On the afternoon of Friday, November 6, 2026, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic of Cuba, conducted an official on-site visit to the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), a world-renowned center of excellence based in Havana, accompanied by Minister of Public Health José Ángel Portal Miranda and a delegation of senior health sector officials. During the visit, the head of state met directly with the IPK’s leadership, leading microbiologists, researchers, frontline clinical staff and trainees, expressing profound admiration for the institution’s decades-long track record of advancing public health outcomes for both Cuban citizens and global communities. Following a detailed, data-backed briefing delivered by IPK Director Dr. Vivian Kourí Cardellá – a leading physician, microbiologist and Doctor of Sciences – Díaz-Canel highlighted the institute’s irreplaceable role during the 2020-2022 COVID-19 public health emergency, noting that IPK and its peer institutions under the national BioCubaFarma network formed the backbone of Cuba’s highly effective national pandemic response. He specifically referenced the institute’s early, pre-local-outbreak COVID-19 research, pioneering clinical trial work and development of life-saving domestic treatment protocols, which he credited for placing Cuba among the nations with the most successful pandemic management outcomes worldwide. The president also addressed the disproportionate strain that tightened U.S. economic and energy blockades have imposed on Cuba’s entire healthcare system, noting that IPK staff have persisted through extreme operational hardships including transport shortages, frequent residential power outages and long, unscheduled work shifts to continue delivering specialized care, running critical diagnostics and advancing research. He emphasized that the consistent, heroic dedication of IPK’s workforce has prevented far more severe public health harms that would have otherwise been amplified by decades of systematic external economic pressure. Díaz-Canel also outlined the national government’s ongoing 2026 priorities to roll out widespread digital transformation and expand responsible artificial intelligence integration across all public sectors, noting that pilot programs are already underway in the health portfolio to leverage these technologies to elevate the institute’s research, diagnostic and training capacities. Later, the presidential delegation toured IPK’s state-of-the-art research laboratories that focus on infectious disease surveillance and treatment development. During the visit, Dr. Kourí Cardellá walked attendees through the institution’s nearly 90-year history, tracing its origins back to 1937, its formal reorientation post-1959 revolutionary victory to block the reintroduction of eradicated exotic diseases, the official adoption of the IPK name in 1979, and the 1993 inauguration of its current purpose-built campus by Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, who famously charged the institute to serve not just Cuba but all of humanity. Today, the IPK functions as Cuba’s national reference hub for infectious diseases, operating a specialized hospital, running high-complexity diagnostic laboratories that exceed standard hospital capabilities, and delivering accredited master’s, doctoral and undergraduate training programs for students from across Cuba and dozens of other countries. Its research contributions have shaped global public health guidelines for dengue, chikungunya, Oropouche virus and COVID-19, cementing its status as a globally respected public health resource. Dr. Kourí Cardellá confirmed that the institute has fully honored Fidel’s founding mandate to serve all humanity, noting that its team prioritizes recruiting and mentoring young scientific talent even amid national economic challenges to sustain its legacy of impact-driven research and cross-border public health collaboration.
标签： Cuba
古巴
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Raúl congratulates military counterintelligence personnel
Havana, November 9, 2026 – Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, iconic leader of the Cuban Revolution, has issued an official congratulatory public letter marking the 64th anniversary of the founding of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) Military Counterintelligence branch, praising the unit’s long track record of unwavering service to the Cuban nation. The full text of the message was broadcast nationwide on state-run Cuban Television on the Saturday of the anniversary commemoration, reaching service members, veterans and civilian audiences across the island.
In his personal address to all personnel affiliated with the branch, Raúl extended sincere, pride-filled well-wishes to every tier of the Military Counterintelligence family: commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers, cadets, sergeants, active-duty soldiers, and the civilian administrative and support staff who underpin the unit’s daily operations. He specifically highlighted the collective effort of all members that has preserved the institutional integrity and global reputation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces across more than six decades of operation.
The letter singles out three foundational traits that have come to define generations of Military Counterintelligence personnel: unshakable loyalty to the Cuban revolution, dauntless courage in the face of external threats, and humble commitment to duty without fanfare. Raúl emphasized that these core values enable the unit to tackle complex, evolving challenges posed by the longstanding aggressive policy of Cuba’s primary geopolitical adversary with rigorous professionalism and unwavering focus.
The message also pays a special, well-earned tribute to all former Military Counterintelligence members who have passed away, noting that their legacy of dedicated service continues to serve as a guiding example for current and future cohorts of the force. Closing his address, Raúl expressed full confidence that the branch will remain faithful to the enduring legacy of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, and will continue to act as resolute defenders of all the social, economic and political achievements the Cuban people have secured, ready to bear any cost to safeguard national sovereignty. The letter concludes with the iconic revolutionary slogan “Always onward to victory!” and a warm collective embrace for all service members. The official commemorative photo distributed by Cuban News Agency (ACN) captures the public dissemination of the landmark message as part of the official 64th anniversary events for the FAR branch.
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Díaz-Canel on new U.S. coercive measures against Cuba:
HAVANA – On Saturday, November 8, 2026, Cuban head of state Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, who serves dual roles as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic of Cuba, publicly condemned the latest round of punitive economic restrictions rolled out by the U.S. administration, which target domestic Cuban enterprises, Cuban-flagged maritime vessels, and third-country foreign firms that supply critical goods and core services underpinning the Caribbean nation’s ongoing economic expansion and social welfare programs. The Cuban leader delivered his rebuke via an official post on his verified X (formerly Twitter) account, framing the new restrictions as a deliberate escalation of Washington’s decades-long campaign to isolate the island nation. “The United States has once again chosen to weaponize economic policy to inflict harm on the ordinary people of Cuba, by slapping new coercive measures on our domestic businesses, our maritime fleet, and the international partners that help us deliver essential supplies and services to move our national development agenda forward,” Díaz-Canel wrote in his public statement. He emphasized that the latest actions fit squarely into a long-running, well-documented strategy of economic strangulation and collective punishment designed to force the sovereign Cuban nation into political submission, noting that the justifications cited by U.S. policymakers to defend the new rules are rooted in baseless, absurd claims that have garnered no credibility among the global community, and even fail to win support from a large share of ordinary U.S. citizens. In a defiant closing note, the Cuban president stressed that the intensified pressure campaign would never succeed in breaking the resolve of the Cuban people. Independent policy analysts note that the expanded restrictive measures extend the scope of Washington’s longstanding Cuba sanctions framework, expanding secondary sanctions risks for foreign commercial actors that previously operated outside the bounds of U.S. restrictions on trade with the island. The cumulative impact of these new rules is expected to fall disproportionately on everyday Cuban households, exacerbating existing supply chain bottlenecks for food, medicine, and industrial inputs, and creating additional barriers to the government’s ongoing efforts to boost local production, upgrade public infrastructure, and expand social services for vulnerable populations.
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Moscow asserts Europe has no place in talks on Ukraine
Maria Zakharova, the official spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, issued a sharp public statement via her personal Telegram channel targeting a newly announced set of Western military training exercises codenamed Coalition 26.2, which are scheduled to kick off immediately before planned tripartite Russia-U.S.-Ukraine peace consultations set to resume in Abu Dhabi. The timing of the drills, Zakharova emphasized, carries deliberate symbolic weight that exposes the West’s bad faith ahead of critical diplomatic negotiations aimed at de-escalating the years-long Ukrainian conflict.
In her formal remarks, the senior Russian diplomat argued that the sequence of military maneuvers makes it unequivocally clear that Western powers have no intention of addressing Russia’s long-stated, legitimate security grievances, and are instead actively taking steps to push the ongoing conflict into an ever more dangerous cycle of military escalation. Zakharova specifically called out the governments in London and Paris, alleging that the two NATO capitals are pursuing plans to deploy multinational military contingents on Ukrainian territory as part of a proposed “Coalition of the Willing” framework, with the explicit goal of maintaining a permanent military foothold to counter Russian interests and engineer a strategic military defeat for Russia.
Zakharova went on to restate Moscow’s formal, unnegotiated position that any deployment of foreign military units inside Ukraine — regardless of what alliance or organizational banner they operate under — is categorically unacceptable to the Russian government. The spokeswoman warned that such a move would mark a major, dangerous inflection point in the conflict, dragging European NATO member states far deeper into direct military involvement in hostilities and risking a catastrophic, uncontrollable expansion of the war across Eastern Europe. -
Turkiye’s candidate says UN is imperfect but indispensable
A leading candidate for the United Nations Secretary-General position has laid out his core rationale for pursuing the top UN post, rejecting the framing of the global body as a flawless institution while emphasizing its irreplaceable role in navigating the world’s most pressing crises. “I am running for the office of Secretary-General not under any illusion that the United Nations is a perfect organization, but because I hold an unshakable conviction that it is an indispensable pillar of global collective action,” the candidate, Sinirlioglu, stated during his formal campaign pitch. In a frank assessment of current global geopolitical headwinds, Sinirlioglu issued a stark warning that deepening, widespread distrust between sovereign nations is eroding the foundation of cross-border cooperation, while existing structural constraints on UN specialized agencies are severely limiting their capacity to counter fast-moving threats to international peace and collective security. Even amid these systemic challenges, he stressed that no alternative global governance framework comes close to matching the UN’s unique mandate and cross-national representation, making it the most viable, inclusive platform available to tackle both ongoing 21st-century crises and unforeseen future threats. To revitalize the world body and deliver on its founding mission, Sinirlioglu laid out a clear set of top-tier priorities for his potential tenure: proactively preventing and mediating armed conflicts before they escalate, rebuilding fractured public and governmental faith in multilateral cooperation, accelerating progress on stalled sustainable development goals and ambitious climate action targets, and strengthening global safeguards for universal human rights.
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Storm exacerbates suffering of Gaza’s displaced women and girls
A Gaza-based government ministry has formally characterized the unfolding on-the-ground situation as a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe, with women — especially widows and those serving as sole heads of households — bearing the brunt of cascading, life-threatening challenges. For these vulnerable groups, securing dry, structurally sound, and safe shelter to shield their children from harsh winter conditions has become an almost insurmountable hurdle. Critical life-sustaining supplies are running dangerously low across the territory: the widespread scarcity of blankets, insulated winter apparel, dry bedding mattresses, staple food rations, infant formula, and essential medical medications has drastically amplified the exposure of at-risk families to preventable illness, hypothermia, and hunger. Official data released by the ministry paints a stark portrait of the crisis’s disproportionate impact on women: the Gaza Strip is now home to 64,413 widows in total, 28,224 of whom lost their husbands in the ongoing armed conflict. The total number of households run exclusively by women has surged to 86,290, and approximately 702,000 women and girls are currently grappling with acute, life-threatening food insecurity. Compounding these strains, 258,927 displaced families are still residing across 2,090 makeshift collective shelters scattered throughout the territory, where residents are left unprotected from seasonal rainfall, sudden flash flooding, and plummeting winter temperatures. Against this alarming backdrop, the ministry has issued an urgent, formal call to international governing bodies and humanitarian aid agencies to mobilize immediate, targeted relief shipments, prioritizing waterproof tents, heat-retaining insulating tarps, thick thermal blankets, and weather-appropriate winter clothing to prevent further avoidable harm to displaced communities.
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Cuban delegation, Xinhua strengthen friendship and cooperation
A high-level bilateral media dialogue between Cuban senior Communist Party officials and the leadership of China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency was co-chaired recently by Liudmila Alamo Duenas, Deputy Head of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), and Lyu Yansong, Editor-in-Chief of Xinhua. During the opening segment of the talks, Alamo emphasized that cross-nation media alliance building, which the upcoming intergovernmental summit is set to advance, carries critical strategic weight for Cuba as the island nation navigates a complex, challenging domestic and international operational landscape.
Representatives from Cuba’s leading state media outlets took turns highlighting the longstanding, mutually beneficial partnership between Cuban and Chinese press institutions that has spanned more than 60 years. Alejandro Gomez, Information Vice President of Cuba’s official Prensa Latina news agency, extended formal gratitude to Xinhua for the consistent technical and operational support it has provided to Prensa Latina’s ongoing energy transition projects. He traced the historic friendship between the two agencies back to decades of formal cooperation pacts, noting that Prensa Latina established its permanent Beijing correspondent bureau more than 55 years ago, and that Xinhua on-the-ground journalists were the first to document and report on the formal establishment of diplomatic ties between Cuba and China all the way back in 1960.
Oscar C. Zaragoza, Director of Cuban Television, echoed that appreciation, specifically calling out China’s tangible support for the broadcaster’s ongoing digital transformation, including targeted equipment and vehicle donations, accessible credit facilities to upgrade production infrastructure, and long-running professional development training programs for Cuban TV staff. Randy Alonso, director of Cuban multimedia outlet Ideas Multimedios, put forward a concrete proposal to elevate bilateral communication cooperation to the next level, with a focus on exploring joint applications of artificial intelligence technology, paired with new structured exchange programs and specialized professional training for media practitioners on both sides.
The high-level meeting was also attended by Yuniel Labacena, director of Cuba’s prominent Juventud Rebelde newspaper, and Isaura Diez, the current chief China correspondent for Prensa Latina. -
Cuba Youth Baseball Olympians 5 champions return
In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, a high-level official delegation led by Osvaldo Vento Montiller, president of Cuba’s National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER), gathered at Havana’s José Martí International Airport to extend an official celebratory reception to the island nation’s returning triumphant youth athletes from the 2026 Dakar Youth Olympic Games. During the welcoming ceremony, Vento offered special public commendation to Sergio Arturo Pérez Hechevarría, the head coach of Cuba’s gold-medal winning competitive team that made history in its sport’s first-ever appearance on the Youth Olympic Games five-ring competition program. Vento emphasized that the squad’s historic victory was a direct testament to the transformative impact of dedicated, student-centered coaching, noting that exceptional competitive achievements are reliably produced when leaders pour full commitment into nurturing the potential of every young athlete under their guidance. The landmark run for Cuba’s newly crowned Youth Olympic champions included a hard-fought preliminary round loss to Chinese Taipei, before the Cuban side staged a full redemption arc by defeating the same East Asian opponent in the final match to claim the top podium spot. Standout squad member Rachel Medina was honored with the tournament’s Most Valuable Player distinction, marking her second consecutive major global MVP award following her identical top individual honor at last year’s World Youth Championship hosted in Nayarit, Mexico. Traveling alongside the gold-medal winning team was Cuban judoka Kaila Pita, who secured a fifth-place finish in her Dakar 2026 competition bracket. Pita was forced to withdraw from the bronze medal playoff match after sustaining a left arm injury mid-competition, cutting short her bid to claim an even higher finish for her home nation.
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Cuba calls for greater international action to protect the planet
In a public statement shared via his official account on social platform X, top diplomat Rodríguez emphasized the pressing need to guarantee fair, unobstructed access to critical resources required for all nations to advance along sustainable development pathways. He called on wealthy industrialized economies to step up and acknowledge their well-documented historical contributions to global emissions, while meeting longstanding commitments to deliver climate finance and facilitate cross-border technology transfer under clear, verifiable, and predictable timelines.
Rodríguez went on to highlight the urgent necessity of rolling back all unilateral coercive trade restrictions, framing such measures as a major barrier to meaningful global climate progress. “Without removing these harmful trade barriers, we cannot deliver the bold, ambitious climate action the planet demands, nor can we deliver equitable, inclusive, and sustainable just transitions for vulnerable communities around the world,” he stated.
The foreign minister cited latest official data from the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to underscore the severity of the current climate crisis, noting that 2025 carbon dioxide concentrations have surged to 153% of pre-industrial baseline levels, while atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide concentrations have also hit all-time recorded peaks. These record-high greenhouse gas levels are locking in long-term global warming trends that will persist for generations, he warned.
Against this grim backdrop, Rodríguez pointed out that low- and middle-income developing nations, and especially fragile small island developing states, are confronting nearly insurmountable hurdles to secure the climate finance, green technology, and material resources they need to adapt to and mitigate the worsening impacts of climate breakdown.
The WMO first issued its formal warning on these unprecedented greenhouse gas levels in late October 2025, confirming that heat-trapping gases driving the climate crisis had hit historic highs by the end of that year. The UN specialized agency further explained that these long-lived atmospheric pollutants will continue to trap excess heat in the planet’s atmosphere for hundreds of years, supercharging extreme weather events, and amplifying cascading economic, social, and humanitarian risks for every region across the globe.
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Iran accuses IAEA of sharing information with its adversaries
Amid a sharp escalation of cross-border frictions between Tehran and Washington in the aftermath of a joint U.S.-Israeli military offensive targeting Iranian territory launched on February 28, 2026, a senior Iranian military official has publicly pushed back against bellicose statements from former U.S. President Donald Trump regarding potential strikes on a strategic Iranian outpost overlooking the world’s most critical oil chokepoint. In an exclusive interview with the international broadcaster RT, the Iranian official, Eslami, addressed recent public threats from Trump that the United States would carry out targeted military strikes on Iran’s Mount Ras al-Fas, the high-elevation site that commands unobstructed surveillance and operational access to the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow maritime passage that facilitates roughly one-fifth of global crude oil trade. Eslami framed the overt threats not as a demonstration of U.S. military strength, but as a transparent indicator of strategic vulnerability on Washington’s part, dismissing the saber-rattling as a transparent display of inherent weakness. Trump had previously laid out the U.S. administration’s hardline stance on the site, stating explicitly that U.S. forces would not hesitate to launch a direct attack on Mount Ras al-Fas if any suspicious or hostile activity was detected emanating from the location. Eslami went on to level explosive, unprecedented criticism against Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body tasked with monitoring global nuclear non-proliferation compliance. The Iranian official alleged that Grossi had effectively abandoned his neutral, impartial mandate as head of an independent international oversight body, claiming he had aligned himself with Iran’s adversaries and was acting as a conduit for passing sensitive Iranian information to hostile foreign parties. As of press time, the International Atomic Energy Agency has not issued any formal statement or response to the sweeping, unsubstantiated accusations leveled against its director general by the Iranian official. The series of public confrontations marks a new, dangerous peak in bilateral tensions that have spiraled rapidly since the coordinated U.S.-Israeli military assault on Iranian soil in late February 2026, raising widespread global concerns about potential disruptions to global energy supplies and the risk of a wider regional military conflict.