HAVANA, December 9 (Ernesto Roque Cintero, UPECI www.cubanet.org) - A sweep by police and transportation inspectors netted several arrests and a number of confiscated cars Wednesday in the area around the Havana bus station.

Another raid later on that day, this one in the environs of the Parque de la Fraternidad, yielded more arrests.

The enforcement action targeted private operators who pick up passengers, but who don't have a license.

Eyewitness Reinaldo Hernández explained: "It is true that many of the taxi drivers are operating without a license, but the problem is that the government will not grant them, in spite that many of them have applied for them. Some of these people driving are retirees, some even from the Ministry of the Interior itself of the Armed Forces. The government doesn't grant the licenses for self-employment, but neither does it solve the transportation problem."

According to Hernández, bystanders were astonished as they watched the raid unfold. "This is the end, it's as if they were arresting criminals or murderers," Hernández said one of them said. A woman said: "They should be chasing drug dealers and those holding people up in the street." A newspaper vendor explained: "You can't live decently on what you make. The government told us back in October to stop selling magazines and newspapers, but we have to continue... It is abusive; we don't even have the opportunity of doing it legally."

And then there's:

HAVANA, December 8 (Adrián Leiva, Grupo Decoro / www.cubanet.org) - A steep rise in the price of eggs led to loud consumer complaints at a cafeteria in the El Cerro district of Havana.

Eggs, an important staple in the Cuban diet, were selling at 2 pesos each, and many of the customers said they remembered clearly that Commerce Minister Bárbara Castillo had recently said on TV that the imported eggs in question would sell at 1.50 pesos.

Some even accused cafeteria employees of engineering the price increase for personal profit, but the establishment's administrator showed them the order had come from above. The cafeteria is government owned and operated, and its prices are set by the government.

Still, consumers grumbled that the eggs were selling at 1.50 in other areas of the city.

Havana residents are entitled to purchase 8 eggs per month under the government's rationing system at subsidized prices, but most people want more. The eggs in question here are sold at what Cubans call "free" prices (meaning free of government control, although the government sets the price) and, at 24 pesos a dozen, or just under a dollar, are selling for about 10 percent of the average monthly wage in Cuba.

And of course, it's all about the free education in Cuba:

HAVANA, December 8 (Richard Roselló / www.cubanet.org) - Education authorities in Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast of central Cuba, have barred a tourism industry worker from taking English lessons, alleging that she does not belong to government-sponsored political organizations.

Tarahaumara Medina, 21, is a graduate of the hotel and tourism program offered by the government, and is on a waiting list for a job in the industry. Jobs in the tourist sector are usually considered a plum in Cuba, primarily because the workers get tips in hard currencies and other small benefits.

Medina is not a member of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the neighborhood watch organization, or of the Cuban Federation of Women.

Her father, Juan de Dios Medina, once served time in prison for "disobedience" and attempting an "illegal exit from the country," both charges considered political here. He said he has also been denied a job as a custodian.

And, ah yes, the "worker's paradise":

HAVANA, December 8 (Richard Roselló / www.cubanet.org) - Construction workers at a school in Gibara, Holguín province, are complaining about unsafe working conditions and delays in getting their wages.

Arnaldo Pino, a labor activist, said the workers "go almost barefoot, without helmets or gloves."

"For 8 months they have been building the middle school as a component of the "battle of ideas for an educational revolution" and have been promised several times they would be issued a work-kit which is still nowhere to be seen," said Pino.

All four of the preceding news items were written by independent journalists (possibly at risk to themselves) in Cuba for Cubanet.