Reporting by Marc Frank;
Editing by Sandra Maler
World
Cuban ministers reveal details of food, fuel shortages amid economic crisis
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/HZU3F4U4DZNTTDMISGKX4G53OA.jpg "Cuban ministers reveal details of food, fuel shortages amid economic crisis")
[1/3]People check vegetables for sale on a cart in downtown Havana, Cuba, August 14, 2023. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Nov 22 (Reuters) – Senior Cuban officials have over several weeks provided an increasingly dire snapshot of a deepening economic crisis in a series of televised prime-time appearances, revealing the extent of the downturn in unprecedented detail.
Minister after minister have delivered the bad news as the import-dependent Communist-run country weathers a fourth year of crisis, scraping by with a minimum of foreign exchange as output plummets.
Food production, the supply of phamaceuticals and transportation are down by at least 50% since 2018, the top officials said, and continued to decline this year in large part due to chronic fuel shortages and power outages.
Cuba imports most of the food and fuel it consumes, but revenues have plunged following the pandemic, hampered by stiff U.S. sanctions and floundering tourism, once a mainstay of the Caribbean island economy.
“The ministers provided new information revealing just how serious the crisis is and that growth this year is very doubtful,” Cuban economist Omar Everleny said.
Production of pork, rice and beans – all staples on the Cuban dinner plate – are down by more than 80% this year over pre-crisis levels and eggs 50%, Agriculture Minister Ydael Jesus Perez said.
“It has only been possible to acquire 40% of the fuel, 4% of the fertilizer and 20% of the animal feed required,” the minister explained.
Hospitals, short on basic supplies such as sutures, cotton and gauze, have done 30% fewer surgical procedures compared with 2019, according to data shared on state-run TV during a presentation by First Deputy Health Minister Tania Margarita Cruz. Nearly 68% of basic pharmaceuticals are not available or in short supply.
Public transportation, vital in a country where few have vehicles, has also been hobbled by fuel shortages and difficulties in obtaining spare parts.
If before the collapse of former benefactor the Soviet Union “there were 2,500 buses operating in Havana … today there are just 300 compared with 600 four years ago,” Transportation Minister Eduardo Rodríguez Davila said.
The ministers revealed domestic freight traffic continues to decline and is half of what it was in 2019. Industry is operating at 35% of capacity.
Cuba’s government has acknowledged its state-run economy needs reform.
Local authorities, increasingly under pressure as the problems and tension ratchet up, have launched programs to contain hunger, build homes and improve the flow of transportation, but remain hamstrung by a lack of funds, they have said.
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South Korea on Wednesday admitted for the first time that in its rush to send children to American and European homes decades ago, its adoption agencies committed widespread malpractices, including falsifying documents, to make them more adoptable.
The findings by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a government agency, which said children were sent away “like luggage” for profit decades ago, were a hard-won victory for South Korean adoptees abroad. Many adoptees have returned to their birth country in recent years, campaigning tirelessly for South Korea to come to terms with one of the most shameful legacies of its modern history.
Adoption agencies falsified documents to present babies as orphans when they had known parents, the commission acknowledged. When some babies died before they were flown overseas, other babies were sent in their names. The heads of four private adoption agencies were given the power to become legal guardians for the children, signing them away for overseas adoption.
The commission’s report was the government’s first official admission of problems with the country’s adoption practices, including the lack of oversight, even though such malpractice had been exposed in the past. The agency recommended that the state apologize for violating the rights of South Korean adoptees.
South Korea is the source of the world’s largest diaspora of intercountry adoptees, with around 200,000 South Korean children sent abroad since the end of the Korean War in 1953, mostly to the United States and Europe.
In its destitute postwar decades, South Korea promoted overseas adoptions to find homes for orphaned, abandoned or disabled children abroad rather than build a welfare system for them at home. The government left it to the adoption agencies to find and ship children abroad for fees from adoptive families.
“Numerous legal and policy shortcomings emerged,” said Sun-young Park, the chairwoman of the commission. “These violations should never have occurred.”
The findings carry repercussions beyond South Korea, as several receiving countries — including Norway and Denmark — have opened investigations into their international adoptions. The United States, which has received more children from South Korea than any other country, has not done so.
“This is a moment we have fought to achieve: the commission’s decision acknowledges what we adoptees have known for so long — that the deceit, fraud, and issues within the Korean adoption process cannot remain hidden,” said Peter Moller, a South Korean adoptee from Denmark who led an international campaign for the commission to launch an investigation.
The commission identified many cases where the identities and family information of children were “lost, falsified or fabricated” and where children were sent abroad without legal consent.
It cited the case of a baby girl it identified only by her last name, Chang, who was born in Seoul in 1974. Her adoption agency in Seoul knew her mother’s identity. But in the documents it sent to her adoptive family in Denmark, the agency said the girl came from an orphanage.
That agency, Korea Social Service, charged a $1,500 adoption fee, as well as a $400 donation, per child from adoptive families in 1988, the commission said. (South Korea’s per-capita national income that year was $4,571.) Some of these funds were in turn used to secure more children, turning intercountry adoptions into “a profit-driven industry,” the commission said.
South Korea’s export of babies peaked in the 1980s, with as many as 8,837 children shipped abroad in 1985. Children were “sent abroad like luggage,” the commission said, presenting a photo that showed rows of infants and young children strapped to airplane seats.
“While this is not news to us adoptees, it is a significant victory in the sense that we are finally receiving acknowledgment of what has happened to us over the years,” said Anja Pedersen, who was sent to Denmark in 1976 under the name of another girl, who had died while waiting for adoption.
The truth commission does not have the power to prosecute any of the adoption agencies, but the government is required by law to follow its recommendations.
The adoption agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Since the commission launched its investigation in late 2022, some 367 overseas adoptees have asked it to investigate their cases, a majority of them from Denmark. On Wednesday, the commission recognized 56 of them as victims of human rights violations. It was still investigating the other cases.
Mia Lee Sorensen, a South Korean adoptee who was sent to Denmark in 1987, said the commission’s findings provided the “validation” that she had been seeking. When she found her birth parents in South Korea in 2022, they couldn’t believe she was alive. They told her that her mother had passed out during labor and that when she woke up, the clinic told her that the baby had died.
Those whose cases weren’t recognized among the victims on Wednesday expressed hope that the commission would be extended to carry out more investigations.
Mary Bowers, who was adopted by a family in Colorado in 1982, was still waiting for answers to many inconsistencies in her adoption papers.
“This is only the beginning,” Ms. Bowers said.
Houthi militants in Yemen are claiming responsibility for recent attacks against U.S. warships in the Red Sea.
The terror group claimed in a statement published by the Jerusalem Post Tuesday that they had attacked the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and several U.S. warships in the Red Sea.
Early on Wednesday, the Houthis said they had targeted a U.S. vessel and Israeli military locations using drones.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Department of Defense for comment.
TRUMP’S SIGHTS SET ON IRAN AFTER US AIRSTRIKES DECIMATE MORE THAN 30 HOUTHI TARGETS
The Houthis in Yemen claimed responsibility for alleged recent attacks against U.S. warships. (Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The Houthis had claimed earlier this month that they had attacked the Truman and its warship in response to U.S. attacks on Yemen, but offered no evidence to support their claim of retaliation.
The U.S. military had shot down several Houthi drones a short time before the group’s claim.
This comes after several Trump administration officials discussed plans for a forthcoming military strike against the Houthis in a group chat on the encrypted messaging service Signal in which they mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who said he received a request to join the group on March 11 from what appeared to be the president’s National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
The group, called “Houthi PC Small Group,” featured top Trump officials discussing what turned out to be an upcoming attack on the Houthis, as many are criticizing the group chat as a massive breach of national security and note that senior officials are not supposed to discuss detailed military plans outside special secure facilities or protected government communications networks.
TRUMP OFFICIALS ACCIDENTALLY TEXT ATLANTIC JOURNALIST ABOUT MILITARY STRIKES IN APPARENT SECURITY BREACH
The Houthis claimed they had attacked the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and several U.S. warships in the Red Sea. (Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Goldberg reported that 18 people were listed in the group, including Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
The article noted that officials were discussing “war plans,” and Goldberg said he elected not to publish some of the highly sensitive information he saw in the Signal chat, including precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing, because of potential threats to national security and military operations.
The editor also said that Ratcliffe put the name of a CIA undercover agent into the Signal chat.
The Houthis said they had targeted a U.S. vessel and Israeli military locations using drones. (AP)
The White House has confirmed that the group chat “appears to be authentic,” although administration officials, including Hegseth, have sought to downplay concerns and discredit Goldberg as a reporter.
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said Monday.
Hegseth criticized Goldberg as “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the, I don’t know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people on both sides hoax or suckers and losers hoax. So this guy is garbage.”
The claims appear to have sprung from reports that the Nordic countries have started advising citizens to keep a supply of cash at home in the case of a digital banking crisis.
A false narrative spreading online claims that Norway and Sweden are doing away with e-money and are returning to a fully cash-based society.
For example, one post circulating on social media says the countries are now going back to paying in cash because they’ve supposedly realised that it’s the most secure payment method, as digital accounts allow the authorities to block your transactions.
Another popular post says that Sweden is going back to cash because digital payments are potentially a threat to national security.
However, these claims aren’t accurate.
They appear to have their origins in news reports over the past few months that both countries are putting the brakes on their plans to become cashless societies, apparently over fears that fully digital payment systems could leave their financial and state institutions vulnerable to Russian cyber attacks.
For example, The Guardian recently reported that despite the Nordic countries’ ambitions to reduce their reliance on cash, they are now starting to see electronic banking as a potential threat to national security.
An image or link to this report is often shared by social media users alongside a claim that the countries are getting rid of e-money altogether.
As things stand, Norway and Sweden have the lowest amount of cash in circulation as a percentage of GDP in the world, according to recent figures from Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank in Stockholm.
Fellow Nordic country Denmark also ranks quite low, as does the UK, while the eurozone as a whole still has significantly more cash in circulation.
But now, Sweden is encouraging citizens to use cash regularly through a variety of different measures.
Over the past few months, the defence ministry released a brochure entitled “If Crisis of War Comes” in which it advised people to keep a week’s supply of cash at home to remain prepared.
Sveriges Riksbank also said that the country needs to make sure that no one is excluded and that everyone is able to pay in the event of a large-scale crisis or war.
Norway meanwhile recently brought in legislation that fines retailers if they don’t accept cash, and also advised people to keep some cash on hand in case digital payment systems are attacked.
Nevertheless, Sveriges Riksbank told EuroVerify it’s not abandoning digital payments, and that it’s continuing with its plans to bring in an “e-krona” — a digital version of Sweden’s national currency.
Norges Bank, Norway’s central lender, also fully denied the claims that the country wants to move away from an electronic payment system and back to cash.
ADVERTISEMENT“Increased use of electronic payment methods has brought great benefits to society as a whole, banks, and their customers,” a spokesperson for the central bank said. “However, there is still a need for cash. Cash is not an end in itself, but has properties and functions that other payment methods and instruments do not have, and which are important to ensure an efficient and secure payment system.”
There’s no evidence that either country is trying to phase out e-money and return to a 100% cash-based society.
The misleading narrative online appears to feed into fears of digital currencies, in particular the digital euro envisaged by the European Central Bank (ECB).
Opponents of the digital euro say it could damage privacy, financial control and security, and even fully supplant cash.
ADVERTISEMENTFor example, they say that every transaction could be monitored by central authorities, leading to financial surveillance, and that the government would have more control over the currency, opening up the possibility of currency manipulation.
It’s also been suggested that the elderly or those in rural areas could lose out, as they wouldn’t have the same access to digital services as those in more urban areas.
However, the ECB and its president, Christine Lagarde, have repeatedly said that a digital euro would complement cash, not replace it, and that it would be safe, make payments more efficient, and be easy for all to use.
“The use of cash to make payments is declining and the shift towards online shopping and digital payments is accelerating,” the ECB says. “The digital euro would be an electronic form of cash for the digitalised world. It would give consumers the option to use central bank money in a digital format, complementing banknotes and coins.”
ADVERTISEMENT“Like cash, the digital euro would be risk-free, widely accessible, user-friendly and free for basic use,” it continues. “Moreover, the digital euro would strengthen the strategic autonomy and monetary sovereignty of the euro area by boosting the efficiency of the European payments ecosystem as a whole, fostering innovation and increasing its resilience to potential cyberattacks or technical disruptions, such as power outages.”
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