The eldest son of late Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, committed suicide on Thursday aged 68 after being treated for months for depression, Cuban state-run media reported.
The nuclear scientist, also known as "Fidelito", or Little Fidel, because of how much he looked like his father, had initially been hospitalised and then continued treatment as an outpatient.
"Castro Diaz-Balart, who had been attended by a group of doctors for several months due to a state of profound depression, committed suicide this morning," Cubadebate website said.
Fidelito, who had the highest public profile of all Castro's children, was born in 1949 out of his brief marriage to Mirta Diaz-Balart before he went on to topple a US-backed dictator and build a communist-run state on the doorstep of the United States during the Cold War.
Through his mother, Castro Diaz-Balart was the cousin of some of Castro's most bitter enemies in the Cuban American exile community, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart and former US congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart.
He was also the subject of a dramatic custody dispute between the two families as a child.
Cuba scholars say his mother took him with her to the United States when he was five after announcing she wanted a divorce from Castro, while he was imprisoned for an attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago.
Castro was able to bring his son back to Cuba after the 1959 revolution.
A multilingual nuclear physicist who studied in the former Soviet Union, Castro Diaz-Balart was head of Cuba's national nuclear programme from 1980 to 1992, and spearheaded the development of a nuclear plant on the Caribbean's largest island until his father fired him.
Cuba halted its plant plans that same year because of a lack of funding after the collapse of Cuba's trade and aid ties with the ex-Soviet bloc and Castro Diaz-Balart largely disappeared from public view, appearing only at the occasional scientific conference or diplomatic event.
He had been working for his uncle, President Raul Castro, as a scientific counsellor to the Cuban Council of State and vice president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences at the time of his death.
A former British ambassador to Cuba, Paul Hare, who lectures at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, said Castro Diaz-Balart had seemed "thoughtful, rather curious about the world beyond Cuba" at a dinner in Boston two years ago.
"But he seemed a bit weary about having to be a Castro, rather than himself," Mr Hare said.
Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba expert at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, said Castro Diaz-Balart had provided him with invaluable help in the 1990s while he was writing a book on Cuba's nuclear programme.
In 2000 they met again at a conference in Moscow and Castro Diaz-Balart worked "the room full of international nonproliferation experts, diplomats and journalists with aplomb, speaking no less than four languages - Spanish, English, Russian and French".
Mr Benjamin-Alvarado said he suspected Castro Diaz-Balart's title as scientific adviser was largely ceremonial as his views on energy development were not incorporated into national policies.
"He had written extensively on Cuba’s need for developing renewable energy resources," Mr Benjamin-Alvarado said. "And yet almost all efforts by the Cuban government were geared to maintaining the status quo of oil dependency."
"I imagine that was disappointing for him."
Castro Diaz-Balart's death came just over a year after that of his father on November 25, 2016, aged 90.
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Important questions to consider
1. Where on the plane does my pet travel?
There are different types of travel available for pets:
- Manifest cargo
- Excess luggage in the hold
- Excess luggage in the cabin
Each option is safe. The feasibility of each option is based on the size and breed of your pet, the airline they are traveling on and country they are travelling to.
2. What is the difference between my pet traveling as manifest cargo or as excess luggage?
If traveling as manifest cargo, your pet is traveling in the front hold of the plane and can travel with or without you being on the same plane. The cost of your pets travel is based on volumetric weight, in other words, the size of their travel crate.
If traveling as excess luggage, your pet will be in the rear hold of the plane and must be traveling under the ticket of a human passenger. The cost of your pets travel is based on the actual (combined) weight of your pet in their crate.
3. What happens when my pet arrives in the country they are traveling to?
As soon as the flight arrives, your pet will be taken from the plane straight to the airport terminal.
If your pet is traveling as excess luggage, they will taken to the oversized luggage area in the arrival hall. Once you clear passport control, you will be able to collect them at the same time as your normal luggage. As you exit the airport via the ‘something to declare’ customs channel you will be asked to present your pets travel paperwork to the customs official and / or the vet on duty.
If your pet is traveling as manifest cargo, they will be taken to the Animal Reception Centre. There, their documentation will be reviewed by the staff of the ARC to ensure all is in order. At the same time, relevant customs formalities will be completed by staff based at the arriving airport.
4. How long does the travel paperwork and other travel preparations take?
This depends entirely on the location that your pet is traveling to. Your pet relocation compnay will provide you with an accurate timeline of how long the relevant preparations will take and at what point in the process the various steps must be taken.
In some cases they can get your pet ‘travel ready’ in a few days. In others it can be up to six months or more.
5. What vaccinations does my pet need to travel?
Regardless of where your pet is traveling, they will need certain vaccinations. The exact vaccinations they need are entirely dependent on the location they are traveling to. The one vaccination that is mandatory for every country your pet may travel to is a rabies vaccination.
Other vaccinations may also be necessary. These will be advised to you as relevant. In every situation, it is essential to keep your vaccinations current and to not miss a due date, even by one day. To do so could severely hinder your pets travel plans.
Source: Pawsome Pets UAE
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Rohit Sharma (captain), Shikhar Dhawan (vice-captain), KL Rahul, Suresh Raina, Manish Pandey, Dinesh Karthik (wicketkeeper), Deepak Hooda, Washington Sundar, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Vijay Shankar, Shardul Thakur, Jaydev Unadkat, Mohammad Siraj and Rishabh Pant (wicketkeeper)
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Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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