News stories by Patricia Grogg* - Tierramérica

Cuba hopes to revive its sugar industry as part of the recently announced economic changes and take advantage of good international prices for what was once the Caribbean island’s main export.

The residents of Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth), the second largest of the Cuban archipelago, know a lot about hurricanes, but it wasn't enough to avoid the destructive power of Hurricane Gustav two years ago.

With the wounds exposed by earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and other parts of the Americas, Cuba is beginning to focus on its own great challenge: adapting construction for housing that can withstand strong tremors.

Cuba, which has major reserves of zeolite, aims to boost exploitation of the mineral, whose properties and uses in products and technologies contribute to protecting the environment.

The ocean punishes Carahatas every time a hurricane tears through the region. The sea combines with the flow of a nearby river, and floods the houses with water a metre and a half deep, or more. Nevertheless, the residents of this Cuban town are deeply attached to the sea.

The Zapata wren (Ferminia cerverai) is known in Cuba as the 'soprano of the forest' for its lovely song. But this tiny bird is very timid and, at the slightest sound, will hide in the vegetation in the Cienaga de Zapata - Zapata Swamp - 160 km south of Havana on the island’s south-central coast.

The cyclical climate phenomenon known as El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the equatorial Pacific Ocean this year is helping weaken cyclone activity in the Northern Atlantic and the Caribbean. But Cuban meteorologists are warning against complacency.

With little fanfare, genetically modified maize produced by Cuba's genetic and biotechnology engineering centre, CIGB, is being grown on test plots as part of a new project involving five of the Caribbean island nation's provinces.