■HAITI
Aristide speaks up
Former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has released a rare statement from exile about the death of his ally Reverend Gerard Jean-Juste. A poem titled Triumph Over Death was posted Thursday on a Web site of Aristide’s Famni Lavalas party accompanied by an apparent recording of Aristide reading it aloud. In the poem, he compares Jean-Juste’s time in prison after the ouster to Jesus’ crucifixion and refers to his work with Haitian migrants in Florida. Aristide rarely issues statements from his South African exile except on Jan. 1, independence day. Aristide also refers to his 2004 removal from power aboard a US plane as a kidnapping. Jean-Juste died on Wednesday in Miami of stroke complications.
■CUBA
US, Microsoft criticized
Havana criticized Microsoft on Friday for blocking its Messenger instant messaging service on the island and in other countries under US sanctions, calling it yet another example of Washington’s “harsh” treatment of its southern neighbor. The technology giant recently announced it was disabling the program’s availability in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea to come into compliance with a US ban on transfer of licensed software to embargoed countries. The move “is just the latest turn of the screw in the United States’ technological blockade against the island,” a writer said in the state youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
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