Now for the news ...

Oh, dear … more trouble ahead for foreign correspondents in Havana.

As you may recall, the Castro regime has been cracking down in recent months on those few foreign correspondents on the island who refuse to toe the Communist Party line and insist on filing stories deemed to be “too negative”.

You know the type of stories we are talking about: negative yarns about nonexistent transport services, crumbling buildings, inequalities, the arrest of dissidents …

Now the official propaganda sheet of the regime, Granma, has published an ominous “commentary” accusing foreign correspondents in Havana of being nothing but US lackeys. Of course.

In an article that is depressingly similar to the stuff we used to read in Pravda back in the early 1980s, the newspaper says foreign correspondents are spending too much time interviewing “mercenaries” - the term used by the regime to refer to anyone who opposes the Castro brothers.

Instead, the paper says, the corespondents should be writing more “good news” stories on the great “social achievements” of the Revolution.

Stay tuned.

Photograph: Adalberto Roque (AFP).