A student holds up a photograph of Fidel Castro at the memorial of Jose Marti on Revolution Square in Havana, on Wednesday. Cuban youths gathered at the memorial to celebrate the 162nd birthday of national independence hero and poet Marti. Marti, who was forced to live most of his life in exile due to his opposition to Spanish colonial rule, launched an invasion of Cuba for its independence in 1895. He was killed the same year.

Reuters/Havana

Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in good health, appearing skinny but lucid, a Brazilian theologian who met with him told official Cuban media on Wednesday.
Castro, 88, who stepped down from power in 2008, has not been seen in public in a year and his photograph has not appeared in Cuban media since August, giving rise to speculation.
“The commander (Castro) enjoys very good health is in very good spirits,” the writer and activist Carlos Alberto Libanio Christo, better known as Friar Betto, told Cuban state television after meeting Castro in Havana on Tuesday.
The Cuban news agency Prensa Latina quoted Betto as saying that Castro looked thin and took copious notes during their conversation.
Castro was lucid and well-informed on national and international affairs, he said.
Though Castro periodically writes a column, he went silent for several weeks after his younger brother and current president, Raul Castro, and US President Barack Obama announced on December 17 they would restore diplomatic relations.
On January 12, Castro sent a letter to retired Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona to squelch rumours that he had died.
On Monday he finally commented on US relations, offering lukewarm support for the agreement his brother reached with Obama.
“I don’t trust the policy of the United States, nor have I had an exchange with them, but this does not mean ... a rejection of a peaceful solution to conflicts or the dangers of war,” Fidel Castro said in a statement published on the website of Cuba’s Communist Party newspaper Granma.


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