Flight BBQ2241, carrying 54 passengers and three crew members, was scheduled to depart for Ignacio Agramonte International Airport in Camagüey, Cuba, at 11:40 a.m., Friday. The plane taxied for departure at 11:22 a.m. but returned to the gate due to an electrical odor detected inside the cabin.
Passengers evacuated the aircraft using emergency slides, and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue units responded to the scene.
Upon arrival, firefighters found no signs of a fire. However, out of caution, all passengers were safely evacuated, and firefighters assessed the situation.
Emergency crews are continuing to investigate the source of the odor, and firefighters are evaluating passengers for any potential injuries.
So far, no fire has been detected.
The island's Communist Armed Forces reported that the detonation shook the small rural community of Melones, in the eastern province of Holguín, 724 km southeast of Havana. The whereabouts of four officers and nine soldiers are unknown.
The island's Armed Forces reported that the detonation shook the small rural community of Melones, in the eastern province of Holguín, 724 km southeast of Havana. The whereabouts of four officers and nine soldiers are unknown.
Thirteen Cuban soldiers are missing after explosions that shook a weapons and ammunition depot in the eastern province of Holguín, the (Communist) Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba reported late Tuesday.
The explosions shook the small rural community of Melones on Tuesday morning, 724 km southeast of Havana. According to the authorities, the explosions were caused by a fire in a construction site.
The Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces reported through its account on the social network Facebook that on Tuesday there were explosions in a work in which war material is stored as a result of a fire.
The first news of the incident in the official Cuban press emerged in the early hours of the morning. They stressed that the event does not offer danger to the community - and that the authorities were investigating the causes of the fire that caused the detonations.
The Cuban Army reported that the missing troops are four officers and nine soldiers, indicating that the families were informed by the Communist Party of Cuba. The Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces pay all possible attention to this situation and the investigations are continuing at the scene of the events, the institution added.
Videos posted on social media showed columns of dark smoke and flames above a grove near Melones.
Soldiers and local police monitored access routes to the site while rescue teams and firefighters worked to put out the flames.
As of early Tuesday, authorities reported that 361 people had been evacuated to a safe location following the explosion.
Edelweiss Air (Edelweiss is a sister carrier of SWISS and a member of the Lufthansa Group) will discontinue its Zurich-Havana route from March 2025 due to declining demand and operational challenges at Havana’s José Martí International Airport.
- Final Flight: The last Zurich-Havana service will operate on 27 February 2025.
- Customer Options: Affected passengers will be contacted for rebooking on alternative routes or offered a full refund.
-
Operational Challenges: An on-site evaluation revealed difficulties in
ensuring reliable long-haul operations at Havana airport. Declining
demand.
Edelweiss will continue weekly flights on
this route until the suspension and regrets any inconvenience caused to
its passengers.
(Source:
Aviation 24)
ociete Generale SA and BNP Paribas SA on Thursday won the dismissal of a lawsuit in New York accusing them of trafficking in assets that Fidel Castro's government seized in 1960 from the former owners of a Cuban bank.
The case had sought damages estimated at several hundred million dollars.
It was brought by 12 heirs, mostly children and grandchildren, of Carlos and Pura Nuñez, who had owned Banco Nuñez before and during the Cuban Revolution.
SocGen and Paribas were accused of evading U.S. sanctions by doing business with Cuba's central bank after it nationalized and absorbed Banco Nuñez and other lenders, resulting in more than $1 billion of profit for the French banks since 2000.
But in Thursday's decision, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil said that despite claims by a SocGen whistleblower, the heirs lacked proof that SocGen funds kept flowing through Banco Nacional de Cuba even after the French bank was warned about it.
The Manhattan judge also said she lacked jurisdiction over BNP Paribas, which according to the heirs "routinely" provided cash in Switzerland to the Cuban central bank and transacted with entities that did business with it.
Vyskocil also said many claims against BNP Paribas were too old.
Lawyers for the heirs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. SocGen and BNP Paribas declined to comment.
The heirs had sued under the Helms-Burton Act, a 1996 U.S. law that allows lawsuits against traffickers in property confiscated by Cuba's government.
Litigation was suspended for 23 years because of international opposition and concern U.S. courts could be flooded by lawsuits.
The Trump administration lifted the suspension in April 2019, to boost pressure on Havana to end Cuban support for Venezuela's socialist/communist Dictator Nicolas Maduro.
(Source: IBT)
In 2024, according to official figures, 93 returns occurred from different countries in the region, with a total of 1,384 Cubans deported.
Archive image of the arrival of a deportation flight from the US to Cuba in 2024
On Friday January 3, the first deportation flight of 2025 arrived in Havana, with 19 Cuban migrants from the Bahamas.
The group of 16 men and 3 women, most of them residents in the province of Ciego de Ávila, arrived through the José Martí International Airport.
Cuba, which is going through an unprecedented mass exodus, received 1,384 deported Cubans in 93 returns from different countries in the region in 2024, according to official figures.
More than 42,000 Cubans in the United States have deportation orders but the Government of Havana refuses to accept them, a Fox report recently revealed that cites reports from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
This figure includes people who have been processed by immigration judges but have not yet been repatriated. The report notes that Mexico could become a starting point for mass deportations planned under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
At the beginning of last December, the governments of the United States and Cuba held a bilateral meeting on migration issues to review, among other issues, the implementation of the Migration Agreements begun in 1984.
At the meeting, according to Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernández de Cossío, the proposal for mass deportations was not addressed.
Deportation flights for Cubans from the United States resumed in April 2023, after they were paralyzed at the end of 2020.