The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), consisting of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, clandestinely and directly financed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
Nuestra América Convoy
34 votes, 75 comments. Nuestra America Convoy is completely out touch with the reality in Cuba. I would have liked to feel grateful and positive that…
Guantánamo’s Other History - Boston Review
Four months after the first Haitian vessel sailed into Guantánamo Bay, another arrived at Pompano Beach. More followed, showing up in the Keys, Port Everglades, and other sites up and down the South Florida coast. The INS was no more sympathetic to the claims of these Haitians than they were to those at Guantánamo, and they attempted to send virtually all of them back to Haiti after brief and cursory interviews.
Exclusive: Downed US pilot reported seeing Iranian drones swarm in ‘jellyfish’ formation | CNN Politics
A US fighter jet pilot rescued by special forces after being shot down over Iran in April described a shocking sight before ejecting from his aircraft: multiple Iranian drones hovering in the air, moving as one, in a formation that resembled a jellyfish, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Russia’s Drone Line Experiment - Foreign Policy Research Institute
The following analysis was originally published on Two Marines, a newsletter on Russia's war in Ukraine, defense technology, and modern warfare, on April 3,
Yoani Sánchez responds to Convoy Nuestra América visiting Cuba: “Go engage in ideological tourism elsewhere.”
The Cuban journalist criticized those who visit the island to defend the government while ignoring the daily crisis faced by the population. The message comes amid the presence in Cuba of leftist activists and politicians linked to the Convoy Nuestra América. The reactions reflect a growing unease among citizens who reject the ideological exploitation of the Cuban crisis.
The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East
A work of true crime following one American family’s search for answers after a 1984 murder in war-torn Beirut, where the Iranian revolution collided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, setting off the geopolitical conflagration that burns to this dayOn January 18, 1984, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by a pair of gunmen outside his office. His murder, in the wake of the bombing of the US Marines’ barracks, Palestinian guerrilla warfare, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was just one more shocking headline in a city ravaged by the chaos of nine years of war. There was no investigation. Four decades later, the question of who killed Malcolm and why still haunts Kerr’s family, including his son Steve, a world-famous basketball player and NBA coach. In The Best Kind of American, Kim Ghattas embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of Kerr’s assassination, weaving together the family’s story with that of Lebanon’s warlords and peacemakers, Hezbollah hostage takers and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and American presidents from Reagan to Trump. She also tells the definitive story of how Beirut came to be the point of origin for the policies and people who went on to shape the Middle East for decades, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was then assassinated in a joint US-Israeli strike in the opening salvo of their 2026 war against the Islamic Republic. With the nuance, clarity, and storytelling that made Black Wave an era-defining work on the Middle East, Ghattas delivers a riveting, deeply human saga—a must-read for understanding why this conflict continues to shape today’s world.
The Bay Area Was Hip-Hop Before There Was Hip-Hop | KQED
In the ’60s and ’70s, the Black Panthers, boogaloo dancers and Sly Stone anticipated the arrival of hip-hop.
What Is a Pig Butchering Scam?
This type of devastating scheme ensnares victims and takes them for all they’re worth—and the threat is only growing.
China to help Cuba with solar energy amid US oil blockade and total power outage
Beijing will ‘intensify its support’ to Havana after around 10.9 million people were left without power amid an ongoing energy crisis.
Putin’s High-Tech Russian Submarines Goad NATO Deep Below the Atlantic
NATO is fighting back against Russia’s submarine threat in cat-and-mouse games reminiscent of the Cold War
The invasive soft coral Xenia umbellata has been confirmed in Cuban waters
Octocoral colonies with unusual morphology were detected in September 2022 and October 2023 in two coastal areas east of Havana, Cuba, and tentatively identified as Unomia stolonifera. U. stolonifera is an invasive octocoral from the Indo-Pacific that was first reported in the Caribbean off Venezuela in the 2000s, where it has spread rapidly, smothering coral reefs and substantially altering benthic communities. After obtaining tissue samples from a Cuban octocoral colony, we re-examined the specimen using molecular barcoding of three mitochondrial regions (16S/ND2, mtMutS, COI) and the nuclear large ribosomal subunit (28S rRNA), and we unequivocally identified it as Xenia umbellata. X. umbellata, a native of the Red Sea, was first identified in southern Puerto Rico in October 2023 and has since been found in various marine ecosystems along the southern coast of the island. The presence of either invasive octocoral species in Cuba or elsewhere in the Caribbean would be of a serious environmental concern due to their documented tolerance, totipotentiality, propagation capacity and significant negative interactions with local benthic fauna. Attempts to eradicate the invasive soft coral colonies from Cuban waters have been initiated with apparent success, helping to control further expansion. The most likely introduction pathway is the accidental or intentional releases from the aquarium trade but transport via ballast water cannot be ruled out. We cannot discount the possibility of independent invasion events from different routes to Puerto Rico and Cuba occurring within a year of each other. Propagation from Cuba to Puerto Rico, or vice versa, which we consider highly improbable, would likely imply that soft coral populations may also have been established on Hispaniola but have remained undetected in the Dominican Republic and Haiti to date.
The Strange Rise and Fall of Russia’s Crowd Sourced Defense Industry
In the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, much that could go wrong did for the Russian military. As one volunteer
Landslide; a ghost story
On March 27, 1964, a converted liberty ship named the SS Chena brought a shipment of supplies to the port of Valdez, Alaska. Valdez, which I need you to know is pronounced “valDEEZ,” sits at the end of a fjord—a narrow inlet carved by a glacier.
My ambition with @tiles.run is to build a decentralized stack that creates an impact as profound as Cuba’s. Learn more about Cuban decentralized internet in this Vox documentary: youtube.com/watch?v=fTTno8D-b2E
This is Cuba's Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify – all without the internet
www.youtube.com
