News stories by Patricia Grogg, page 3

HAVANA, Apr 01 (IPS) - A new law opening Cuba up to foreign investment and a shift in the country's relations with the European Union are aimed at seeking outside support to overcome the chronic crisis plaguing the country since the early 1990s.

HAVANA, Jan 30 (IPS) - Heads of state and government at the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) made a joint commitment to reduce poverty, hunger and inequality, and declared their region a "zone of peace".

HAVANA, Dic 30 (IPS) - The landscape has changed in Cuba's cities and towns: where once only political slogans could be seen, today lighted signs are cropping up to advertise the best of local and international gastronomy and air-conditioned lodgings – signs of an emerging private sector that was inconceivable until recently.

HAVANA, Nov 25 (IPS) - From a very young age, Irma Castañeda has braided her curly hair and cared for it with natural recipes inherited from her mother, ignoring the widespread conception that black women's hair is "ugly" or "bad".

HAVANA, Oct 25 (IPS) - An end to the country's dual-currency system is one of the reforms most anxiously-awaited by Cubans, who nevertheless reacted with scepticism and doubt to the announcement of a timeline for eliminating the system, blamed for exacerbating social inequalities in the country.

HAVANA, Oct 23 (IPS) - As private initiative expands in socialist Cuba, it is making incursions into new areas, such as waste picking and recycling – for many a means of subsistence, but for others, a gold mine.

HAVANA, Sep 26 (IPS) - A rise in temperature modifies the physiological features of some plants – a consequence of climate change that is less perceptible than stronger and more frequent hurricanes, but just as harmful to food production.

HAVANA, Sep 07 (IPS) - One challenge faced by the Cuban government, and a high priority for citizens, is improving the efficiency and sustainability of public health services, a constitutional right that the state is supposed to ensure for all.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 28 (IPS) - It's Saturday, and the entrance hall of a police station in front of the busy market in Salomon in the Haitian capital has become an improvised health post. In a few minutes there is a long queue of people waiting to be seen by the Cuban medical brigade.

HAVANA, Aug 22 (IPS) - The spread of the virus that causes dengue fever has created an emergency situation for institutions, governments and scientists in Latin America seeking sustainable solutions for a health problem that could worsen as a result of climate change.