HAVANA (AP) — Caribbean correspondent Dánica Coto returned to Cuba in late January, more than three years after her last visit to the island.
The landscape and lives in Cuba are now very different, and more changes are anticipated since the fallout of the U.S. attack on Venezuela, Cuba’s strongest ally, has yet to be fully felt.
This is an interview of Coto with Associated Press editor Laura Martínez.
I’m struck by the amount of garbage piling up in corners at popular tourist spots, and by the occasional Cuban wearing neatly pressed clothes rummaging through it. I observed one clean-cut man step into a pile of soggy rubbish, grab a small plastic container, fish for its lid and walk away with his find.
Fuel is hard to come by, and equipment including tractors and garbage trucks are breaking down, with crews unable to find the necessary spare parts.
I’ve also noticed that Havana’s beautiful architecture is crumbling more than ever. Once bright facades ranging from baroque to art nouveau are slowly being reduced to rubble in some areas.
At nighttime, the skyline is now largely black, with chronic outages, programmed and non-programmed, sinking the capital and beyond into darkness.
Alternatively, I was pleasantly surprised to see a handful of dog owners in Havana. I saw Cubans waking up early to walk well-cared for dogs, with the smaller ones sporting T-shirts to protect them from a cold snap in late January.
It’s the smallest things that reveal the most. The upgraded hotel where I’m staying cuts flimsy napkins in half to save resources and occasionally offers very small dabs of butter when it’s available.
Meanwhile, it’s not uncommon for office buildings in Havana to lack toilet paper and for water to be cut by mid-afternoon.
A growing number of Cubans are turning to firewood and charcoal so they can cook, because not only are power outages common, but natural gas is not always available, and many cannot afford solar panels.
Fuel and natural gas are so scarce sometimes that a group of people living in the city have set up a makeshift fireplace outside their building to cook food.
I’ve also seen people scramble to rearrange schedules so they can spend several hours in line to buy gasoline. I’ve also observed people crowded outside banks, with Cubans telling me that there’s a cash deficit.
Cubans also have told me that they’ve seen an increase in disruption in communications, making it harder to call people or browse online.
They’re very much in self-sufficient mode. Cubans have a strong spirit, and many lived through the so-called Special Period, an economic depression that struck in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That period eased when Venezuela, under former President Hugo Chávez, became an ally.
Even before the U.S. attacked Venezuela, Cuba was struggling with severe blackouts, soaring prices and scarcity of basic goods. Experts say that a disruption in oil shipments from Venezuela and now Mexico could unleash a potentially catastrophic crisis, especially since U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba.
Overall, many Cubans I’ve interviewed have shrugged off what could be impending doom, with experts saying that the Trump administration aims to spark a popular uprising in hopes that a new government will be established. But Cubans have said they will not be manipulated by outside forces. Meanwhile, some are preparing even though they doubt an invasion is looming. Those who can afford it are installing solar panels, while others are growing their own produce.
It’s hard to say. The U.S. government is stepping up its rhetoric, with Trump asserting that Cuba is failing while U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau recently claimed that the “Castro regime is tottering…after 67 years of a failed revolution.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has said that the U.S. government seeks “the opportunity for a change in dynamic. That’s a country that’s been backward. It has no functional economy.”
Under Trump, the government once again designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Meanwhile, the Cuban government has not budged or changed its defiant speech. Cubans are going about their business as they decry the U.S. embargo and try to find ways to subsist.
The slogan “Patria o muerte, venceremos!” (Homeland or death, we will overcome!) still rings clear in Cuba.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Drivers wait in line to fill up at a gas station in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
People walk next to trash on a street in Havana, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
Tourists travel in a classic American car along the Malecon littered with sargassum seaweed, in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors can’t seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a judge ruled Friday, foiling the Trump administration’s bid to see him executed for what it called a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding that it was technically flawed. She wrote that she did so to “foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury" as it weighs whether to convict Mangione.
Garnett also dismissed a firearm charge but left in place stalking charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. In order to seek the death penalty, prosecutors needed to show that Mangione killed Thompson while committing another "crime of violence." Stalking does not fit that definition, Garnett wrote in her opinion, citing case law and legal precedents.
The government could try to appeal. A message seeking comment was left for a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, which is prosecuting the federal case.
Garnett acknowledged that the decision “may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law." But, she said, it reflected her "committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case. The law must the Court’s only concern.”
Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to federal and state murder charges. The state charges also carry the possibility of life in prison.
He was due in court at later Friday for a conference in the case. His lawyers didn't immediately comment on the decision but might do so during the conference or afterward.
Jury selection in the federal case is scheduled to begin Sept. 8, followed by opening statements and testimony beginning on Oct. 13. The state trial's date hasn’t been set yet. On Wednesday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office sent a letter urging the judge in that case to schedule a July 1 trial date.
Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.
Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.
Following through on Trump’s campaign promise to vigorously pursue capital punishment, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors last April to seek the death penalty against Mangione.
It was the first time the Justice Department was seeking to bring the death penalty in President Donald Trump’s second term. He returned to office a year ago with a vow to resume federal executions after they were halted under his predecessor, President Joe Biden.
Garnett, a Biden appointee, ruled after a flurry of court filings in the prosecution and defense in recent months. She held oral arguments on the matter earlier this month.
In addition to seeking to have the death penalty thrown out on the grounds Garnett cited, Mangione’s lawyers argued that Bondi’s announcement flouted long-established Justice Department protocols and showed the decision was “based on politics, not merit.”
They said her remarks, which were followed by posts to her Instagram account and a TV appearance, “indelibly prejudiced” the grand jury process that resulted in his indictment a few weeks later.
Prosecutors urged Garnett to keep the death penalty on the table, arguing that the charges allowing for such punishment were legally sound and that Bondi’s remarks weren’t prejudicial, as “pretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect.”
Rather than dismissing the case outright or barring the government from seeking the death penalty, prosecutors argued, the defense’s concerns can best be alleviated by carefully questioning prospective jurors about their knowledge of the case and ensuring Mangione’s rights are respected at trial.
“What the defendant recasts as a constitutional crisis is merely a repackaging of arguments” rejected in previous cases, prosecutors said. “None warrants dismissal of the indictment or categorical preclusion of a congressionally authorized punishment.”
The defense has also sought to suppress certain evidence collected during his arrest, including a 9 mm handgun and a notebook in which authorities say Mangione described his intent to “wack” an insurance executive.
Mangione’s lawyers contend that Altoona police illegally searched his backpack because they hadn't yet obtained a warrant. Prosecutors say the search was legal. Officers were following protocols, which require promptly searching a suspect’s property for dangerous items, and later obtained a warrant, prosecutors said.
Garnett has yet to rule on that request.
FILE - Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court for an evidence hearing, Dec. 18, 2025, in New York. (Shannon Stapleton/Pool Photo via AP, File)
