Ailing Cuban President Fidel Castro saluted the Cuban people for their "50 years of resistance" against the US in a written message read on state TV shortly before the first minutes of the new year.
"During the course of the morning, the 49th year of the Revolution will have been left behind and we will have fully entered the 50th year, which will symbolize a half century of heroic resistance," said the message read by a TV presenter shortly before midnight.
The broadcast showed old photographs of the Cuban leader.
"We proclaim to the world with pride this record which makes us believe in the most just of our demands: that there be respect for the life and the wholesome joy of our nation," the message said.
Cuba will mark the 50th anniversary of the Jan. 1, 1959, triumph of the revolution led by Castro a year from now, but is already characterizing all of this year leading up to that date as the "50th year of the revolution."
The 81-year-old Castro has not been seen in public in the 17 months since he announced he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding his powers to a caretaker government led by his younger brother Raul, the 76-year-old defense minister.
Fidel's exact ailment and condition are carefully guarded state secrets, but Raul Castro recently told voters in the eastern city of Santiago that his brother is doing well enough that Communist Party leaders support his candidacy to be re-elected as a deputy to Cuba's National Assembly, or parliament, on Jan. 20.
When the new parliament meets on a still unspecified day in early March for the first time after the national elections, deputies will elect a new ruling Council of State -- Cuba's governing body.
At that time, they will also have to decide whether to retain the elder Castro as the council's longtime president.
Fidel has not said directly whether he would seek to retain the post, but recently indicated he could be thinking about retirement.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS