The Cuban government has extended to state-run enterprises the application of taxes that already regulated other economic activities and sectors.

The news spread like wildfire through the streets, the press and the Internet. It unleashed concerns among Cubans, motivated extensive radio and television programmes, public forums with government officials and also served as gossip for the opposition when it actually is something common in any world economy. But the decision of applying in Cuba a special tax for social security and on personal income to workers in state-run enterprises is not a novelty.

A shop looks in Cuba toward the expanding private sector to reduce the pressures that the latter has on the retail market.

When a new shop of the Cimex Corporation opened its doors in late July it offered an option for the private sector in Cuba, but it has left pending an old demand. Created in the Miramar district of Havana, with the name of Zona +, the installation placed at the reach of consumers an unknown offer, which alleviates commercial work though it does not satisfy the request for a wholesale market for cooperatives and private workers.

Is the novel by Cuban José Lezama Lima read today, half a century after it appeared, as it was read then?

It was 1966 and the appearance of the only novel published while Cuban José Lezama Lima was alive unleashed on the island one of the scandals most remembered by those who lived during that homophobic period and when an epic literature prevailed that had nothing to do with the aesthetic propositions of he who is today a canonical writer of Spanish-American literature.

The leisure industry is advancing this year with agreements, flights and growth, confirming it as the most dynamic sector of the Cuban economy.

Tourism is confirming that it is the sector of hope, in a year of hurdles and threats to the general growth of the Cuban economy. The reception of visitors is climbing month by month in a sustained way, with investments to expand the accommodations capacity and the resumption of regular flights from the United States.