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Business Weekly Archive: Getting cash into Cuba 

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17/04/2009

Getting cash into Cuba 

BBC World Service - Business Weekly Archive, Getting cash into Cuba

Looks at breaking through the barrier of the Straits of Florida to get cash into Cuba.

Business Weekly looks at breaking through the barrier of the Straits of Florida to get cash into Cuba. The rules on how much money Cuban-Americans can send back to their families are to be relaxed.

Business Weekly looks at breaking down the barrier that is the Straits of Florida to get cash into Cuba.  

The rules governing how much money Cuban-Americans can send back to their families are to be relaxed.  But, perhaps more potent in the long run, American telecoms companies will be allowed to do business with Cuba, and that could well open the way for much more internet and phone use there.

At the moment, there are only about 11 fixed-line phones for every 100 Cubans, and even fewer mobile phones, not that Cubans can afford to use them so high are the rates compared to their incomes.  Only 12 out of every 100 Cubans are connected to the internet, compared with 21 in Mexico and 73 in the US.  

The internet, too, is very expensive to use because it is all via satellite, in the absence of the cable from mainland America that Cuba needs. 

Business Weekly talked to economist, Professor Luis Rene Fernandez, of the University of Havana.

Also the programme discusses whether we are defined by our work?  It's a self-indulgent question, of course.  For the great mass of the people on this planet, work is what you do despite its unpleasantness in order to get payment and, therefore, food and a roof and then, with a bit of luck and elbow-grease, the luxuries of life.  

But for some happy few, work is pleasure, and our jobs give us status and self-worth.  In the last recession, there were people who were made redundant but who continued to leave home each morning dressed for work, even if they only went to the library or the local park.  

We asked one of the world's most popular authors, Alain de Botton, the author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, to reflect on the pleasures and sorrows of work.

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