Cuba

The USA smoked Cuba like a cigar, 136-57, and, no, Charles Barkley did not feel guilty. "I was found not guilty (in Milwaukee) two weeks ago," Barkley shot back after leading the Dream Team with 22 points in 22 minutes of its debut yesterday in the Tournament of the Americas, the qualifying event for men's Olympic basketball teams from North, Central and South America. You can take Barkley out of Philadelphia (Phoenix, remember, already has done that), but you can't take the Barkleymania out of Barkley.

The Cuban government called an unusual press conference here last night to say that in an effort to be helpful to the United States, it would take "no reprisal whatsoever" against any Mariel felons deported to the island. In fact, Cuban Interests Section Chief Ramon Sanchez Parodi said his government would pardon any Mariel felon who was returned, regardless of crimes committed here or in Cuba. He added that Cuba also would take back the families of Mariel felons, if they wished to return.

At Cuba's recent Third Communist Party Congress, President Fidel Castro rammed through a wholesale reorganization of his party's leadership, replacing scores of his aging guerrilla comrades with younger militants. He also announced that should he die or be disabled, the reins of government would be taken by his brother, Raul. The magnitude of the shake-up, which Castro announced in an emotional speech Feb. 7, has left European and Western diplomats shaking their heads in amazement after more than a week of scrutinizing scrambled Communist Party lists of its leadership.

Two boxers deported by Brazil were back in Cuba yesterday after they disappeared during the Pan American Games last month and were arrested at a resort where officials said they partied and ran up an exorbitant bill. Convalescing leader Fidel Castro said in comments published yesterday that the boxers would be confined to guest houses upon their return, although he promised not to harshly punish them. Guillermo Rigondeaux, Cuba's top boxer and a two-time Olympic bantamweight champion, and Erislandy Lara, an amateur welterweight world champion, arrived in Cuba early yesterday after being deported from Brazil, Cuban state radio and TV reported without offering any specifics.

When you hear Arturo Sandoval, you can hardly believe he's playing metal. The mouthpiece is like an organic part of his lip, and the trumpet channels the convivial madness within him. Virtuosity poured out of Sandoval Wednesday night at a near-capacity show in the Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall. For an hour and a half, the cofounder of Cuba's legendary folk-jazz band Irakere, who defected from the island in 1990, held forth with his sextet on trumpet, flugelhorn, keyboards and percussion.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced yesterday that he will visit Cuba next month on the first leg of a major diplomatic tour that will include a meeting in New York with President Reagan and President-elect George Bush. He will speak before the U.N. General Assembly and end his trip in London, where he will meet with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The visit to Cuba will be only the second time a Soviet leader has visited the island that Fidel Castro's revolutionaries seized in 1960 and turned into a Soviet satellite.

Lucius Walker, 80, a pastor who led an annual pilgrimage of U.S. aid volunteers to Cuba in defiance of Washington's near half-century-old trade embargo, died Tuesday of a heart attack in New York. Mr. Walker headed the nonprofit Pastors for Peace, which since 1992 has sent tons of supplies donated in the United States to Cuba - goods ranging from walkers and wheelchairs to computer monitors and clothing.

Venezuela offered to host part of next year's World Baseball Classic in place of Puerto Rico and suggested moving the final to Canada, proposals aimed at keeping Cuba in the 16-team tournament. Such an arrangement would open the way for communist-led Cuba to participate in the first World Cup-style baseball tournament. Cuba is banned from playing on U.S. soil, and Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth. The U.S. Treasury Department has rejected Cuba's tournament application, apparently because of concerns that Fidel Castro's government could enjoy financial gain by participating.

On a day when opponents of Fidel Castro caused turmoil in and above the stands, David Ortiz powered the Dominican Republic to a key victory over Cuba in San Juan, Puerto, Rico. Ortiz hit his third home run of the tournament and walked with the bases loaded in a 7-3 victory yesterday that kept alive the Dominicans' hopes of advancing to the World Baseball Classic semifinals. A group of fans caused a scuffle at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, spelling "Abajo Fidel [down With Fidel]" with the letters on their shirts.

The Roxy's Festival Latino hasn't even finished the first of its three weeks, but it has already demonstrated one interesting fact: Cuban cinema is very far from the ideologically sanitized enterprise one might have expected. The festival's first offering, "Vampires in Havana," was a remarkably irreverent (and disarmingly funny) piece of social satire. "Lejania," which opens at the Roxy today, is an impressively unideological piece of social realism. Actually, the movie's concept is more interesting than its execution.

CARTAGENA, Colombia - President Obama got the expected lectures Saturday from Western Hemisphere leaders over his insistence on vetoing Cuban participation in future summits and his intransigence on abandoning a drug war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and undermined governments. The opening salvo came from the summit's host, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who reiterated the message nearly all his colleagues harped on: Drop attempts to isolate Cuba. "There is no justification for that path that has us anchored in a Cold War overcome now for several decades," Santos said, suggesting a change might encourage reforms on the communist-led island.

HAVANA - Cuba has honored an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI and declared this week's Good Friday a holiday for the first time since the early days following the island's 1959 revolution, though a decision on whether the move will be permanent will have to wait. The Communist government said in a communique Saturday that the decision was made in light of the success of Benedict's "transcendental visit" to the country, which wrapped up Wednesday. It said the Council of Ministers, Cuba's supreme governing body, will decide later whether to make the holiday permanent.

HAVANA - Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday concluded his first trip to the Spanish-speaking Americas, launched with a condemnation of Marxism and drug-war violence and ending with a forceful plea for "genuine freedom" as he preached from the symbolic heart of Cuba's leftist revolution. Standing under larger-than-life portraits of revolutionary heroes such as Che Guevara, the pope admonished Cuban authorities for not doing enough to allow the public exercise of religious faith. Later, he met with former President Fidel Castro, and the two octogenarians joked about the hardships of being old men. Dressed in a gilded miter and robes of purple in keeping with the Lenten season, Benedict rode the popemobile into the Plaza of the Revolution and celebrated an open-air Mass witnessed by an estimated 300,000 Cubans and other Latin Americans.

SANTIAGO, Cuba - Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Cuba on Monday in the footsteps of his more famous predecessor, gently pressing the island's longtime communist leaders to push through "legitimate" changes their people desire, while criticizing the excesses of capitalism. In contrast to the raucous welcome Benedict received in Mexico, his arrival in Cuba's second city was relatively subdued. While President Raul Castro greeted him at the airport with a 21-cannon salute and military honor guard, few ordinary Cubans lined Benedict's motorcade route into town and the pope barely waved from his glassed-in popemobile.

MIAMI - Natalia Martinez speaks with a clinical distance when discussing her family's decision to leave Cuba two decades ago. But the graduate student's cool demeanor falls away when she speaks of returning to her homeland for the first time this week during Pope Benedict XVI's visit. "I am excited. I am nervous, and I'm anticipating confusion," Martinez, 25, said. She could be speaking for many of the more than 300 Cuban Americans who will form a delegation to Cuba led by Miami's Roman Catholic archbishop, Thomas Wenski.

Hacking suspect is released DUBLIN, Ireland - An Irish computer hacker accused of breaking into the e-mail account of Ireland's top cybersecurity cop, then using its contents to eavesdrop on American and British anti-hacking detectives, was released without charges Wednesday. Irish police said they were preparing a new evidence file for state prosecutors to use against Donncha O Cearbhaill. He has been arrested and released once before over alleged hacking attacks in Ireland last year.

Chalk up another victory for the greeting-card cartel: Valentine's Day now goes on for weeks, months, even decades - at least when it comes to the American left and the Castro brothers. The latest love letter to Havana comes from Peter Phillips, a sociologist at California's Sonoma State University, where he runs an outfit called Project Censored. It is the conceit of Project Censored that mainstream news media in the United States and other liberal democracies ruthlessly suppress real news in order to protect the world's corporate ruling order.

HAVANA - Why Cuba? Blame fate. In January, a friend told me she had just returned from Cuba on a Jewish humanitarian mission. In February, Mr. "I Don't Want to Be Just Your Friend" asked me if I wanted to go to Cuba with him. Two weeks later, I received a letter about a Catholic humanitarian effort to Cuba. Those three mythological gals that compose "fate" were working overtime - I sent in the application to Bringing Hope Inc., of Miami. The trip required participants to bring at least 15 pounds of over-the-counter drugs and school supplies.

Don't be so sure Iran won't attack A letter Monday, "Provoking a war with Iran," asserted that "Iran is not about to attack anyone. " How does the writer know this fact? Does she have a mole in the CIA giving her this information? Are the recent bombings in India and Africa, and the arrest of five Iranians who were in possession of bomb-making material in Thailand, just a rehearsal for further attacks? Neither Israel nor the United States is engaged in saber- rattling. Quite the contrary, it has been the U.S. policy these past three years to attempt negotiations and sanctions rather then any military action.

HAVANA - When it started, American teenagers were doing "The Twist. " The United States had yet to put a man into orbit around the Earth. And a first-class U.S. postage stamp cost 4 cents. The world is much changed since the early days of 1962, but one thing has remained constant: The U.S. economic embargo on communist-run Cuba, a near-total trade ban that turned 50 on Tuesday. Supporters say it is a justified measure against a repressive government that has never stopped being a thorn in Washington's side.