MIAMI (AP) — With the first of his three picks for the Florida Supreme Court, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday chose a female Cuban-American appellate judge to become the state’s newest justice.

Barbara Lagoa, for the past 12 years a judge on the 3rd District Court of Appeal in ...

Nearly six decades passed in Cuba with a man named Castro in charge.

As that era draws to a close, the three journalists who have served as AP’s Havana bureau chief since 1999 -- when the bureau, closed for decades, reopened -- offer their perspectives on the Cuba’s ongoing transition, ...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Ali Rodriguez, an icon of Venezuela’s socialist revolution who went on to serve as a diplomat in top government posts, died on Monday.

Rodriguez had served as ambassador to Cuba since 2014. He passed away in Havana and was 81 years old, Venezuela’s state TV ...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In a slap to the United States, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution Thursday condemning the American economic embargo of Cuba and rejected proposed U.S. amendments strongly criticizing the lack of human rights in the island ...

MIAMI (AP) — The United States imposed new sanctions Thursday on Venezuela and Cuba and promised additional penalties against Nicaragua as the Trump administration laid out a hard-line policy toward countries the White House branded a “troika of tyranny.”

National security adviser John ...

GUANTANAMO, Cuba (AP) — While Muslims detained at the U.S. naval station base at Guantanamo Bay bowed their heads in prayer on a recent day, Cuban men in the nearby city of Guantanamo tooted horns and banged on drums as they prepared for a carnival.

The two Guantanamos have been a contrast ...

MIAMI (AP) — Former CIA operative and militant Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who was accused of organizing a string of 1997 Havana hotel bombings and a 1976 Cuban airline bombing that killed 73 people, has died. He was 90.

Posada, who had been diagnosed with throat cancer about five ...

HAVANA (AP) — For half a century Fidel Castro seemed to be everywhere in Cuba — inspecting factories, farms and offices, expounding to the press and zooming to the scenes of natural disasters to direct the minutest details of the response.

His brother Raul was a military man who operated ...

HAVANA (AP) — The Latest on Raul Castro’s handover of Cuba’s presidency (all times local):

6:45 p.m.

Vice President Mike Pence is responding to outgoing Cuban leader Raul Castro, telling him on Twitter that “we’re here standing with the Cuban people.”

Pence tweeted in response ...

MIAMI (AP) — The political transition in Cuba is bringing no joy to exiles in Florida, who say they expect nothing to change after Raul Castro steps down as president.

Cuban-Americans who left the island in waves of migration since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution are skeptical that Cuba’s ...

HAVANA (AP) — Some of the main figures in the Cuban establishment as the government prepares to usher in new leadership:

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RAUL CASTRO

He became acting president in 2006 when his brother Fidel Castro surprised the world and announced his retirement following emergency ...

HAVANA (AP) — The men who have run Cuba for nearly six decades began life in a remote, rural part of the island known as Biran, sons of a wealthy farmer.

Both Fidel and Raul Castro turned to radical politics at a young age as they went to school first in the eastern city of Santiago, later ...

NEW YORK (AP) — Floyd Carter Sr., a Tuskegee Airman who was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, has died at the age of 95, according to the New York Police Department.

In addition to his service with the fabled Tuskegee Airmen, Carter spent 27 years with the NYPD, where his duties included ...

A story claiming that Fidel Castro was the father of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not true. The Canadian government denied it, Cuba has never claimed it and Trudeau’s parents never visited Cuba until several years after Justin Trudeau was born.

The Feb. 1 suicide of Castro’s ...

LIMA, Peru (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday that it’s too early to know if President Donald Trump will attend a regional summit seen as the premier forum for projecting U.S. leadership in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Speaking to journalists in Peru, Tillerson ...

HAVANA (AP) — Fidel Castro’s oldest son was mourned in Cuba on Friday after the unusually public announcement of his suicide following a long depression.

Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart was known as Fidelito, or Little Fidel, for his resemblance to his father. A nuclear physicist by training, ...

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s small but exuberant skateboard movement has carved out a new space for itself, helped by a Cuban-American skate shop owner.

Using small donations from individuals and a handful of charities, Rene Lecour and a group of Cuban skaters poured concrete bowls and ramps in an ...

HAVANA (AP) — The oldest son of late Cuban leader Fidel Castro killed himself on Thursday after months of treatment for depression, state media reported. He was 68.

Official website Cubadebate said Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart had been in a “deeply depressed state.” A brief note read on state ...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The liberal mayor of Wisconsin’s capital who is preparing a challenge to Republican Gov. Scott Walker defended giving a key to the city to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, blasting Walker on Thursday for making the 1975 move an early flashpoint in the race.

Madison ...

This photo gallery highlights some of the top news images made by Associated Press photographers in Latin America and the Caribbean, published in the past week.

Tensions stayed high in Honduras, with no definitive winner declared in the second week since the Central American nation’s ...

HAVANA (AP) — Armando Hart, a historic figure of the Cuban revolution who as education minister in the early 1960s oversaw a huge literacy campaign aimed at ensuring all Cubans could read and write, died Sunday at age 87.

Cuban state media said he died of respiratory failure in ...

MIAMI (AP) — President Donald Trump’s effort to reverse a historic opening between the U.S. and Cuba is raising tensions in South Florida’s exile enclave, where wealthy patrons and institutions have sought to unify Cubans on both sides through unprecedented art exhibits.

Museums and ...