Embargoes

Cuban Americans' travel to the communist island nation just got easier under guidelines issued last week by the Obama administration. The Treasury Department confirmed that Cuban Americans may visit extended relatives as well as close family members once a year and spend as much as $179 a day without fear of prosecution, effective immediately. The guidelines signal a trend toward looser enforcement of the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

Europe slapped a boycott on Iranian oil Monday, signaling that the Islamic Republic's second-largest market is likely to dry up as part of a U.S.-led sanctions campaign that has already inflicted serious damage on Iran's economy and sharply increased tensions. The value of Iran's currency is falling dramatically, prices are rising and Iranians are stocking up on supplies in fear of worse to come. Iran, which receives an estimated 70% of its revenue from oil sales, has threatened to retaliate by choking off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz at the southern end of the Persian Gulf.

If Christopher J. Dodd is elected president, he will end a decades-old trade embargo with Cuba and lift travel restrictions to the communist island, the Democratic candidate pledged Saturday. He'll also open an embassy in Havana and shut down TV Marti, a U.S. government-run station that has broadcast to Cuba for 17 years, said Sen. Dodd of Connecticut. "Other than the war in Iraq, no other American policy is more broadly unpopular internationally" than U.S. policy on Cuba, Dodd.

As trade embargoes go, this one probably won't make it into the history books. It won't have much impact on the economy or create shortages of critical goods. But a decision by the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture to ban all sales of palm fronds to Israel this year was, at the least, not very neighborly. Wednesday at sundown marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, an autumn celebration of God's providence and bounty. Part of the celebration involves gathering four plants, including a date palm branch or lulav, which is used during a prayer and other parts of a religious service.

The Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia, aiming to press President Slobodan Milosevic to make concessions to ethnic Albanians in his country's restive Kosovo province. China abstained from the vote, saying the resolution would not help negotiations on giving Kosovo's Albanians more autonomy.

Vietnam became the latest country to flout the U.N. air embargo on Iraq when a Vietnamese plane carrying Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Cong Tan landed at Baghdad airport, the Iraqi News Agency said. The flight, the first from Hanoi to Baghdad since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, brought a delegation that included the foreign, trade and industry ministers. "The visit aims to hold talks with senior Iraqi officials to discuss means of developing relations between the two countries," Tan said.

The Palestinian Authority has eased an embargo on Israeli products that was imposed during the summer in retaliation for Israeli security closures. Under the partial embargo, about 20 Israeli products were barred from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including soft drinks, fruit and appliances. Palestinian officials said the list of forbidden products had been shortened but would not say which items had been removed.

A crippling worldwide trade embargo went into effect at midnight Saturday to punish Haiti's military rulers for not reinstating their ousted elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The United Nations gave the go-ahead for the ban to begin, and business owners shipped out their last wares. The new sanctions place a trade ban on all but food, humanitarian supplies and medicine.

Film director Steven Spielberg, visiting Cuba for the first time, said the United States should end its trade embargo against the communist-run island and allow more cultural interaction with Cubans. "I personally feel that this embargo should be lifted. I do not see any reason for accepting old grudges being played out in the 21st century," Spielberg said at a news conference Monday. "It does not make sense to me that my country will trade with North Korea and China, but not with Cuba."

The federal agency charged with implementing U.S. trade embargoes, under investigation for its own action in several cases, has been stripped of its investigative and enforcement division. Treasury officials said the action was designed to make trade embargo enforcement more efficient and was unrelated to the ongoing investigation of the Office of Foreign Assets Control. OFAC's enforcement division, and its five criminal investigators, will be reassigned to the Customs Service this month.

President Obama will have to decide by next week whether to continue, for yet another year, provisions of the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. Without a presidential extension, these provisions — though not others that were instituted by congressional action — will end this month. The ending of the embargo is long overdue. The current economic crisis provides a useful rationale for doing so. There is precedent for taking such a step with a communist nation during hard times. In the face of the Depression, prominent American businessmen began arguing that recognition of the Soviet Union would lead to a substantial increase in trade and so provide a much-needed boost to the U.S. economy.

Cuba and its foreign partners will begin exploring for oil this year in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling will take place as close as 50 miles from Florida and in sites deeper than BP's Macondo well, the source of last year's disaster. About 5 billion barrels of oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie beneath the gulf in land belonging to Cuba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. If Cuba finds oil in commercially viable amounts, this would be transformative. Revenue from natural resources has the potential to provide long-sought stability for its economy and is likely to significantly alter Cuba's relations with Venezuela, Asia and other leading energy-producing and consuming nations.

Moammar Kadafi's loyalists appeared to have strengthened their grip on the Libyan capital, while chaos roiled much of the country and spilled over its borders in a wave of frightened refugees. The unrest in Libya has left hundreds dead and nearly frozen the country's oil-based economy. The United Nations reported Monday that more than 100,000 refugees, many of them laborers from nearby countries, have fled to Tunisia and Egypt over the last week to escape destitution and an outbreak of violence that has drawn international condemnation.

If Mohsen doesn't come up with $100,000 by the end of the week, he's a dead man. Or so the seemingly well-to-do Tehran businessman says as he fidgets in his chair, inhales another Marlboro Light and adjusts his fitted sports jacket, his eyes darting nervously back and forth in the cafe as if he were being hounded by a ghost. His company, he says, is a million dollars in the hole. "Do you know where I can get a $100,000 loan?" he demands of a friend, only half in jest.

A Thai court has agreed this week to hear an appeal by suspected arms trafficker Victor Bout, a move likely to frustrate, at least temporarily, U.S. efforts to extradite him on four terrorism-related counts. The former Russian military officer earned international notoriety in the post-Cold War era for allegedly arming a rogues' gallery of terrorist groups, militias and governments, many of which were under a United Nations weapons embargo. If the court proceeds with the appeal it accepted Wednesday, Bout could remain in a Thai prison beyond the Nov. 20 U.S. extradition deadline, a date determined after an earlier court decision.

Cuban President Raul Castro has been moving slowly but steadily over the last couple of years to relax his government's grip on the country's ailing economy, yet it is the news that half a million state workers will get pink slips in the coming months and will be expected to find jobs in the private sector that has created a front-page buzz in the United States. Change is underway in the Cuban economy. It is time for Congress to end the archaic and ineffectual U.S. trade embargo and get out of the way of U.S. investment in Cuba before American firms lose out to those from Europe, Brazil and elsewhere.

With less than six months remaining in President Clinton's term, the leader of the National Council of Churches urged him to end the decades-old trade embargo against Cuba before he leaves office. "If we wait until after the elections take place, a new administration will have to select new ambassadors and new persons in the State Department and prioritize their foreign policy," said the Rev.

The leaders of Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo and Gabon, meeting in Nigeria to discuss unrest in Ivory Coast, backed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an arms embargo on both rebels and the government. The council had been expected to impose a ban on weapons purchases from Dec. 10 at a meeting today, but the six African leaders called for the sanctions to take immediate effect.

Glenn Shadix Character actor worked with Tim Burton Glenn Shadix, 58, a character actor best remembered for his portrayal of the portly, pretentious interior designer Otho in director Tim Burton's 1988 ghost comedy "Beetlejuice," died Tuesday at his home in Birmingham, Ala., according to his personal manager, Juliet Green. Shadix's sister, Susan Gagne, told the Birmingham News that he had been using a wheelchair for mobility and appeared to have fallen in his kitchen and struck his head.

David Alexander Longtime president of Pomona College David Alexander, 77, who brought national standing to Pomona College during a two-decade tenure as president, died Sunday in Claremont after a long battle with cancer, the college announced. Alexander was Pomona president from 1969 to 1991. During that time, the college's endowment grew from $24 million to $296 million and the faculty increased from 130 to 156. He oversaw a campus expansion that added 15 major buildings.