With a new 10 percent federal tax kicking in July 1, there’s a June gloom descending on tanning salons across South Florida. The tax, which is supposed to generate some $2.7 billion over the next 10 years to help cover uninsured Americans, has spooked even the palest Miamians from exposing…

There aren’t many countries where being sentenced to 16 months for having two sacks of cement in your home is considered a victory for human rights. But this is Cuba, and Tuesday’s sentencing of dissident Darsi Ferrer after a reportedly tense two-hour trial, was being hailed as a sign that…

Hardliners opposed to lifting the travel ban to Cuba have been among the staunchest champions of the Communist island’s increasingly vocal dissident movement. But a letter released Thursday by 74 of the Cuba’s most prominent dissenters undermines some of the key arguments made by leaders of Miami’s exile community. “We…

Trouble is brewing at Florida International University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Faculty members charge Dean Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver rarely shows up for work, retaliates against dissenters, allows classes of as many as 200 students to be crammed into a single auditorium, and has failed to raise much-needed funds. “I…

For the second day in a row Wednesday, the Cuban government cracked down on protesters, this time punching and dragging several members of the Women in White denouncing the treatment of dissidents, one of whom died after a hunger strike last month, the Herald reported. The mother of Orlando Zapata…

For the first time since 1972, a Cuban dissident has died after going on a hunger strike. Florida Congressmen in Washington denounced the death Tuesday of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who stopped eating in December, and called on Obama to “stand in solidarity” with dissidents opposing the Castro regime.The U.S. already…

The three dozen “Ladies in White” who took to the streets of Havana on Human Rights Day on Thursday hoped to bring attention to husbands, fathers, and friends serving time in Cuban jails for speaking out. But it was the government that made the strongest case that human rights are…

Pánfilo is back.A Cuban with a major drinking problem, Pánfilo stumbled onto a video interview with a Cuban rapper earlier this year and became an overnight sensation, logging nearly 750,000 hits on YouTube and becoming a hot topic of debate across Miami’s Cuban community.In his latest video appearance — aired…

Baseball agent Juan Ignacio Hernandez Nodar returns to Miami after 13 years in a Cuban prison