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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Chronology of Castro health crisis

Posted on Thu, Apr. 12, 2007

Chronology of Castro health crisis

2005

• CIA believes Fidel Castro has Parkinson's disease.

2006

• July 31: Castro undergoes surgery for secret ailment.

• Nov. 12: U.S. officials say Castro has cancer and less than 18 months
to live, The Associated Press reports.

• Dec. 13: Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte says
Castro's death is ''months, not years'' away.

• Dec. 26: Castro does not have cancer, says a Spanish surgeon who saw him.

2007

• Jan. 16: Castro is wasting away from life-threatening complications
following multiple surgeries, a Spanish newspaper reports, quoting the
surgeon's colleagues.

• Jan. 30: He appears in a video, looking less thin than in earlier videos.

• Feb. 20: A Cuban official says Castro is ``capable of returning and
surprising us all.''

• Feb. 28: Castro phones Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on live radio.

• March 14: He phones Chávez and Haitian President René Preval during
Chávez's visit to Haiti.

• March 19: Bolivian President Evo Morales says he believes Castro will
return to public life during an April 28-29 summit in Havana with
Morales, Chávez and others.

• March 20: The first photo of Castro outdoors since his surgery is
published in Colombia.

• March 21: Tom Shannon, the top U.S. diplomat on Latin America, while
not directly contradicting previous U.S. assessments that Castro was
close to death, gives a more cautious view. ''I've tried to be very
careful . . . about making it clear that the Cuban state is so opaque
and that his health is treated as a state secret, and guarded in such a
way that it's hard to assess what it is,'' he said.

• March 29: Castro's byline appears on a Granma newspaper article.

• April 4: A second bylined article appears in Granma.

• April 8: As of this day, the 80-year-old Castro has not made a public
appearance for eight months and 13 days.

http://www.miamiherald.com/581/story/71583.html

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