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HAVANA — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel for the first time is offering some self-criticism while saying that government shortcomings in handling shortages and other problems played a role in this week’s protests.

Cuba’s President Has Made A Rare Mea Culpa, Admitting To Failures That Fueled Unrest

In a televised address Wednesday night, President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that failings by the state have played a role in the protests that roiled the island nation this week.

JAKARTA — Indonesia has overtaken India as Asia’s new epicenter for the coronavirus pandemic, with daily infections exceeding 40,000 for two straight days and officials warning that the delta variant is spreading outside the most populous island of Java.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy on Tuesday reported 47,899 new infections, a record high, up from 40,427 the previous day. India’s cases, meanwhile, dropped to 32,906 from 37,154.

More alarming is that despite having more daily infections, Indonesia’s population of 270 million population is just a fifth of India’s. Indonesia now has around 132 cases per million people, compared with India 26 as of Sunday, according to ourworldindata.org.

Indonesia overtakes India to become Asia’s COVID epicenter

Southeast Asia’s largest economy reports new daily record of 47,899 new cases

in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans….

He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

It’s not wholly surprising therefore that the same sources who say they know he was some sort of intelligence asset say that he became a liability — which is why, possibly, he lost any “protection” and was arrested.

Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?

The notorious financier pedophile told exaggerated stories of his time in intelligence circles — but some of those stories may have been, at least partially, true

Po-Shen Loh has resurrected the United States International Mathematical Olympiad team, leading it to four first-place rankings in the last six years as the team’s head coach.

The Coach Who Led the U.S. Math Team Back to the Top

Po-Shen Loh has harnessed his competitive impulses and iconoclastic tendencies to reinvigorate the U.S. Math Olympiad program.

What’s a sovereign nation to do?

When Moïse came to power in February 2017, he had little or no access to some of the economic levers that two of his predecessors, Joseph Michel Martelly and René Garcia Préval, had enjoyed. The latter were able to benefit from more than US$4 billion from the PetroCaribe fund, as well as from the largesse of international funding for development projects. In comparison, Moïse’s means for financing development projects for the country were limited.

After its president was assassinated, Haiti needs international help more than ever

The current chaos in Haiti can be explained by the country’s political, institutional, economic and security conditions.

This is true for the much-worried-over Delta variant. It is also true for all the other variants, and for the original strain. Most remarkably, it has been known to be true since the very earliest days of the pandemic — indeed it was among the very first things we did know about the disease. The preliminary mortality data from China was very clear: To children, COVID-19 represented only a vanishingly tiny threat of death, hospitalization, or severe disease.

The Kids Were Safe the Whole Time

Why we should rethink COVID safety protocols for children — and everyone else.

But on July 12 Merkel expressed doubt the upcoming talks with Biden would resolve the disagreement between Berlin and Washington over Nord Stream 2. … U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on June 23 reiterated warnings about Nord Stream 2 during meetings in Berlin with Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. Blinken said he and Maas agreed that concrete steps were needed to “ensure that Russia cannot use energy as a coercive tool directed at Ukraine or anyone else in Europe.”

Merkel Says Gas Will Transit Ukraine Even After Nord Stream 2 Finished

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has sought to assure Kyiv that Ukraine will remain a transit route for natural gas even after completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Russia to Germany.

The price of oil surged to $75 a barrel the other day under President Joe Biden’s green energy policies. The price was as low as $35 a barrel under former President Donald Trump because he believed in American energy dominance (“Drill, baby, drill”). So, more oil meant lower prices at the pump. It was effectively a massive, multibillion-dollar tax cut for lower- and middle-income earners of tens of billions of dollars a year.

OPEC and Big Oil’s New Best Friend, Joe Biden | RealClearPolitics

The price of oil surged to $75 a barrel the other day under President Joe Biden’s green energy policies. The price was as low as $35 a barrel under former…

Thanks to a “wobble” in the moon’s orbit and rising sea levels, every coast in the United States will face rapidly increasing high tides that will start “a decade of dramatic increases in flood numbers” in the 2030s.

Brace for flooding. A moon ‘wobble’ is coming, NASA warns

NASA says rising sea levels mixed with the increase of high tides because of the moon’s orbit will cause major flooding throughout the U.S. coastline.

‘For the people that are protesting and looting, please do so carefully and please do so responsibly. Because you cannot hold people responsible for defending what they love,’ Zuma said. The 37-year-old, who has his own ambitions to run the country, said that ‘finger pointing’ was not going to help because the government must ‘feed the poor people that are looting’ as he blamed lockdown-fuelled economic inequity for the chaos.

Jacob Zuma’s son urges looters to do so ‘responsibly’

Jacob Zuma’s son has urged looters to ‘do so responsibly’ and called for his father to be freed after South Africa’s lawlessness entered its sixth consecutive day.

NetBlocks metrics show that communications platforms WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and as well as some Telegram servers are disrupted on government-owned ETECSA (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A. / AS27725) including Cubacel, the cellular network operated by Cuba’s sole telecommunications company. Findings corroborate user reports of disruptions to the services.

Social media restricted in Cuba amid widening anti-government protests – NetBlocks

Network data from NetBlocks confirm partial disruption to social media and messaging platforms in Cuba from 12 July 2021. The targeted restrictions are likely to limit the flow of information …

The old global world is going down. Biden’s political challenge is how to avoid becoming the Chernenko of a collapsing edifice. He will either transition to a new, more sustainable political order or go down in history as the captain of the new Titanic.

Biden’s remarks disappoint leaders in Havana. Before Biden came to office, they hoped he would follow in President Barack Obama’s footsteps and thaw relations with the island, reversing Trump’s actions that tightened the Cold War-era U.S. embargo.

On the campaign trail, Biden said he would reverse policies on Cuba that “have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.”

Joe Biden wounds Cuba, Venezuela and China’s hopes of Obama-style detente

The American president said the U.S. stands with Cuban protesters and condemned “decades of repression” by “Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”

More than 1200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air Tuesday and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations.

Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampedes as thousands of people stole food, electric appliances, liquor and clothing from stores, police Major General Mathapelo Peters said in a statement Tuesday night.

Death toll spirals in South Africa as desperation sets in

More than a thousand people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged since the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma.

New at the Belmont Club. Is the geriatric Washington mindset able to cope with a changed world?

The Crumbling Global Tower

Not pulling out of the dive

“At times, one of the suspects in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a confidential source to the DEA,” the DEA said in a statement.

Several tied to Haiti assassination plot were previously US law enforcement informants

Several of the men involved in the operation that killed Haiti’s president previously worked as US law enforcement informants, according to people briefed on the matter, as US investigators grapple with an increasing number of Florida links to the alleged hit squad.

Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer known as Barbecue who heads the so-called G9 federation of nine gangs, railed against police and opposition politicians whom he accused of colluding with the “stinking bourgeoisie” to “sacrifice” Mr Moïse.

Haiti’s president ‘riddled’ with bullets in the ‘blink of an eye’, wife says

As Haiti descends into further unrest, the widow of the slain President gives a graphic account of his final minutes.

Haiti (AP) — Gangs in Haiti have long been financed by powerful politicians and their allies — and many Haitians fear those backers may be losing control of the increasingly powerful armed groups who have driven thousands of people from their homes as they battle over territory, kill civilians and raid warehouses of food.

Gangs complicate Haiti effort to recover from assassination

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Gangs in Haiti have long been financed by powerful politicians and their allies — and many Haitians fear those backers may be losing control of the increasingly powerful armed groups who have driven thousands of people from their homes as they battle over territory, kill…

Thousands of Cubans took part in rare protests Sunday against the communist government, marching through a town chanting “Down with the dictatorship” and “We want liberty.”

The protest in San Antonio de los Banos, a town of some 50,000 people southwest of Havana, came as Cuba is experiencing its toughest phase yet of the coronavirus epidemic, the same day it reported a new daily record of infections and deaths.

Thousands join rare anti-government protests in Cuba – France 24

Thousands join rare anti-government protests in Cuba