Cuba’s former president and revolutionary icon Fidel Castro has made his first public appearance in 14 months, Cuban media reported on Saturday.
The state-run newspaper Granma said Castro had this week met with a Venezuelan delegation that had been invited to the communist island.
Granma published four photographs on its Web site of the 88-year-old Castro seated inside a bus or van, shaking the hands of supporters leaning in through the vehicle’s windows.
The bearded leader was wearing a blue-and-white tracksuit, a black cap and a hearing aid.
Since leaving office in 2006 for health reasons, the father of the Cuban revolution has kept a low public profile. He last appeared on Jan. 8 last year, when he attended a gallery opening for a Cuban artist friend, and appeared frail in images that were not shown on official state media.
Granma said Castro “greeted, one by one and without any difficulties, the Venezuelans,” who were left impressed “by Castro’s lucidity and his attention to the details of what is happening in Venezuela.”
Castro was particularly close to late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who provided Havana with a steady supply of cut-rate oil and brought in thousands of Cuban doctors, nurses and advisers.
Venezuela is in the grip of a profound economic crisis triggered partly by plunging oil prices.
Cuba and the US late last year announced a historic bilateral rapprochement, decades after severing diplomatic relations.
Despite the attempt at rapprochement, there is no immediate end in sight to the more than five-decade-old US economic embargo, which US President Barack Obama would need the blessing of the Republican-controlled US Congress to lift.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not