U.S. turns off anti-Cuba ticker in Havana

CNN reports: It was the U.S. government's version of the ticker in New York's Times Square, blasting Havana's main seaside strip with anti-Cuba slogans in 5-foot high crimson letters. It symbolized the tit-for-tat diplomatic row between Washington and Havana.

But the ticker at the top of the U.S. interests section in Cuba has gone blank, yet another signal the past half-century of animosity between the two countries is easing.

The sign -- erected in 2006 by the Bush administration and billed as a way to circumvent censorship and, the administration said, offer hope and freedom to Cubans oppressed by a brutal regime -- fueled a propaganda war with Fidel Castro, who referred to the U.S. interests section as "the headquarters of the counterrevolution."

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the ticker was turned off in June because it was not considered "effective" as a means of delivering information to the Cuban people.

The scrolling electronic sign, fitted across 25 windows of the U.S. interests section, ran quotes from American heroes, such as Martin Luther King's "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up," and Abraham Lincoln's "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."

It also streamed news and political messages that blamed Cuba's everyday problems on the communist regime led by Fidel Castro and the island's socialist economy. The island's transportation woes, for example, were the topics of jabs such as, "Some go around in Mercedes, some in (Russian-built) Ladas, but the system forces almost everyone to hitch rides."