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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Chanting “we are not afraid,” thousands of Cubans took to the streets Sunday to demand the end of the communist dictatorship. The COVID crisis has only exacerbated the unrest on the island nation, which is why protesters also called for food and vaccines.

President Joe Biden speaks at Sportrock Climbing Centers, Friday, May 28, 2021, in Alexandria, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) The Biden administration on Thursday sanctioned Cuban officials and the government’s special forces unit “The Boinas Negras” for human rights abuses amid unrest. “I unequivocally condemn the mass detentions and sham trials that are unjustly sentencing to prison those who dared to speak out in an effort to intimidate and threaten the Cuban people into silence,” said President Joe Biden. “The Cuban people have the same right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly as all people. The United States stands with...

#cubalibre 🇨🇺 #CLM (@willygotfamee) Tweeted: Young kid yelling I’m just a kid and being forced into the police car for protesting freedom in cuba this is sad and we need to free Cuba together!!!! #CubaLibre #SOSCuba #PatriaYVida https://t.co/gUKaKO4Qbz

A protest broke out in Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday in support of the anti-government protesters in Cuba and participants appealed to the Biden administration to take a firmer stance on the crackdown in Havana. "Where is Biden?" the protesters chanted, according to Fox 13 News. "Where is Biden?" Protests have broken out across the state and this particular rally resulted in three arrests after the protesters blocked traffic on Dale Mabry Highway and forced the partial closure of Interstate 275. The demonstrators yelled, "Cuba Libre!"

The demonstrations were mainly triggered by people's discontent over Cuba's economic hardships and shortages of basic supplies. These are mainly a result of the US' decades-long sanctions against Cuba. Despite dialogue during the Obama era, the Trump administration tightened sanctions on Cuba, further crippling their economy. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Sunday that the protests were a form of "systemic provocation" by dissidents doing the bidding of the US. He said Washington in recent months had sought to destabilize and weaken the island's economy as part of a policy designed to "provoke a massive social implosion," according to New...

As Cubans cry for “freedom”—a common refrain of right-wing radicals— Democrats are starting to worry that this dangerous movement could gain momentum in the U.S. “These Cubans—or Q-bans as I call them—have obviously been influenced by some radical Trump-type figure,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom. “I’ve worked hard in my state to clamp down on freedom in order to fight COVID and climate change, and the last thing we need is people now thinking liberty is a good thing.” Democrats have made dictating to American citizens what they can do a big part of all their plans, and this strategy...

GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) criticized President Trump on Thursday for reportedly deciding to renew nuclear waivers for Iran. "This is disappointing and another lost opportunity to tear up the catastrophic Obama-Iran nuclear deal once and for all," the senators said in a joint statement tweeted by Cruz. "President Trump should immediately order his administration to stop issuing civil nuclear waivers."

FULL TITLE: Washington D.C. restaurant is fined $7,000 for demanding a transgender woman show her ID before using the bathroom - then kicked her out after she refused A Washington DC Cuban restaurant has been fined $7,000 for demanding a transgender woman show ID before using the ladies' restroom. Workers at a restaurant called Cuba Libre in the capital asked Charlotte Clymer for identification in June 2018 when she tried to use a women's bathroom, then followed her inside and told her to leave. Writing in a Twitter thread that has gone viral, Charlotte explained how when she went to...

A Washington, D.C., restaurant issued an apology to a transgender woman who said she was kicked out for trying to use the women’s bathroom. Charlotte Clymer, a communications staffer for the Human Rights Campaign, wrote about the incident on a Twitter thread Saturday afternoon. Clymer wrote that she was at Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum Bar on Friday night for a bachelorette party when a staff member asked for her ID. She said he told her the identification needed to read “female” in order to use the women’s restroom. Charlotte Clymer🏳️‍🌈 ✔ @cmclymer Last night, I was told by the...

Forty-eight years ago today, 1,500 Cuban exiles landed on the beach of a desolate area of Cuba's southern shore known to the locals as Bahia de Cochinos -- the Bay of Pigs. Authorized by a young and inexperienced President John Kennedy -- who had been in office fewer than two months when he green-lighted the plan -- the Central Intelligence Agency had recruited and trained the exiles in the hopes that their landing would spark a nation-wide uprising. But Kennedy's insistence on reducing the U.S. military role in the invasion, in the hope of maintaining plausible deniability, doomed to failure...

A federal grand jury handed up a new indictment against Luis Posada Carriles, for the first time linking the Cuban exile militant in a U.S. legal proceeding to a series of 1997 tourist-site bombings in Cuba that killed an Italian national. The superseding indictment from the grand jury in El Paso does not charge Posada, 81, with planting the bombs or plotting the bombings but with lying in an immigration court about his role in the attacks at hotels, bars and restaurants in the Havana area. The perjury counts were added to the previous indictment that accused Posada of lying...

http://www.therealcuba.com/ in English: "...Jan. 24 - Gabriel Salvia, President of the Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America (CADAL), said on Saturday that "Cuba is a pressure cooker ready to explode," because its citizens keep asking for more freedom..."

Raúl Castro has started to make cautious changes in Cuba which could signal plans for political and economic reform. Since he took over from his brother Fidel, dozens of dissidents have been released, an olive branch has been extended to Washington and there is talk of easing communist controls on property and agricultural production. Three political prisoners have been freed in the past fortnight, the latest being Armando Betancourt Reina, a journalist jailed for 15 months after reporting on the eviction of a family in Camagüey. Analysts said Raúl, 76, who has been acting president since illness forced his brother...

REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF The press dispatches bring the news; it belongs to the Astute Class, the first of its kind to be constructed in Great Britain in more than two decades. "A nuclear reactor will allow it to navigate without refuelling during its 25 year of service. Since it makes its own oxigen and drinking water, it can circumnavigate the globe without needing to surface," was the statement to the BBC by Nigel Ward, head of the shipyards. "It’s a mean looking beast", says another. "Looming above us is a construction shed 12 storeys high. Within it...

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- A group of Cubans deported in January after nearly reaching the United States landed Friday at close to the same spot, a bridge in the Florida Keys that authorities earlier ruled wasn't American soil, a relative said. The people who beached around 3:30 a.m. at the new Seven Mile Bridge's south end near a state park in the lower Florida Keys had not been identified, Monroe County sheriff's spokeswoman Becky Herrin said. They were being taken to a Border Patrol station for processing. Mariela Conesa said her teenage son, husband and five others in the January...

Alfredo was thinking and remembering many things when the old woman arrived; it had been a while since someone had arrived at the place where he was selling his fruit. The old woman asked him for the price of the oranges. They haggled for a few minutes, until Alfredo cut her short with some advice: “If you’re going to buy, hurry up and do it; if the police come by, they’ll take everything from me.” The old woman checked the oranges out one last time and placed them back to the wooden board where Alfredo displayed all his produce. She...

HAVANA, Aug. 2 -- In this island capital's long bus-stop lines and open markets, its offices and restaurants, the question keeps popping up: Where's Raúl? Raúl Castro has yet to appear in public since being named temporary president of Cuba late Monday. His absence is adding a layer of intrigue to the speculation-heavy ambience that has settled over this city. It was two days ago that the Cuban government announced that Fidel Castro -- who is recovering from intestinal surgery -- would relinquish his 47-year hold on power to his younger brother. "I think Raúl should have appeared by now,...

The White House and Congress, caught unaware by Fidel Castro's illness, prepared Wednesday for a possible showdown in Cuba as lawmakers drafted legislation that would pay millions of dollars to dissidents who fight for democratic change. "The message will be: The United States stands with you," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., one of the authors, said in an interview. "Be ready to assert your independence." There was no sign of upheaval in Cuba Wednesday, two days after Castro stunned U.S. officials and many of his own countrymen with the news that he had temporarily ceded power to his brother, Raul, in...

HOLLYWOOD – Nineteen Cuban migrants were taken into custody Monday morning shortly after a speedboat dropped them off on a beach just north of Sheridan Street, news partner NBC 6 reported. The migrants were dropped off by a go-fast boat on the 3500 block of Ocean Boulevard around 6 a.m. The group included 12 men, four women and three children. All were reported in good condition. The Border Patrol was questioning the group about who brought them to the United States and why. Most or all are expected to be granted permission to stay under the government's wet foot, dry...

A college professor and his wife, a college administrator, have been charged with being longtime illegal agents of Cuban President Fidel Castro, according to documents filed Monday. Carlos Alvarez, a psychology professor at Florida International University, and his wife, Elsa Alvarez, were charged with acting as agents of Cuba without registering with the U.S. government as required, said the documents filed in U.S. District Court. The two were scheduled to make an initial court appearance Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrea Simonton, according to the documents. An indictment further describing the charges was expected to be unsealed after that appearance,...