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WORLD

Cuban festival draws cigar aficionados the world over

For some Americans, Cuba’s annual cigar festival is an enticing - forbidden fruit for which they risk hefty fines for violating the U.S. ban on travel to the island.

“We don’t do anything illegal against the government policies,” said Prabpeet Singh, 45, a heart surgeon and Stanford University professor from San Jose, Calif. “But I think to visit any country is the basic right of a human being. We are not taking in any contraband. We just enjoy and finish the cigars here and we go back.”

Cuba’s 9th annual Habanos Festival, which ended Friday night with a lavish $500-a-head banquet, drew more than 1,000 aficionados from more than 40 countries for a sampling of new product lines, tours of factories where the cigars are hand rolled and visits to tobacco plantations hours outside Havana.

No participants were more tight-lipped than the dozens of Americans who slipped onto the island illegally through Canada or Mexico for the five-day celebration of the world’s finest cigars. Under Washington’s 43-year-old trade embargo, U.S. citizens and residents are prohibited from traveling to the island in an attempt to stem the flow of dollars to the communist government.

Singh, a cardiothoracic surgeon who traveled here with six other doctors, said he has been smoking Cuban cigars for 27 years - longer than he has been poking into the chests of his patients. He insisted he was not breaking the law by spending money in Cuba, though admission to all festival events alone was nearly $1,300.

“I don’t see it as a violation,” he said, echoing other Americans at the festival. “It’s a personal right.”

While Bush administration officials have remained adamant about their commitment to the embargo and travel ban, many Americans (including members of Congress) have called for easing restrictions. Last week, Sen. Mike Enzi, a Republican from Wyoming, cosponsored a bill that would remove all restrictions for Americans traveling to Cuba. Nine other senators cosponsored the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act.

Habanos S.A., is a joint venture between the Cuban government and the Spanish-French tobacco firm Altadis. A third of the 400 million hand-rolled cigars sold in the world each year are Habanos, but they are banned in the U.S. under the trade sanctions.

Javier Terres, a vice president, said no figures were available on how many Cuban cigars are consumed or sold illegally every year in the United States. While half of the world’s cigars are smoked in the U.S., Cuba has 75 percent of the premium cigar market. Sales of Habanos’ premium hand-rolled cigars rose eight percent to $370 million last year, despite public smoking bans around the world, officials said.

The festival included bus trips to one of the island’s main tobacco-growing regions in the western province of Pinar del Rio.

Jesus Menendez, 39 and a father of two, has been working in one of the plantations for four years. When asked how much he earned, his boss, standing nearby, quickly interrupted.

“Nine-hundred pesos,” the boss said, or about $40, nearly four times the salary for most state workers.

“Nine-hundred pesos,” Menendez repeated. “But I can’t wait until the end of the month to get paid. I ask for an advance every couple of days. Times are tough.”

Asked if he ever smoked a Habanos, Menendez smiled. “Never tasted one. I can’t. That’s for the people over there,” he said, pointing to the foreigners taking the tour.

NATIONAL

Driver in street-race accident gets work-release

A lot has happened to Josh Guynn since the morning nearly two years ago when he lost control of his Volkswagen GTI during a street race and crashed into a tree, killing his best friend, Wayne Dietz.

Guynn was charged with vehicular homicide. Dietz’s family has forgiven him, while some angry friends have abandoned him.

Just five months after the crash, Guynn was ticketed for speeding 87 mph in a 70 mph zone on Interstate 90 and lost his license.

And last month, as a judge prepared to sentence him in the death of Dietz, he began speaking to high-school students about his experience, urging them not to get sucked into illegal street racing.

On Friday, King County Superior Court Judge James Cayce weighed the sincerity of Guynn’s actions since the fatal April 2005 crash and the severity of his crime, to which Guynn pleaded guilty.

In the end, Guynn, 20, who could have gone to prison for more than two years, was given a second chance.

Cayce agreed to a rare exceptional sentence below the standard range, allowing Guynn to move into a residential work-release program in Kitsap County, Wash., for 12 months, where he will be allowed to work at his father’s plumbing business and continue to talk to students.

He was also ordered to be on probation after his release, pay restitution and complete 240 hours of community service.

LOCAL / BSU

Blueprint for a community college in Nampa drafted

A newly-formed Treasure Valley coalition has drafted a community college district blueprint they hope will put a two-year campus in Nampa by this fall or early next year.

Last month, the group led by the Nampa Chamber of Commerce initiated a petition drive to collect 1,000 signatures from voters in at least four school districts in Canyon and Ada counties for a proposed community college district.

This past week, the coalition announced it had surpassed its goal by double in Canyon County alone, with another 500 to 1,000 signatures gathered in neighboring Ada County. The proposed community college district would encompass both counties and be called the College of Western Idaho District.

“There’s a huge momentum building,” Nampa Chamber of Commerce CEO Georgia Bowman-Gunstream said Thursday. “We anticipate a lot more petitions coming in between now and when we take those to file them.”

Organizers plan to take the petitions to Canyon County Commissioners on Wednesday in hopes of putting the proposed community college district to voters as early as May 22.

“There’s already been a discussion with them,” Bowman-Gunstream said of Canyon County commissioners.

“They’re supportive and overall the three of them are not going to stop us from moving forward. They’ll comply and do what needs to be done.”

Jason Lehosit, Community College YES! campaign manager, called the latest drive for a two-year school in the Treasure Valley “a wonderful plan” and a “Canyon County-driven effort.”

“The citizens of the Treasure Valley — Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Star, Caldwell, Parma — have all come together to help build this,” Lehosit said.

Community College YES! kicked off its campaign Thursday to put a community college measure on the May ballot and to raise operating costs.

  “I think a big part of what’s making the difference is that we’re no longer a small rural state,” Bowman-Gunstream said.

“We’ve grown to the extent that we have a lot of people not from here, living here that have moved in from places where there are community colleges and they ask why don’t we have one.”

She added that a community college in the Treasure Valley would meet the demands for additional and affordable education and provide an alternative to students who want to stick close to their homes and family.

Initial plans call for a community college serving 3,500 students at the Boise State University-West campus and the university’s Canyon County center, both in Nampa.

Dennis Griffin, Boise State-West’s executive director, said the Nampa campus is still being considered as the home for the community college.

“Boise State wants to do everything it possibly can to cooperate to make that happen,” he said, “to include the availability of land for the expansion of the campus, use of both the West campus building and the Canyon County center.”

Another plan would call for a separate community college at the Nampa site with a proposed $71 million donation from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation.

Under that plan, the community college would be built on a 150-acre parcel at Boise State-West, and the school’s Selland College of Applied Technology would relocate to the Nampa campus.

Boise State views a two-year college as a viable option for students who cannot afford tuition costs or fail to meet the school’s high admissions standards, Griffin said.

“Every year, Boise State has close to a thousand students who do not meet the admissions requirements and are turned away, and we fully recognize they need someplace to go,” Griffin said.

Courtesy Idaho Press-Tribune

WHAT THE ?

You’re going to have to do better than that - or else!

Police were called to a home in Lulea, Sweden, in response to a call that a woman stabbed her boyfriend. The man told police that his girlfriend knifed him after they had sexual relations, and she found his efforts to be “disappointing.”

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