A package of news briefs from the Caribbean

CUBA: Castro calls Chavez in live broadcast on communist-run island

HAVANA (AP) — Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro made his first live appearance on Cuban airwaves Sunday since falling ill 14 months ago, seeming lucid and in good humor as he exchanged praise and jokes with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

The Venezuelan president, bringing his weekly television program to Cuba, sang hymns to Castro and referred to him in almost religious tones as the "father of all revolutionaries" during a videotape he said was made during a four-hour meeting a day earlier.

"I am very touched when you sing about Che," Castro told Chavez during an hour-long phone call to the program dedicated to revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

"There is electricity in the air," Chavez said, obviously pleased with Castro's call to his "Alo, Presidente!" program.

Castro, who has not appeared in public since falling ill in July 2006, made his last live media appearance with a phone call to a Chavez radio broadcast from Venezuela in February. But there was a half-hour delay before that program was broadcast in Cuba.

On the videotape, Chavez also gave Castro a painting he said he made while imprisoned in the early 1990s after leading a failed coup. The dark-colored painting showed the bars of his cell and a night scene beyond, with a full red moon and a guard tower in the distance.

Castro told him he needed to sign his work. "No one knows the merit that this has, that you did this!"

Both on the 17-minute videotape and during the program, the two men seemed mindful that the leadership of Latin America's left is being passed from one generation to another, with Chavez calling Castro "the father of all revolutionaries in this America."

PUERTO RICO: Activists to offer legal aid to owners of dogs, cats thrown off bridge

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Animal welfare groups will help Puerto Rico housing project residents pursue legal action after animal control workers seized their pets and hurled them to their deaths from a bridge, an activist said Sunday.

Puerto Rico-based Friends of the Animals, which rescues and rehabilitates abandoned pets and farm animals, and several other groups will help the grieving pet owners aggressively pursue claims of animal cruelty and civil rights violations, said the organization's director, Elizabeth Kracht.

Residents in low-income housing in the north coast city of Barceloneta said animal control workers threatened to evict them last week for keeping dogs or cats. Days after they reluctantly handed their pets over, dozens of animals seized were found thrown to their deaths from a tall bridge in a nearby town.

"These people were given permission by the government to go to the homes of these residents and to take away their pets," Kracht said.

Barceloneta Mayor Sol Luis Fontanez has said the municipality ordered the removal of the pets, but he blamed the massacre on a contractor hired to take the dogs and cats to a shelter. He said he would cancel the contract with the company and that city lawyers were weighing a possible lawsuit.

Phone calls to the contractor, Animal Control Solutions, went unanswered Sunday.

CAYMAN ISLANDS: Destructive mealybug found in British Caribbean dependency

GEORGETOWN, Cayman Islands (AP) — Agriculture officials reported a new infestation of an island-hopping insect that damaged crops and ornamental plants on the British dependency's main island last year.

Alfred Benjamin, the islands' chief agricultural officer, said Saturday that a team is trying to determine the extent of the pink hibiscus mealybug infestation discovered in recent days on the western tip of Cayman Brac, the westernmost island in the three-island Caribbean chain.

Officials plan to combat the pest with tiny parasitic wasps that were used to fight an infestation in fruit trees on the main island of Grand Cayman in June 2006, Benjamin said in a statement.

"We have already alerted our partners overseas that we will need additional supplies of the parasitic wasps," he said.

The wasps, which are almost invisible to the naked eye, lay eggs inside mealybugs. Once hatched, the larvae feed on the pest internally, causing it to die. The wasps pose no threat to humans.

Benjamin said the pink hibiscus mealybug, which feeds on the sap, roots and leaves of plants, likely piggybacked its way to Cayman Brac on a traveler. He said it has not spread to Little Cayman, which is located between Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac.

Mealybugs have destroyed millions of dollars (euros) in crops and ornamental plants across the Caribbean since they were first reported in the Western Hemisphere in 1994, in Grenada.

CUBA: Driver of bus blamed in collision with train that left 29 dead, 75 injured

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban authorities arrested the driver of a bus that collided with a train, an accident that killed 29 people and injured 75 others, after determining he stopped his vehicle on the tracks as the locomotive approached, state media said Sunday.

Cuba's official National Information Agency reported that a commission of transportation experts determined that bus driver Manuel Taurino Chavez Pena stopped the bus on the tracks for unknown reasons around midday Oct. 6 shortly before it was slammed by the locomotive.

The report said Chavez Pena was detained and "awaiting the correspondent legal process," but did not mention whether or how seriously he was injured.

Twenty-seven of the injured remained hospitalized over the weekend, including two in critical condition, the agency report said.

Transportation Minister Jorge Luis Sierra said that authorities are studying ways to improve security at railroad crossings, including placement of protective guards at all of them.

The accident occurred at a crossing near a bridge in Yara municipality in the province of Granma, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Havana.

The Communist Youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde reported Sunday that the train signaled its approach as required, but was unable to stop in time to avoid the bus, which was dragged to the bridge, where it fell.

Juventud Rebelde said 57 people were killed in a similar collision between a bus and a train in the eastern province of Holguin in 1997.

GUYANA: US doctor helps country log first ever open-heart surgery

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — An American doctor has helped a team of local physicians perform the first open-heart surgery in Guyana's history, according to the impoverished country's top health official.

"This is a milestone for medicine in Guyana," Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy said late Saturday, shortly after the surgeons successfully completed the four-hour operation at a public hospital in the capital of Georgetown.

Dr. Gary Stephens, of the nonprofit Maimonides Medical Center in New York, trained about a dozen local doctors and nurses during a double bypass procedure on a 64-year-old Guyanese man.

Ramsammy said more open-heart surgeries were planned in coming days in the South American country, one of the least developed in the region.

JAMAICA: Reggae legend Peter Tosh to be honored at symposium in Caribbean homeland

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — The work of late reggae legend Peter Tosh will be the subject of a one-day symposium at a Jamaican university campus in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of his death.

Tuesday's symposium at the University of the West Indies' campus in Kingston will feature a tribute from drummer Sly Dunbar and other reggae musicians who worked with Tosh as well as a lecture by Omar Davies, Jamaica's former finance minister.

The Jamaican musician, who was killed by gunmen who broke into his home in 1987, was a founding member of the Wailers group along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer.

Tosh co-wrote some of reggae's best-known anthems, including "Get Up, Stand Up." Although he was posthumously awarded a Grammy for his album "No Nuclear War," he never achieved the international fame of Marley, who died in 1981.

"Peter has not gotten the level of recognition someone of his stature should have," former manager Herbie Miller said Sunday.