Travel Restrictions

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.

Apparently responding to appeals for restraint by government and religious officials, smaller-than-expected crowds turned out here Saturday to protest a Supreme Court ruling that allows cars to travel on a main thoroughfare on the Jewish Sabbath. Police said the ultra-Orthodox demonstrators threw a few stones and shattered the windshields of two cars traveling on the disputed road but that no one was injured. An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 people took part, a police spokesman said.

San Fernando Valley residents planning to join 33 million Americans who will hop into a car, camper or onto a plane for the final holiday weekend of summer had better not head for Castaic Lake. The ever-popular Labor Day retreat is already at capacity--with firefighters.

A ghost of the Communist past is haunting Anna Bankowska, head of Poland's behemoth social security system. With her overburdened state-run agency nearly $2 billion in the hole, Bankowska says it is time to get tough with employers who are chronic social security tax cheats. But Bankowska is learning that her weapon of choice--the passport--has become so revered in post-Communist Poland that it will be difficult to prevent tax evaders from traveling abroad, as her disputed crackdown threatens.

The long-standing ban on most travel to Cuba was upheld Monday by a federal appeals court, which said it was within the government's authority and did not violate Americans' civil rights. "The purpose of the travel ban is the same now as it has been since the ban was imposed almost 35 years ago--to restrict the flow of hard currency into Cuba," said the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Cuba is studying the possibility of closing its airspace to all U.S. planes because of continued American pressure over the two civilian planes shot down by Cuban jet fighters on Feb. 24, a Foreign Relations Ministry spokeswoman said Thursday. Other measures also are being studied, Marianela Ferriol said during her weekly news conference, but she declined to specify what they are. Prohibiting U.S.

Faced with rapidly deteriorating economic and health care conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel took steps Sunday to slightly ease the strict closure it imposed March 3 after a rash of suicide bombings. Prime Minister Shimon Peres told his Cabinet that Palestinians may return to their jobs in Jewish settlements in the territories and that Palestinian patients will be allowed to seek treatment in Israeli hospitals.

Although Cuba theoretically remains off limits to American tourists, as it has for most of the 37 years of Fidel Castro's rule, more and more U.S. citizens are traveling to the Communist island in defiance of the spirit of the Trading With the Enemy Act. Travel experts estimate that as many as 16,000 Americans will go to Cuba this year as tourists, aboard U.S.

The United States said Saturday that it has issued a transit visa to Taiwanese Vice President Li Yuan-zu, a move that could easily irritate U.S. relations with China. The visa will allow Li's plane to stop in Los Angeles to refuel Thursday and again Jan. 16 on his way to and from Guatemala to attend next Sunday's presidential inauguration, State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Young said. "There will be no public activity during the transits," Young said.