The President of Cuba Raul Castro has held a rare meeting with leading members of the Roman Catholic Church on the island. The talks come ahead of a visit next month by the Vatican foreign secretary. From Havana, Michael Voss.
The official Communist Party newspaper Granma showed a photograph of a smiling President Raul Castro, greeting Cardinal Jaime Ortega, head of the Catholic Church in Cuba along with the Archbishop of Santiago Dionisio Garcia. The meeting, the paper said, discussed various international and domestic issues as well as the favorable development of relations between the Catholic Church and the state. Church sources indicate that the talks also touched on the fate of political prisoners whom the government brands as mercenaries in the pay at the United States.
Soldiers from Jamaica's national reserves have been mobilized to help the police after parts of the capital Kingston became no-go areas. Streets have been taken over by supporters of an alleged drug lord, Christopher Dudus Coke who the government now want to extradite to the United States. Mr Coke is wanted in the US for alleged drugs and arms smuggling.
The American cyclist Lance Armstrong who's won the Tour de France seven times has denied allegations by a disgraced fellow competitor that he used performance-enhancing drugs. Floyd Landis who was stripped of the Tour de France title in 2006 after testing positive for drugs accused Armstrong, his former teammate, of doing the same. Dismissing the accusations, Armstrong said he had nothing to hide.