Elian Gonzalez, the child at the center of a highly emotional custody dispute between the US and Cuba in 2000, has joined the youth wing of the Communist Party of Cuba, the party newspaper Granma reported Monday.

Sports goods maker adidas has further strengthened its role as Europe's leading supplier of football (soccer) equipment in 2007, its CEO said in Vienna on Monday.

Honda Motor Co. on Monday began producing a next-generation fuel cell vehicle that it hopes will propel zero-emission cars running on hydrogen closer to the mainstream. Japanese automakers are in a race to produce fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly vehicles amid soaring prices at the pump. Honda said it would set up the first network of sales dealers in the United States for fuel cell vehicles.

For more than two decades, the annual Hispanic Business 500 directory has served as a barometer of the U.S. Hispanic economy. A purchase of the 2007 directory provides the top 500 Hispanic-owned companies list in Excel format including: CEO names; company addresses and telephone numbers; e-mail addresses for 375 companies and Web addresses for 430 companies; and company revenue and employees numbers for 2005 and 2006.

HispanTelligence estimates that existing trends support the projections of at least 2.2 million Hispanic-owned businesses generating close to 388.7 Billion Dollars in revenues in 2008 according to a new report released by Hispantelligence. With a compound annual growth rate of 9.1 percent over the last 5 years, Hispanic-owned businesses are increasingly impacting the overall U.S. Economy.

For the second year in a row, R. Marcelo Claure, the chairman, CEO, and president, has taken his company, Brightstar Corp. to the top of the Hispanic Business 500 companies. He's done so with verve, vision, and the ability to penetrate new markets. Despite his globetrotting schedule, we caught up with Mr. Claure this spring for a surprisingly forthright interview. He not only shared his business philosophies, he also gave us a glimpse of his early experiences that set the course for his remarkable success. Our discussion spanned a variety of issues and topics.

Miss out on this year's Hispanic Business 500 -- or want to nominate another company as a candidate to our list? Or do you just want to know our methodology in selecting the list? Click through!

The Hispanic Business 500 have endured turbulent economic times before, but market conditions proved especially bearish for U.S. Hispanic companies in 2007. Revenues for this year's HB 500 slid backwards 0.6 percent to $36.1 billion. It is the first such dip since 2002, and only the third in the directory's 26-year history. It should come as no surprise that more than 41 percent of CEOs cited market conditions as the top barriers to growth in 2007.