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Cuba accused of ignoring health of jailed dissidents*** MIAMI -- When Miriam Leiva visited her jailed husband Thursday, the Cuban dissident journalist tried to talk but his tongue was sluggish. Oscar Espinosa Chepe, already debilitated and gravely ill from a liver condition, had been given new pills by a government psychiatrist this week.

"Oscar doesn't even know what they gave him. We don't even know what kind of treatment they are giving him," Leiva said by phone from Havana. "They are all-powerful, and we are helpless."

As the health of more than a dozen jailed Cuban dissidents like Espinosa deteriorates, U.S. officials and human rights groups say the Cuban government is purposefully denying them proper medical care. Their illnesses range from poor circulation to kidney trouble and gastritis, and "the Cuban authorities don't appear prepared" to provide them with adequate medication, said Eric Olson, Amnesty International's Americas advocacy director. This week, the United States said 75 dissidents arrested this spring are being held in "appalling conditions, with very poor sanitation, contaminated water and nearly inedible food."

"The Cuban government appears to be going out of its way to treat these prisoners inhumanely," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.

The United States called on the Cuban government to let independent groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders evaluate the patients.

Doctors Without Borders hasn't had a Cuba program for three years because the group was not allowed to act independently, spokesman Kevin Phelan said. [End]

Rancher ships 148 cattle to Cuba***The latest large-scale loophole in the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba goes moo -- nearly 150 times. A Naples rancher, J.P. Wright & Co., announced Thursday that it had delivered 148 dairy cattle to the island this week in what the firm said was the largest successful U.S. shipment of cows to Cuba since the communist revolution.

The shipment, the latest of several summer deliveries, raised to nearly 450 the number of U.S. cattle that have been sent to Cuba since Congress in 2000 exempted U.S. food and agricultural products from the overall trade embargo, provided Cuba pays cash. ***

I think he's going to be ill.

Cuban President Fidel Castro, right, talks with Spain Prince Felipe during lunch in Asuncion, Paraguay, Friday, August. 15, 2003. Castro and Felipe traveled to Paraguay to attend New Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte swearing-in ceremony. (AP Photo/Dado Galdieri)