<p><strong>Cuba faces food crisis: </strong>The island nation of Cuba fared well in the early months of the pandemic. A strong public health system and draconian quarantine measures — a police state helps with that — squelched the disease even as much richer nations struggled to contain its spread. Havana even <a href="https://www.gzeromedia.com/hard-numbers-cuban-doctors-abroad-vaccine-promise-chinas-pressure-on-the-eu-high-times-in-california" target="_self">sent its own doctors abroad</a> to help more than a dozen other countries battle the virus. But the economic impact on the island since then has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/world/americas/cuba-economy.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">devastating</a>. Even before the pandemic, the country's badly mismanaged, state-dominated economy was suffering as the Trump administration tightened long-standing sanctions. Turmoil in Venezuela, meanwhile, led to a <a href="https://www.rt.com/business/499667-venezuela-oil-exports-rise/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">decrease in the shipments of cheap oil</a> that the Maduro regime in Caracas sends its ideological pals in Havana. Now, a pandemic-driven collapse in tourism —the island's main source of hard currency — has left the government scrambling to amass enough dollars to purchase the food imports that meet two-thirds of the country's food needs. Cuba is facing its most acute economic crisis since the so-called "special period" of the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's main patron, plunged the island into a harrowing decade of poverty.</p><p><span></span></p><p><strong>US military beefs up Syria presence to counter... Russia? </strong>The Pentagon has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54215915" target="_blank">announced</a> that it will deploy about 100 additional US troops in Syria in order to "ensure the safety" of US-led forces there. The move comes just a few weeks after seven American soldiers were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/world/middleeast/pentagon-russia-syria.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">injured</a> when their convoy was hit by a Russian vehicle (in an open field) in northeastern Syria. Although run-ins between troops from the two countries are not uncommon amid the chaos of the decade-long Syrian civil war, and the Pentagon did not cite Russia as the reason to boost the US military contingent in the country, a senior US official <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/pentagon-sending-troops-syria-after-clashes-between-u-s-russian-n1240319" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">called out</a> recent Russian misbehavior, saying it "got us into a dangerous situation" on the ground. President Trump — who controversially decided to <a href="https://www.gzeromedia.com/who-wins-and-loses-from-trumps-new-syria-policy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self">withdraw</a> US forces from northern Syria a year ago — has pledged to bring home US troops from "endless wars," but he <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/18/politics/us-armored-vehicles-syria/index.html%5C" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">also</a> is fond of keeping US troops in Syria to protect oil fields, he says. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is still keen to assist Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State. All this comes as the White House has yet to respond to the allegations of <a href="https://www.gzeromedia.com/president-trump-is-in-a-nother-russia-bind" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self">Russian bounties</a> to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. If the new deployment is indeed meant to send a signal to the Kremlin, we're watching to see what the response is.</p>
Read Now
Show less