Cuba's Fidel Castro: A timeline

November 26, 2016

Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro passed away on Saturday. Here is a look at his life and work in Cuba.

CubaBIRTH DATE: Officially listed as Aug. 13, 1926, in Cuba's Oriente province, although some say Castro was born a year later.

TITLES: Former president of Council of State and Council of Ministers, first secretary of Communist Party of Cuba, commander in chief of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. Before resigning Feb. 19, 2008, he was the world's longest-ruling head of government, and leader of one of world's last five communist states. Had been off public stage for year and half after provisionally ceding power to his brother Raul following emergency intestinal surgery.

EDUCATION: Attended Roman Catholic schools and University of Havana, where he earned law and social science degrees.

FAMILY: Married Mirta Diaz-Balart in 1948; son, Fidel Felix Castro Diaz-Balart, born in 1949; divorced in 1955. Although Castro never confirmed remarrying, reportedly wed former schoolteacher Dalia Soto del Valle and had five sons. Also reportedly had several other children out of wedlock.

QUOTE: “Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!”

July 26, 1953: Launched his revolutionary fight by attacking military barracks in eastern city of Santiago. Was arrested, later freed under amnesty deal. Travelled to Mexico to form a rebel army, and returned to Cuba with followers aboard small yacht. Most were killed or captured, but Castro and a small group escaped into eastern mountain strongholds

Jan. 1, 1959 Castro's rebels take power as dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Cuba.

June 1960 Cuba nationalises U.S.-owned oil refineries after they refuse to process Soviet oil. Nearly all other U.S. businesses expropriated by October.

October 1960 Washington bans exports to Cuba, other than food and medicine.

April 16, 1961 Castro declares Cuba socialist state.

April 17, 1961 Bay of Pigs: CIA-backed Cuban exiles stage failed invasion.

Feb, 7, 1962 Washington bans all Cuban imports.

October 1962 U.S. blockade forces removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba. U.S. President John F. Kennedy agrees privately not to invade Cuba.

March 1968 Castro's government takes over almost all private businesses.

April 1980 Mariel boatlift: Cuba says anyone can leave; some 125,000 Cubans flee.

December 1991 Collapse of Soviet Union devastates Cuban economy.

August 1994 Castro declares he will not stop Cubans trying to leave; some 40,000 take to sea heading for United States.

March 18, 2003 75 Cuban dissidents sentenced to prison.

July 31, 2006 Castro announces has had operation, temporarily cedes power to brother Raul.

Feb. 19, 2008 Castro resigns as president.

July 2010 Castro re-emerges after years in seclusion, visiting a scientific institute, giving a TV interview, talking to academics and even taking in a dolphin show at the aquarium.

April 19, 2011 Castro is replaced by his brother Raul as first secretary of the Communist Party, the last official post he held. The elder Castro made a brief appearance at the Congress, looking frail as a young aide guided him to his seat.

April 19, 2016 Castro delivers a valedictory speech at the Communist Party's seventh Congress, declaring that “soon I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.”

November 25, 2016 Fidel Castro dies

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News Network
June 30,2020

Bengaluru, Jun 30: Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Monday launched 'Skill Connect Forum' and said that the government is committed to provide impetuous to creating jobs by reviving economic and industrial activities.

The 'Skill Connect Forum' portal connects both private entrepreneurs and job seekers on the same platform.

After launching the forum, the Chief Minister said that the portal provides information on jobs available and who needs a job. "Under this forum, an unemployed will be imparted skills and then enabled to get a job," Yediyurappa said.
Besides providing jobs via registration, the portal also provides a skilled pool of people for those looking to hire, he added.

Deputy Chief Minister Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, who is also the Skill Development Minister said that portal will be a boon to the youth seeking jobs and it will avoid unemployment issue to a great extent.

"All these years, there was no information and communication between job seekers and recruiters. The portal will solve that problem," he said.

Narayan said that there was no proper information on skilled workers and job market. Moreover, skill development was not in sync with the market. All these issues have been addressed by the portal, he added.

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Agencies
January 4,2020

Washington D.C: One of the greatest spectacles of modern art is still thriving in the Australian outback as confirmed by satellite imagery of NASA. The Marree Man is a massive geoglyph depicting an aboriginal hunter, that spans over 2.6 miles in the Southern Australian region.

Discovered by a pilot in 1998, its origin still remains a mystery even to this date.

The Marree Man was given a new lease of life in 2016 when a group of people from the neighboring town of Marree plowed its lines to avert its fading due to erosion.

After NASA shared the image of the art-work that was taken in June, the efforts of the good samaritans turned out to be a total success, reported CNN Travel.

The restoration team believes that the refurbished Marree Man would last longer than its original version.

According to NASA, "They [the team] created wind grooves, designed to trap water and encourage the growth of vegetation. They hope that eventually, the man will turn green."

In a previous article, CNN reported that an entrepreneur by the name of Dick Smith took upon himself to unravel the geoglyph's mystery in 2016. His team combed through all the available evidence but couldn't find anything conclusive.

In 2018 he even offered a 5,000 Australian dollar reward for anyone who knows the identity of its creator.

Nobody turned up with an answer but it was speculated that unknown artist lives in Alice Springs or even might be an American.

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Agencies
June 8,2020

Washington DC, Jun 8: Astronomers acting on a hunch have likely resolved a mystery about young, still-forming stars and regions rich in organic molecules closely surrounding some of them.

They used the National Science Foundation's Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to reveal one such region that previously had eluded detection and that revelation answered a longstanding question.

The regions around the young protostars contain complex organic molecules which can further combine into prebiotic molecules that are the first steps on the road to life.

The regions, dubbed "hot corinos" by astronomers, are typically about the size of our solar system and are much warmer than their surroundings, though still quite cold by terrestrial standards.

The first hot corino was discovered in 2003 and only about a dozen have been found so far. Most of these are in binary systems, with two protostars forming simultaneously.

Astronomers have been puzzled by the fact that, in some of these binary systems, they found evidence for a hot corino around one of the protostars but not the other.

"Since the two stars are forming from the same molecular cloud and at the same time, it seemed strange that one would be surrounded by a dense region of complex organic molecules and the other wouldn't," said Cecilia Ceccarelli, of the Institute for Planetary Sciences and Astrophysics at the University of Grenoble (IPAG) in France.

The complex organic molecules were found by detecting specific radio frequencies, called spectral lines, emitted by the molecules. Those characteristic radio frequencies serve as "fingerprints" to identify the chemicals.

The astronomers noted that all the chemicals found in hot corinos had been found by detecting these "fingerprints" at radio frequencies corresponding to wavelengths of only a few millimetres.

"We know that dust blocks those wavelengths, so we decided to look for evidence of these chemicals at longer wavelengths that can easily pass through dust," said Claire Chandler of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and principal investigator on the project.

"It struck us that dust might be what was preventing us from detecting the molecules in one of the twin protostars," added Chandler.

The astronomers used the VLA to observe a pair of protostars called IRAS 4A, in a star-forming region about 1,000 light-years from Earth. They observed the pair at wavelengths of centimetres.

At those wavelengths, they sought radio emissions from methanol, CH3OH (wood alcohol, not for drinking). This was a pair in which one protostar clearly had a hot corino and the other did not, as seen using the much shorter wavelengths.

The result confirmed their hunch. "With the VLA, both protostars showed strong evidence of methanol surrounding them. This means that both protostars have hot corinos. The reason we did not see the one at shorter wavelengths was because of dust," said Marta de Simone, a graduate student at IPAG who led the data analysis for this object.

The astronomers cautioned that while both hot corinos now are known to contain methanol, there still may be some chemical differences between them. That, they said, can be settled by looking for other molecules at wavelengths not obscured by dust.

"This result tells us that using centimetre radio wavelengths is necessary to properly study hot corinos," Claudio Codella of Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory in Florence, Italy, said.

"In the future, planned new telescopes such as the next-generation VLA and SKA, will be very important to understanding these objects," added Codella.

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