Page 12 - ARUBA TODAY

A12 WORLD NEWS
Friday 29 March 2019
Haiti opposition calls new protests in bid to oust president

Associated Press eign Affairs Committee,
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) and Rep. Barbara Lee, a
— Haiti's largest opposi- Democrat from California,
tion groups have united in expressed concern about
a campaign to push U.S.- the violence in a letter to
backed President Jovenel Secretary of State Mike
Moise from office with na- Pompeo on Wednesday.
tionwide protests aimed Haiti has moved closer to
at paralyzing the country the U.S. since taking the
starting on Friday. Trump administration's side
Previous protests have in its push to unseat Ven-
led to dozens of deaths in ezuelan President Nicolas
clashes between protesters Maduro. Haiti backed Ven-
and police and left busi- ezuela in regional forums
nesses shut for days, grave- for years and received bil-
ly damaging an economy lions of dollars of subsidized
already struggling with high oil from the socialist gov-
inflation and worsening fuel ernment. That aid has now
shortages. disappeared with Venezu-
Newly named Prime Minis- ela's economic collapse,
ter Jean Michel Lapin said and Haiti recognizes oppo-
Wednesday that he en- sition leader Juan Guaido
couraged peaceful protest In this March 4, 2019 file photo, men accompany a coffin containing the remains a demonstrator as head of state.
but the government would who was killed in a previous protest, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A Haitian Senate investiga-
not allow violence on the Associated Press tion found that some $2 bil-
streets. lion in Venezuelan aid had
"Our brothers are protesting the law," Lapin told report- The Inter-American Com- three weeks of protests and been stolen or misspent,
for a better life, better edu- ers. "People should respect mission on Human Rights related violence. largely under the adminis-
cation, health care and the mandate of those who reported last month that Rep. Andy Levin, a Demo- tration of Moise's predeces-
jobs. We encourage them have been elected in a 26 people had been killed crat from Michigan and sor and political patron, Mi-
to do that and respect vote by the people." and 77 wounded over member of the House For- chael Martelly.q

Cuba, Google move to improve island's connectivity

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba ba's bureaucracy and the
and Google signed a deal obstacles thrown up by the
Thursday moving the island U.S. trade embargo on the
one step closer to having a island.
state-of-the-art connection The embargo does con-
to the modern internet. tain legal exceptions al-
The American internet gi- lowing deals to increase
ant and the Cuban gov- telecommunications ca-
ernment agreed to cre- pacity in Cuba, which
ate a seamless, cost-free makes Google's work pos-
connection between their sible. Cuba already allows
two networks once Cuba is Google to run servers on
able to physically connect the island storing Google
to a new undersea fiber- content such as YouTube
optic cable that would be user information, a mea-
laid sometime in the future. sure that has significantly
With that cable in place, increased the speed of
the so-called peering deal accessing that content for
linking Google's global in- Cubans.
ternet backbone directly The Google-Cuba deal also
to Cuba's local network creates a working group
would allow Cubans to of engineers dedicated to
connect faster to content ironing out the details.
hosted on Google serv- Google's head of Cuba operations, Brett Perlmutter, left, Google's head of Cuba operations, wait Cuba is rapidly leaving be-
ers. It would also reduce to sign a deal with Luis Adolfo Iglesias Reyes, vice president of investments of Etecsa, right, in Ha- hind its status as one of the
the Cuban government's vana, Cuba, Thursday, March 28, 2019. world's least-connected
cost of connecting users to Associated Press nations, but its telecommu-
Google content. nications infrastructure has
Network owners like the Cu- for the benefit of internet has been unable to pro- no immediate effect on been overwhelmed by mil-
ban telecoms monopoly users here in Cuba," Brett vide the island with suffi- the ease of connectivity in lions of new users and ser-
Etecsa currently must pay Perlmutter, the head of cient capacity to support Cuba, and neither Cuban vice suffers from constant
third-party operator fees for Google Cuba, said before its relatively small but grow- nor Google officials provid- interruptions, slowdowns
passing traffic along to sites signing the deal. ing group of internet users, ed any estimated timeline and some of the most ex-
such as YouTube, Google Cuba currently has a sin- for reasons never disclosed for the island's connection pensive rates in the world,
Maps and Google.com. gle fiber-optic connection by either country's socialist to a new fiber-optic cable. particularly for amounts of
"We are excited to have running under the Carib- government. That step could take years data beyond a few giga-
reached this memorandum bean to Venezuela that Thursday's deal will have given the slow pace of Cu- bytes per month.q