U.S. has a 45-year history of torture

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-langguth3-2009may03,0,4295574.story

Our interference, which went on for decades, was not limited to one political party. The meddling in Brazil began in earnest during the early 1960s under a Democratic administration. At that time, Washington's alarm over Cuba was much like the more recent panic after 9/11. The Kennedy White House was determined to prevent another communist regime in the hemisphere, and Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, was taking a strong interest in several anti-communist approaches, including the Office of Public Safety.

Flashback: CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported

http://www.maebrussell.com/Health/CIA%20Pig%20Virus.html

With at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971.

Six weeks later an outbreak of the disease forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic.

A U.S. intelligence source told Newsday last week he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at a U.S. Army base and CIA training ground in the Panama Canal Zone, with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group.

The 1971 outbreak, the first and only time the disease has hit the Western Hemisphere, was labeled the "most alarming event" of 1971 by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. African swine fever is a highly contagious and usually lethal viral disease that infects only pigs and, unlike swine flu, cannot be transmitted to humans.

Cuba Offers Vaccine against Lung Cancer

News From Russia

Cimavas EGF, based on two proteins, triggers an immune response from the victim's body and has absolutely no side effects, as most anti-cancer therapy does. The vaccine only attacks cancer cells. The vaccine is meant to serve as a compliment to rather than a replacement for conventional methods such as chemotherapy and radiation. The vaccine also improves patients’ breathing and decreases their pain.

Fidel Quits After 49 Years

(Source-Nat'l Post)

HAVANA - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday 49 years after taking power in an armed revolution, closing the book on a Cold War career that turned him into a leftist icon and a tyrant to his foes.

Mr. Castro, 81, who has not appeared in public since undergoing stomach surgery almost 19 months ago, said he would not seek a new term as president or leader of Cuba's armed forces when the National Assembly meets Sunday.

The charismatic Mr. Castro led the bearded and cigar-chomping guerrillas who swept down from the mountains of eastern Cuba to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

CIA Whistleblower Phillip Agee dies in Cuba

(Original Article-Reuters)

HAVANA (Reuters) - Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who exposed its undercover operations in Latin America in a 1975 book, died in Havana, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Wednesday.

Agee, 72, died on Monday night, the newspaper said, calling him a "loyal friend of Cuba and staunch defender of the peoples' struggle for a better world."