Cubans

For Cuban exiles and emigres who have been waiting for Fidel Castro's departure for decades, Tuesday's announcement that he was retiring as president was greeted with more cynicism than jubilation. "As far as I'm concerned, until they can show me a body in a casket, I'm never going to believe this is over," Eddie Lopez, an exterminator and U.S.-born Cuban American, said as he made his pest control rounds in Miami Beach.

The dapper octogenarian in a crisp blue suit, his face smoothed by plastic surgery, swanned from table to table in the candlelit banquet hall, bestowing kisses and collecting accolades. An aging movie star being feted by fans? A veteran politico taking his bows?

A few days before his 90th birthday, Bebo Valdes contemplates his memories and melodies on a hotel terrace with a view of waves dancing in an African breeze. Valdes puts aside the coffee he is nursing and examines two CDs. One is "Lagrimas Negras" ("Black Tears"), the surprise crossover sensation that made him an international star four years ago.

A Cuban militant pleaded not guilty in El Paso to charges he lied to federal investigators in a bid to become a U.S. citizen. Luis Posada Carriles, 78, was indicted Jan. 11. Posada, a former CIA operative and U.S. Army soldier, is also accused by Cuba and Venezuela of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people. Posada, a longtime opponent of Fidel Castro who trained for the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, is being held at a jail in New Mexico.

Ramon Saul Sanchez has put out the call: "Get ready. We're going to Cuba." Sanchez, 52, the founder of a Miami group called the Democracy Movement, or \o7Movimiento Democracia\f7, has led flotillas toward Cuba's territorial water to protest the regime of Fidel Castro and what he believes is deeply flawed U.S. policy toward the island nation. When Castro dies, he said, he plans to sail for the island with generators, medicine and other supplies -- and bring word that "freedom is on its way."

Family practitioner Alberto Hernandez suffers anxiety attacks. Dentist Norah Garcia is prone to bouts of uncontrollable sobbing. General practitioner Cesar Fernandez, 31, has high blood pressure. They are among the tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, surgeons and dentists dispatched from their Cuban homeland as medical missionaries to some of the world's poorest countries, in the process earning hard currency for the communist regime.

An appeals court denied the U.S. government's latest bid to keep anti-Castro Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles jailed until his May trial on immigration fraud charges. The decision by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed a decision last week to temporarily block Posada from being released from the Otero County, N.M., jail on $250,000 bond. One of his lawyers said it was unclear when the 79-year-old former CIA operative could be set free.

An exiled Cuban militant wanted by Venezuela in connection with the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner was released from jail Thursday and allowed to return to his home here to await trial on charges of violating immigration law. The Bush administration's inability to keep former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles locked up sparked broad condemnation throughout Latin America and among critics of U.S.-Cuba policy.

A federal judge Tuesday threw out an indictment accusing a Cuban militant of lying to immigration authorities, saying the government manipulated Luis Posada Carriles' statement to investigators. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone said the interpretation of the April 2006 interview "is so inaccurate as to render it unreliable as evidence of defendant's actual statement." Authorities said he confessed to sneaking across the Mexican border into Texas.

Three months before the 1976 midair explosion of a Cuban plane off the coast of Barbados, CIA covert operative Luis Posada Carriles cabled his U.S. minders from Venezuela to report that the plot was in motion and asked for Washington's "assistance." Recently declassified CIA communications confirm that a U.S. agent got back to Posada within a few days.