Cuba | featured news

Twice a day at the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, guards take a number of detainees from their cells, one at a time, to a camp clinic or a private room on their block. The detainees are offered a hot meal or a liquid nutritional supplement and, if they refuse, they are strapped into a chair. A nurse then passes a tube through their noses and down into their stomachs; for one to two hours, they are fed a drip of Ensure while a Navy corpsman watches.

Jay-Z has finally broken his silence over the controversy about his trip to Cuba -- and of course he did it in rap. In a new song, "Open Letter," released via his Web site Thursday, the superstar is defiant, self-pitying -- and eager to let you know how cool his vacation was.

It's official, Beyoncé and Jay-Z's trip to Cuba was legal. Musical power couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z traveled to the Communist island legally on an authorized educational trip, the Treasury Department said Tuesday in a letter obtained by the Miami Herald. The trip was organized by a group called Academic Arrangements Abroad, Reuters reports.

Police say Joshua Hakken tied his mother-in-law up around 6:00 a.m. last Wednesday in Tampa and drove off with the two children, who were still in their pajamas. After ditching a black pickup truck that was later recovered by police, the Hakkens apparently boarded a blue 25-foot sailboat and left John's Pass Marina in Madeira Beach, Fla., bound for Cuba.

Beyonce and Jay-Z’s paparazzi-trailed trip to Havana has prompted questions from two members of Congress. Thousands of Americans every year get around the U.S. embargo on tourism to Cuba with waivers for academic, religious or research work — or by sneaking in through a third country.

Cuban cigar sales rose last year despite the ongoing economic crisis in some of the most important European markets including No. 1 buyer Spain, state-run tobacco company officials said Tuesday....

Cuban President Raul Castro today unexpectedly raised the possibility of leaving his post, saying he is old and has a right to retire. But he did not say when he might do so or if such a move was imminent.

In one of his first acts as commander in chief, President Obama in 2009 signed an executive order to close the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was part of a campaign promise the president made, to close the camp and "determine how to deal with those who have been held there." But four years on, the controversial prison remains open.

Venezuela's cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez is recovering in Cuba and is not in a coma as some have rumored a month after surgery, his brother, Adan Chavez, said after a visit to Havana.

The top negotiator for Colombia's main rebel group announced a unilateral cease-fire on Monday, before heading into much-anticipated peace talks with his government counterparts at a convention center in the Cuban capital of Havana....