Cuba

The U.S. and Cuba built sudden momentum Friday toward easing half a century of hostility as President Obama met Havana's willingness to discuss sensitive topics, including human rights, with a declaration that he was ready for a "new beginning" in relations. One official acknowledged that the Obama administration was caught off guard by Cuban President Raul Castro's willingness to discuss issues long considered off-limits by the communist leadership.

Airline flights. Phone service. Money transfers. Those are among enticing new or expanded business opportunities seen ahead for U.S. companies with Monday's loosening of the U.S. embargo with Cuba. "This is a big deal; it's a significant change in U.S. policy," said former Ambassador David A. Gross, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy and a partner at law firm Wiley Rein.

Talk about a slump. Eleven times Kendry Morales tried to leave his native Cuba. And 11 times he failed. Go 0 for 11 on the baseball field, and you might wind up sitting on the bench for a game. Go 0 for 11 in attempted defections, and you wind up sitting in a Cuban jail for 72 hours. Yet each time he was released, Morales went straight to the beach to try again. Months earlier, after a record-breaking season in the Cuban league, Morales had declared, "Baseball is my life."

The Obama administration announced Monday that it would permit unlimited travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans and lift limits on transfers of money to relatives on the Caribbean island while keeping in place many long-standing U.S. trade restrictions. Obama's moves make good on a campaign promise and seek to take advantage of shifting winds in Havana as Raul Castro, who formally took over from his ailing brother Fidel a year ago, adopts limited reforms.

A bipartisan group of senators predicted Tuesday that Congress was ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba. Removing the travel ban would produce a burst of tourism, create thousands of jobs and generate as much as $1.6 billion in business a year, an independent research group said. A Senate news conference Tuesday and one in the House set for Thursday reflect new attempts to lift the travel ban, a key part of the U.S.

Erika Crenshaw returned to Los Angeles this week from a 10-day trip to Cuba with a message for authorities charged with enforcing a ban on travel to the communist-ruled island: Come and get me. One of 270 U.S. citizens who openly made the illegal journey over the last two weeks, the 30-year-old financial advisor would like the government to fine or charge her, forcing a courtroom showdown on whether the ban is constitutional. Most U.S.

Blending commerce with politics, Orbitz Worldwide has launched a campaign to reverse a law that prohibits travel to Cuba for most U.S. citizens and green-card holders. Through the Open Cuba website, visitors can petition the White House, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and members of Congress to eliminate the Kennedy-era trade and travel restrictions. U.S. airlines and cruise and tour operators are eager to launch travel to the Caribbean's largest island.

Cubans waited hours in line for tickets, packed Havana's cinemas and watched with rapt attention as "The Lives of Others," a chilling account of East German secret-police repression of communism's doubters, arrived in the Cuban capital last month. Was the debut of the Academy Award-winning film two years after its release another signal that Cuba's Communist leaders are open to reform?

California hopes it can carve out an upscale market for such goodies as pistachios, figs, kiwi fruit and wine in Cuba, the land of ration cards and rice and beans at nearly every meal. America's top food-producing state sent its first official agricultural trade mission to Havana last month to show its powdered milk and dairy products, as well as a wide array of fruits, vegetables, nuts, dates, rice and cotton, to the communist government.

Former Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda on Tuesday denied a newspaper's allegations that he had served as a Cuban spy for at least three years beginning in the late 1970s. The allegations appeared Monday in a front-page story in the Mexico City daily El Universal headlined "From Traitor of the Fatherland to Chancellor." "Obviously, the story is categorically false," Castaneda said in a telephone interview. "It's entirely made up."