HAVANA — Large contingents of Cuban police patrolled the capital of Havana on Monday following protests around the island nation against food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus crisis. Cuba’s president said the demonstrations were stirred up on social media by Cuban-Americans in the United States.
Many young people took part in the Sunday protests in Havana, which disrupted traffic until police moved in after several hours and broke up the march when a few protesters threw rocks.
That demonstration and others in communities around the tightly controlled country were one of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment in decades, and authorities appeared determined to put a stop to it. Internet service was also spotty, possibly indicating an effort to prevent protesters from communicating with each other.
“We’ve seen how the campaign against Cuba was growing on social media in the last weeks,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Monday in a nationally televised appearance in which his entire Cabinet was also present.
“That’s the way it’s done: Try to create inconformity, dissatisfaction by manipulating emotions and feelings,” Díaz-Canel said.
In a statement, President Joe Biden said Cuban protesters were asserting their basic rights.
’'We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” Biden said.
6 dead in South Africa riots over jailing of ex-leader Zuma
JOHANNESBURG — Rioting triggered by the imprisonment of former South African President Jacob Zuma escalated Monday as shopping malls in Johannesburg were looted, major roads were blocked by burning tires and the police and military struggled to contain the violence.
The unrest started last week in KwaZulu-Natal province after Zuma was imprisoned for contempt of court. What began as fairly small-scale blocking of roads in Zuma’s home area intensified and spread to Gauteng, South Africa’s most populous province, including Johannesburg, the country’s largest city.
World hunger hit 15-year high as virus stifled food access
World hunger spiked last year, outpacing population growth and probably reaching the highest since 2005, as the COVID-19 pandemic curbed incomes and access to food, according to the United Nations.
As many as 811 million people — about a 10th of the global population — were undernourished in 2020, the UN said in a report Monday. The agency said it will now take a “tremendous” effort for the world to fulfill a pledge to end hunger by 2030 and reiterated a call to transform food systems.
Pope to spend few more days in Rome hospital after surgery
ROME — Pope Francis will spend a few more days in the hospital following his July 4 intestinal surgery to “optimize” recovery and rehabilitation treatment and therapy, the Vatican said Monday.
The Vatican had originally said Francis could be released from Rome’s Gemelli Polyclinic by the end of last week. In its latest update Monday, the Vatican said he had completed his post-operative treatment but “would remain a few more days to optimize medical and rehabilitation therapy.”
Surgeons removed half of Francis’ colon on July 4 for what doctors said was a severe narrowing of the large intestine.
The 84-year-old appeared for the first time in public since the surgery on Sunday, looking in good form as he delivered his weekly prayer from the 10th-floor hospital balcony. He used the occasion to call for free health care for all.
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