Cuba

An airline in China is mulling over plans that would allow passengers to stand during short flights and pay less than those who have seats. Spring Airlines, a low-cost carrier based in Shanghai, said having passengers stand up in flight would enable it to cram 40% more travelers into its Airbus A320 planes while cutting operating costs 20%.

At age 10, Ricardo Lemvo was hooked on the blazing horn arrangements, conga drums and up-tempo sound of Johnny Pacheco and the Orchestra Aragon. It was 1967 in Kinshasa, Congo, and the intoxicating pleasures of Cuban son and rumba were sweeping through Africa. "I still get goose bumps listening to that music," said Lemvo, who's due to perform a free concert at Santa Monica Pier on Thursday as part of the Twilight Dance Series. "It was perfect.

Cuba has unveiled what it says is a recent photo of former President Fidel Castro, showing him looking healthier than in other pictures since he underwent emergency surgery three years ago. The photograph is the centerpiece of an exhibit that opened Wednesday dedicated to the former leader. His 83rd birthday is today. Curator Arturo Suarez said the large image was taken by Castro's son Alex, who he said is a professional photographer. Wearing a blue baseball cap, a white sports jacket and black shirt, Castro looks better than in other shots that have shown him looking gaunt since he gave up the presidency.

All he ever wanted was a chance to play. That's why, as a skinny 8-year-old growing up in Cuba, he picked up a baseball in the first place. That's why, two weeks before his 21st birthday, he left Cuba and everything he had ever known to come to the U.S. And that's why Kendry Morales, perhaps alone among his Angels teammates, cheered Mark Teixeira's decision to bolt Anaheim for Yankee Stadium after last season, leaving first base open for him. "The only thing I needed was the opportunity to play every day," Morales says.

It is an annual ritual: The United Nations today will vote to condemn the U.S. embargo on Cuba, much as the world organization has done for nearly two decades. This will be the first time, however, that the call to end the policy will come with Barack Obama as president, giving rise to spirited debate on how his administration, having promised a "new beginning" in Latin America, is handling one of Washington's most problematic foreign policies. In recent months the Obama administration has taken steps to ease some of the sanctions that successive U.S. governments employed against Cuba.

Fifty years after triumphant rebels descended from the eastern mountains, Cuba celebrated the communist revolution's anniversary with toned-down festivities after a trio of devastating hurricanes. President Raul Castro, who succeeded his ailing older brother, Fidel, in February, planned to speak from the same balcony where Fidel declared victory over dictator Fulgencio Batista's government on Jan. 1, 1959. When President Bush leaves office, the Castro leadership will have outlasted 10 American presidents who maintained strict sanctions on Cuba.

Cuba defended its human rights record in a report to the United Nations, saying that its communist government answers to the people and its controls on unions, social groups and the media work to strengthen individual freedoms. The opposition denounced the assertions, with one activist saying Havana is now claiming to defend the same rights it has jailed dissidents for promoting. In its report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Cuba said it has created "an independent and sovereign socialist state of workers, organized with all and for the good of all."

When Gaylord Johnson Jr. was struggling with a term paper at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., he figured he'd ask for help from someone who knew the material best: Ernest Hemingway. "I've read a couple of the Nick Adams stories and have also read critical material on the same," Johnson wrote in a letter to Hemingway in 1956, referring to one of Hemingway's most famous characters. "I am, however, not quite satisfied with all I've read, and I wondered if you would write me and tell me just what you think of Nick Adams."

The Obama administration plans to appoint veteran diplomat Daniel Fried as special envoy to oversee the closure of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, two senior U.S. officials told the Associated Press. Fried currently is assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs.

Greek households are cutting expenses and spending less time at restaurants and hair salons. But one local luxury is defying the downturn: hand-rolled cigars. Business is good at Domenico Cigars, a tiny factory in central Greece that got its cigar seeds and secrets from Cuba. Greece's unlikely cigar industry got its start five years ago in Domenico, in a valley 185 miles northwest of Athens, where conditions are ideal -- hot and damp. Last year saw a record for output -- still a modest 70,000 cigars.