Cuban coast guard officials fatally shot a suspected migrant smuggler who remained unidentified a full day later and arrested two others after confronting them in an apparent operation to ferry 39 migrants out of the country on a US-registered speedboat.
The Communist Party daily Granma on Thursday said the confrontation occurred the previous morning near Cuba's southern coast in the western province of Pinar del Rio.
The coast guard official in charge ordered officers to open fire after the three-man crew aboard the 12-meter boat failed to stop as ordered and launched "violent sudden attacks" on a coast guard vessel, damaging the craft and almost causing it to overturn, the report said.
It said that two men aboard the US-based boat were wounded by gunfire and taken to a local hospital, where one died on Wednesday afternoon. The identity of the dead man was not immediately known because he reportedly carried no documents and the other crew members refused to cooperate.
The two men carried US passports identifying them as Rafael Mesa Farinas and Rosendo Salgado Castro, Granma said.
Drew Blakeney, spokesman for the US Interests Section in Havana, said US authorities had confirmed the names of the two surviving men and that they were US citizens. He said they were seeking consular access to them in custody. But Blakeney said they had not confirmed the identity nor the citizenship of the dead man.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that authorities were trying to ascertain what happened, and if the dead man turned out to be an US citizen it would be "deeply disturbing."
Cuban authorities blamed Wednesday's confrontation on US migration policies they say encourage its citizens to undertake risky journeys to get to the US.
Ninoska Perez Castellon, spokeswoman for the Miami-based Cuban Liberty Council, blamed the communist government, accusing it of tolerating illegal migrant smuggling.
"The Cuban government has the authority to let them go in and out," she said. "For anybody to believe that all those people are coming in and out without the government getting a cut is ridiculous."
But she also blamed the smugglers, saying they often bring 30 or 40 people on a boat made for six, charging them around US$10,000 each.
Granma said the passports of the two surviving men showed they recently visited Mexico, where Cuban authorities believe they had planned to take a boatload of migrants.
Cuban authorities later took 39 people they believe had been scheduled to leave the island on the speedboat into custody: 20 men, 12 women and seven children.
Most of the women and children were released, but some men remained in custody pending further questioning, the newspaper said.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS