Travel

You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana state line if you're African American, but you might not be able to drive out of it -- at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables. That's because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime.

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.

Chinese authorities tracked down Westwood resident Mike Su recently at a networking banquet in Beijing. They forced him to pack his bags, then whisked him away to a budget hotel on the edge of the city where they detained him for a week. Su's crime? On his flight from Los Angeles, the website director had the misfortune of sitting near someone who had allegedly contracted the H1N1 flu. "I felt like I was going to prison," said Su, 33.

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.

Online travel websites have been ordered to pay Anaheim $21 million in hotel taxes that officials say they are owed, but the companies are fighting back against the increasingly common claim that they have shortchanged cities from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The fight in Anaheim is the latest in an escalating debate between online travel companies and tourist-dependent cities.

Iraq and the United States, at odds for decades over the gravest matters of war and peace, have a new point of conflict: a humble travel bulletin. During Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's recent visit to Washington, Iraqi officials complained to senior U.S. officials that the State Department's advisory for American travelers was painting too dark a picture of Iraq and scaring away U.S. investment, Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy, Iraq's ambassador to the U.S., told reporters Friday.

A crack appeared Thursday in a White House communications operation known for staying on message -- in the form of a vice president with a habit of speaking his mind. It happened when Joe Biden went on a morning talk show and, almost as if he hadn't gotten talking points, veered off the team's message about how to avoid swine flu. Biden said he was telling his family members to avoid confined spaces such as planes and subway trains.

A presidential election is a conversation about the nation's future, but all Richard Brenner was hearing in Van Nuys were fragments, disconnected bits and pieces. He wanted more. He yearned for a lively discussion, some policy, a vision. While presidential candidates swarmed through early primary and caucus states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in the nominating process, they often ignored California.

President Bush's accommodations are never shabby when he travels abroad. But consider life at his hotel in Abu Dhabi, where a run-of-the-mill suite can go for $1,595 a night. He was, a White House aide indicated, assigned one of the eight "Ruler's Suites" at the Emirates Palace Hotel on Sunday night. The suites are made available only to those who Sheik Khalifa ibn Zayed al Nuhayyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, says may stay there.

Record fuel prices and weakening demand for air travel are taking a toll on profits of major U.S. airlines, raising prospects of a consolidation in the industry this year. Recent merger talks and Thursday's announcement by American Airlines Inc. that it would double its fuel surcharge to $40 on round-trip tickets signaled that passengers could soon see higher fares industrywide.