areas of Peru. He said that this is the fourth group of Peruvian young people to study at Havana's Latin American School of Medicine -- noting that there are now a total of 260 Peruvians studying to become doctors. Upon their arrival in the Cuban capital, one of the students -- 19-year-old Gisela Vega -- told reporters that becoming a doctor is one of her greatest dreams. She added that without a free scholarship from Cuba, she would never have been able to study medicine. The Latin American School of Medicine was founded in 1998. There are currently more than 4000 young medical students from 24 countries attending classes at the school, located just outside of Havana. *UN SECURITY COUNCIL ENDORSES PALESTINIAN STATE FOR THE FIRST TIME New York, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, March 13 (RHC)--The United Nations Security Council has for the first time endorsed an independent Palestinian state, as UN secretary-general Kofi Annan accused Israel of illegally occupying Palestinian land. The only nation of the 15-member UN body to abstain, Syria, called the US-sponsored resolution "very weak" because it did not deal with the roots of the conflict. Syria's UN ambassador stated that the resolution "treats the killer and the victim on equal footing." The resolution did not mention outside observers to help calm the situation, which Israel opposes. The United States surprised the council with its unexpected support of the security council resolution, after having previously thwarted every effort by the Palestinians in that direction. Observers widely agree that timing was Washington's major consideration, with Vice President Richard Cheney in the Middle East, US envoy Anthony Zinni heading there, and the violence spiraling out of control. The international community, meanwhile, has stepped up its criticism of seemingly trigger-happy Israeli troops who killed one foreign journalist and wounded two others. Previously, Israeli soldiers had fired for 10 to 15 minutes from tank-mounted machine guns on a hotel where news correspondents were filming an attack against the Al Amari refugee camp, though in this case no one was injured. An ABC television camera left running on a tripod when journalists took cover was hit by seven bullets - one directly in the lens. The Israeli army said the tanks were returning fire from a gunman on the hotel's upper floors, but reporters say there were no gunmen and there was no one shooting from the hotel. An ABC television news producer, with 13 years' experience covering the Mideast conflict, said he would not have stayed in the building one minute had there been a gunman there. Colleagues of an Italian photo-journalist killed in the West Bank city of Ramallah said he was shot by a tank that suddenly appeared and fired six times when there was no fighting in the area. An unidentified French photographer and an Egyptian TV correspondent were also shot at in separate incidents in Ramallah. In related news, an Israeli human rights group has denounced the Israeli army before the country's Supreme Court. Israel's highest court is scheduled to consider on Thursday charges that Israeli troops in occupied territories are deliberately opening fire on Palestinian ambulances. The denunciation was presented by the Tel Aviv-based Physicians For Human Rights, which has blasted the Israeli army's efforts to prevent the evacuation of the wounded - calling the attacks a violation of humanitarian norms and international and Israeli laws. Since March 4, five Palestinian doctors or paramedics have been killed by occupation troops. According to Physicians For Human Rights, Israeli soldiers have opened fire on more than 80 ambulances and have killed 8 Palestinian medical personnel since the Intifada began 18 months ago. *ZIMBABWE: MUGABE WINS OVERWHELMING VICTORY IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS Harare, March 13 (RHC)--Robert Mugabe has taken an overwhelming victory in presidential elections in Zimbabwe in which observers and the opposition say were rigged and/or fraught with irregularities. Mugabe won with 54 percent of the vote, compared to 40 percent garnered by the pro-western opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Mugabe is believed to have clinched his victory in rural areas where he has traditionally done well in electoral races - particularly since many rural Zimbabweans have benefited from the confiscation of large landholdings owned by white commercial farmers. Many of Mugabe's supporters celebrated what they called the victory for agrarian reform. Zimbabwean Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa described the vote as a "runaway victory" on the issue of the land. While western media outlets ran numerous stories about independent observers questioning the validity of the vote and saying it was tainted by violence, intimidation, confusion and the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in the opposition stronghold of the capital, Harare, few reported on white farmers arrested for trying to bribe rural voters with money and food to swing the poll for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. As the election results were announced, Zimbabwean security forces were on full alert, patrolling many of the country's cities to prevent unrest. *NICARAGUA: CORRUPTION CHARGES CONTINUE TO DOG ARNALDO ALEMAN Managua, March 13 (RHC)--Charges of corruption have continued to dog former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman, now a legislator and president of Parliament. In a case that made headlines Tuesday and Wednesday in virtually all the country's newspapers, Aleman is accused of having personally ordered a 500,000 dollar check from the state-owned telecommunications firm that he later stole. According to the former president's ex-director of the firm and the ex-ministers of communication and treasury, Aleman said the funds were to be earmarked for social projects and to help a state-owned TV channel with its debts. Several of Aleman's ministers and colleagues, including his ambassador to Mexico, have been arrested or are being sought by authorities - though the former president remains free due to his parliamentary immunity and has yet to make a statement on the matter. Despite his immunity, however, Nicaragua's Comptroller's Office Wednesday opened an investigation into charges that Aleman has lied about the quantity and nature of his personal fortune - one of the many corruption charges he faced on several occasions during his presidency. It's estimated that the former president's fortune increased by 900 percent since he first held public office as mayor of Managua in 1990. Observers are noting that Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos, of Aleman's own Liberal Party, seems intent on keeping his promise to attack corruption wherever it lies in an effort to clean up his political organization's tainted image. *ARGENTINA: RECORD LAYOFFS AS NATIONAL CURRENCY PLUMMETS Buenos Aires, March 13 (RHC)--Argentina registered another record layoff figure in the month of February, as the country's national currency continued to plummet. Last month 75,000 Argentines lost their jobs, 134 percent more than in January. There are now close to 125,000 more jobless Argentines than when the governmental National Statistics and Census Institute recently placed the country's unemployment rate at 20 percent. That rate is estimated to have reached 22 percent. Meanwhile, the Argentine peso has slipped to a record low amid gloomy predictions that the country's worst ever economic crisis will continue deepening this year. The peso has now slipped to 2.5 to the US dollar, as President Eduardo Duhalde desperately tries to negotiate a restoration of International Monetary Fund aid. Duhalde has predicted that without IMF help, there will be a return to the violent street protests that left close to 30 people killed last December. The IMF is predicting that the economy will shrink by another 8 percent this year, which means more companies closing and more job cuts. And the lending institution has warned the government to stop printing billions of pesos with which authorities are trying to pay workers. The IMF is showing no signs of restoring aid until Argentina adopts further belt-tightening measures in a country where some 50 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. *RUSSIAN LAWMAKERS UP IN ARMS OVER WASHINGTON'S MILITARISM Moscow, March 13 (RHC)--Though Russian President Vladimir Putin continues playing favor to the United States, Russian lawmakers are up in arms over Washington's militarism. As Putin stated Wednesday that US-Russian relations were developing in a positive manner - and downplaying his country's inclusion in the Pentagon's nuclear hit list - the lower house of the Russian Parliament, the Duma, overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning Washington's "axis of evil" campaign and what it called the militarization of international relations in the context of the so-called war on terrorism. With 291 votes in favor of the resolution and only 6 against, Russian legislators also blamed Washington for the spiraling violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while accusing the US of posing a serious threat to global and regional security. *AFRICAN-AMERICANS RECEIVE MUCH POORER MEDICAL CARE THAN WHITES - STUDY Washington, March 13 (RHC)--A new study in the United States has revealed that African-Americans receive much poorer health care than whites in areas ranging from diabetes to mental health. Researchers at Harvard University have made public what is being called one of the broadest studies to date of racial disparities in health care. For the first time, researchers reportedly looked at federal quality-control records for patients in Medicare managed-care plans. In examining 305,000 cases, they found that blacks were less likely to receive adequate care in all four areas measured: eye exams for diabetics, preventive drugs after a heart attack, breast cancer screening, and follow-up care after leaving a mental hospital. They said the differences were not fully explained by socioeconomic gaps, suggesting that simple racism is an important factor. Published in the March 13 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study is reportedly the first large-scale research on race as a factor in mental health care - the category where it found the largest gap. Blacks released from inpatient mental care received follow-up care 33 percent of the time, compared to 54 percent for whites - which the study's lead author said was itself a dismal percentage. Another study last week, published by the nonprofit organization Commonwealth Fund, suggested that doctors and minority patients have communication problems because minority's feel disrespected in a doctor's visit. While for Latin and Asian ethnic groups the communication problem is the result of a language barrier, the lead author of last week's study - Doctor Karen Scott Collins - said that language doesn't explain everything. She said that in categories such as perceptions of disrespect, the problems were larger for African-Americans. Collins said that if you have no confidence that your doctor has your best interests at heart, you're not going to follow the advice you receive and you're not going to go back. *Viewpoint: LUXURIES AND RIGHTS - THE MONTERREY CONFERENCE Next week's International Conference on Funding for Development in the Mexican city of Monterrey, has been convened to serve as a forum for finding alternative, progressive models, because it has been painfully demonstrated that neoliberal globalization is far from fomenting progress in the impoverished South. The gathering, which gets underway on Monday, is set in Mexico where important studies have been done on the behavior of world globalization. Among those essays is one by Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos, entitled: "Seven Pieces Missing from the World Jigsaw Puzzle." The paper takes a close look at the current globalization of neoliberalism as does another important work by Mexican Pablo Gonzalez Casanova. The propaganda in favor of the Free Trade Area of the Americas is so pronounced in Mexico that there is little room to examine other problems related to globalization. However local, small, autonomous organizations often wage resistance efforts against the effects of the neoliberal free market economy. It is in this context that Mexico opens its doors to the UN convened conference, which in accordance with the aspirations of the majority should facilitate steps towards a more rational and fair use of financial resources. Resources, which the opulent North hoards while in other places, it is impossible to find financing even for basic subsistence. Cuba responded favorably to the UN call to discuss development funding and will wholeheartedly participate in the debates, which it considers to be of the utmost importance. Cuba will urge that the countries represented in Monterrey take up the United Nation's call to launch a battle against world poverty, which now affects 80 per cent of humanity. Analysts, perhaps a bit too optimistically, affirm that some of the rich nations participating in the Monterrey conference will abandon their traditional conservative positions when it comes to offering financing to the countries of the South. Others recall that very few nations of the industrialized North are donating the pledged 0.7 per cent of their Gross Domestic Product for development and they doubt that Monterrey will change that. As a result, they counsel the Third World to assume neoliberal models and adjustments recommended by the International Monetary Fund, the only possible way -according to them-to facilitate access to direct foreign investment. The consequences of the implementation of those measures are now well known. If we need a recent example we only need to look at Argentina, with its national industry paralyzed, its principal economic objectives sold off to the highest bidder and funds for social spending exhausted. And as the peoples of the world observe the road to ruin taken by Argentina, time is running out. In the next 50 years, the world's population is expected to double and experts indicate that if things continue as they are, the numbers of poor will spiral as well. That is why, the International Conference on Funding for Development that will take place in Monterrey, Mexico, must demand that the rich give a hand to the poor. In the meeting of non-governmental organizations being held this week leading up to the conference, Cuba will present a document which makes clear that the access of the countries of the South to development is not luxury, but a right. That is an idea that should also prevail in next week's Monterrey Conference. (c) 2002 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. 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