By Kevin Liptak
Alan Gross, the former American subcontractor who's spent four years imprisoned in Cuba, launched a hunger strike last week in a bid to spur both the United States and Cuba to resolve his case.
Gross has called on President Barack Obama to become personally involved in securing his release from the small Cuban jail where he's been incarcerated since 2009. Gross' lawyer on Tuesday said the U.S. government had put a resolution to his case in jeopardy after secretly setting up a social media network designed to help Cubans communicate.
"I am fasting to object to mistruths, deceptions, and inaction by both governments, not only regarding their shared responsibility for my arbitrary detention, but also because of the lack of any reasonable or valid effort to resolve this shameful ordeal," Gross wrote in a statement distributed by his U.S.-based public relations firm.
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By Jose Pagliery
The U.S. government secretly created a Twitter-like social media service to subvert Cuba's communist government, according to an investigative report by the Associated Press.
The AP says U.S. government officials developed an app called ZunZuneo - named after the chirping sound of a hummingbird - to cause social unrest.
U.S. efforts to undermine the Castro regime in Havana are nothing new. There was a poison cigar, an exploding seashell, lethal pills and a fungus-ridden diving suit. But cooking up a tech startup with - literally - revolutionary intentions? That's something else.
To get around Cuba's iron grip control on technology and outside influence via the Internet, ZunZuneo was a low-tech version of Twitter fed by cell phone text messages, the AP reported.
FULL STORYBy Elise Labott
Cuba halted consular services in the United States on Friday because the American bank it was working with is severing their relationship, the Cuban Interests Section said.
M&T Bank informed the Interests Section last year it was getting out of the business of providing banking services for diplomatic missions, but agreed to accept Cuban deposits through February 17.
Panamanian authorities seized a North Korean-flagged vessel with an undeclared haul of weaponry in the Panamanian port of Manzanillo on Monday night, Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli said.
Panama's security minister, Jose Raul Mulino, told CNN the ship had arrived from Cuba.
Panamanian authorities had received intelligence the ship was carrying drugs, but a search Monday revealed military equipment hidden among a cargo of brown sugar.
It was not immediately clear what sort of military equipment was found.
FULL STORYCNN's Phil Black chronicles the 30+ hour flight from Moscow to Havana in search of Edward Snowden.
By Jill Dougherty
Direct mail between the United States and Cuba was suspended 50 years ago.
Now the two countries have agreed to hold talks on reestablishing that service, but U.S. officials caution the discussions "are technical in nature" and do not indicate any change in policy toward Cuba.
Representatives from the State Department and the U.S. Postal Service will meet with Cuban officials in Washington this week to discuss the matter.
"The reason we're doing this is because it's of course good for the Cuban people," she said. "This is something we feel is good for us, but it's not meant to be a signal of anything or indicate a change in policy," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
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By Jill Dougherty
Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, will be granted a U.S. visa to attend a conference on lesbian and gay civil rights in Philadelphia in May, a U.S. official tells CNN.
Initially not expected to receive a visa, the official said the case was "looked at again" and "the restriction on her visa has been lifted, which will allow her to travel" to the event on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.
Mariela Castro is the director of Cuba's National Center for Sex Education and the niece of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Although she is not gay, she has lobbied for gay rights in Cuba, including the right for same-sex couples to marry and for AIDS awareness.
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