[NYTr] Cuban Radar Newsbriefs - Sep 6, 2007 Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 16:30:36 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Progreso Weekly - Sep 6, 2007 http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=1 Cuban Radar Newsbriefs - September 6, 2007 A Radio Progreso Alternativa Havana Bureau service * Back to the classroom * The Catholic Church and education * Electoral process continues * Cuba and the International Pediatric Association * A Cuban prisonsb social program * The Cuban 5: Knowing the truth * Back to the classroom On Monday, September 3, over 3.3 million Cuban students began the 2007-08 school year. The figure includes kindergarten to high school students. Universities have also begun, with a registration of 700,000, a truly impressive figure for a country with little more than 11 million people. The total number of registered students at all levels indicates that 4 million Cubans are in the classrooms, a whopping 35.7% of the population. Luis Ignacio GC3mez, Minister of Education, told reporters that all the material base has been completed (classrooms, school furnishing, books, writing materials, computing equipment, laboratories, TV sets, video players), as well as other means that significantly improve the possibilities of a well-rounded education. The Cuban educational system, which is absolutely free from kindergarten to postgraduate school, has over 300,000 teachers and a plethora of equipment. At isolated places where the national power system has not still arrived, computers and TV sets at schools are powered by solar energy. * The Catholic Church and education Vitral, a quarterly magazine published by the Catholic diocese of the western Pinar del RC-o province, recently published its 80th issue. Found in this edition, the first after a restructuring process much manipulated by international media, is an article in which the Church requests access to education. In Cuba, education is exclusively government-run. The claim, together with others such as access to communication media and greater flexibility in granting working visas to foreign priests, is part of the historical agenda of discussion between Church authorities and the Cuban government. Relations between both parties seem to be in a process of detente after years of difficulties. * Electoral process continues The process for the nomination of candidates to Popular Power municipal assemblies kicked off on Saturday, September 1. At closing time, 204 candidates had been nominated in electoral district assemblies with a total attendance of 28,500, or 86.1% of voters. The National Electoral Commission (CEN) announced that 27.9% of the candidates are women and 15.7% are under 35 years of age. Before the beginning of the electoral process, the official newspaper Granma on Friday, August 31, published that bParty membership is not relevant, nor is sex, occupation, or religious belief in order to be nominated as a candidate. Voters can even nominate themselves. The nomination will depend on the peoplebs approval, for at every assembly (there will be more than 50,600 of them) those nominated will get the largest vote.b * Cuba and the International Pediatric Association National Information Agency (AIN) reported that Cuba was elected as a member of the International Pediatric Associationbs Permanent Committee for the triennial 2007-2010 in representation of Latin America. According to AIN, Dr. Fernando DomC-nguez Dieppa, president of the Cuban Society of Pediatricians, has been appointed to the post. Dr. DomC-nguez attended IPAbs 25th World Congress, which ended this past weekend in Athens with the participation of over 6,000 specialists from 133 countries. DomC-nguez declared that the designation is owed to the bachievements of Cuban pediatricians that have permitted Cuba to reach, ahead of schedule, the goals of the millennium in childrenbs health care, something that for other nations is still a dream, or even an illusion.b * A Cuban prisonsb social program Trabajadores, the Cuban labor federation's official weekly, recently published a report on a new program inside the islandbs prisons. Under the name bMission Trustb, it will allow inmates that have good behavior to study and work outside prison walls. bThe program is aimed at achieving deep changes in the educational treatment of inmates through their incorporation to socially useful work,b said Sara Rubio, head of the Mission Trust Department at the Ministry of the Interiorbs Direction of Penitentiaries. Rubio said that there are already facilities under the bMission Trustb system in Havana, the central city of Santa Clara and the eastern city of HolguC-n. bInmates because of their behavior and discipline have been chosen for studying and working in bopenb conditions in constructive areas such as health, education and cultural facilities will be transferred to those prisons,b she explained. * The Cuban 5: Knowing the truth The International Demonstrations on Behalf of the Cuban Five, incarcerated in U.S. prisons, will begin on September 12. The Cuban Five are Gerardo HernC!ndez, RenC) GonzC!lez, Antonio Herrero, Fernando GonzC!lez and RamC3n LabaC1ino, who infiltrated organizations in Miami dedicated to terrorist actions against Cuba. For the bcrimeb of preventing attacks against their country, they were condemned to sentences ranging from 15-years to life. September 4 marked the 10th anniversary of the death of young Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo, murdered by a bomb planted in the lobby of the Copacabana Hotel in Havana. Meanwhile, Luis Posada Carriles, who revealed to a New York Times reporter that he masterminded that and other similar terrorist acts against Cuban tourist facilities, walks freely through the streets of Miami. bInsisting in the struggle to make that case known, that is the key, the one that the Five are pointing at for usb, said Ricardo AlarcC3n, president of the Cuban Parliament, during the Round Table TV program broadcast on September 4. AlarcC3n compared the performance of U.S. courts in other cases, where in spite of abundant evidence of espionage that affected U.S. national security, sentences were benign. He even mentioned the case of the daughter of former President James Carter, who broke the law in the 1980bs at the time of the U.S. dirty war against Nicaragua. Carterbs daughter occupied a campus facility in protest, was arrested, tried and acquitted under the legal argument that her intention was to prevent a greater evil, such as the death of innocent people. In the case of the Five, the same legal argument, documented by the history of aggressions against the island, was dismissed by the court, concluded AlarcC3n. * ================================================================= .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org . List Archives: https://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ . Subscribe: https://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================