Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba — Cuban law enforcement officials on Friday arrested and detained the leader of a Russian anti-gay extremist group, according to a source in the Russian Federal Security Services, the Investigation Committee of the Russian Federation.

HAVANA — The founder of the anti-gay Russian extremist group “Occupy Pedophilia” has fled Ukraine, where he was hiding to avoid arrest by Russian authorities for a series of criminal homophobic assaults against LGBTQ people, and is now believed by Russian law enforcement to be hiding in Cuba.

Reinaldo Arenas was a Cuban poet, novelist and essayist whose work focused on political and social injustices. He was born into poverty in the Cuban countryside. He wrote his first poems by carving words into tree trunks.

KEY WEST, Fla. — With her lips and tongue swollen, U.S. endurance swimmer Diana Nyad edged closer to Florida on Monday in her attempt to become the first person to swim the treacherous waters from Cuba to Key West without a shark cage.

HAVANA, Cuba — Cuba’s first daughter, Mariela Castro-Espín, on Sunday said the country’s lawmakers will consider legalizing same-sex civil unions this year.

On a sweltering, rainy afternoon in Havana, Ignacio Estrada, an HIV positive gay man, and Wendy Triepa, a transgendered woman, on Saturday became the first gay couple to be legally married in Cuba.

In an interview last week with Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Fidel Castro accepted responsibility for Cuba’s persecution of gays and lesbians decades ago.