Travel Restrictions

A traffic jam nearly made Liu Ting miss her date with destiny. She even had to persuade a janitor to let her into the British Embassy where, at 4:20 p.m. local time Thursday, she picked up the last visa to Hong Kong ever to be issued here by the territory's colonial masters. For Liu, the moment was not so much history being made as it was history being erased--the wiping away of more than a century of national humiliation.

From her third-floor office in the weathered Mission District, Ana Perez has arranged for more than 6,000 Americans to travel legally to Cuba on education and cultural exchange tours in the last two years. The Cuba "reality tour" program is the most successful of several operated by her San Francisco nonprofit organization, Global Exchange. But Perez said a recent Bush administration push to restrict travel to the island would cut her business to a trickle by the end of the year.

With Mideast violence declining in recent days, Israel is expected to scale back tough restrictions on Palestinian movement that have been a major point of friction throughout more than a year of fighting, both sides said Saturday. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet will hold its regular weekly session today and will decide which measures to take at this stage, an Israeli government source said on condition of anonymity.

I joined the Army National Guard and proudly served as a combat medic in Iraq, in gratitude to a nation that has given me the opportunity to live my dreams since I arrived here from Cuba on a fragile wooden raft. I also joined to teach my teenage sons in Cuba a lesson about freedom and responsibility, and about how important it is to give back.

The Bush administration Thursday pledged to further limit U.S. travel to Cuba while spending millions to promote democracy on the communist island, moving to mollify Cuban American critics who said the president risked losing exile support if he did not fulfill promises to get tougher on Fidel Castro. The proposals to strengthen sanctions, from a report by a presidential commission headed by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, will become U.S. policy immediately, officials said.

Faced with Iraq's continued blockade of U.N. weapons inspectors, the Security Council appeared close to agreement Tuesday on a U.S.-backed proposal to clamp an immediate travel ban on top-level Iraqi officials and to warn of unspecified "further measures" if Baghdad does not back down.

The United States has asked Saudi Arabia to begin issuing permanent exit and re-entry visas to American workers, a move that would speed up departures from the country in the event of increasing military hostilities. But U.S. officials privately are playing down the current level of danger to Americans in Saudi Arabia and said it is unlikely that the State Department will recommend evacuation or strengthen travel restrictions even in regions closest to Saudi Arabia's border with Kuwait.

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.

In a decision expected to have deep impact on California family law, a state appeals court Friday overturned a judge's order that forced a divorced mother to move herself and her child from San Francisco to be near her former husband in Ventura. The 2nd District Court of Appeal vacated a 1988 order from the Ventura County Superior Court, which told Pamela Besser she would lose custody of her 6-year-old son, Joshua, unless she moved with him to be near the boy's father, Michael Fingert.

Convicted kidnaper Kenneth Parnell became a free man Tuesday, concluding three years of parole amid fears that he will be a "marked man" if he carries out reported plans to return to Mendocino County. Parnell, 56, was paroled to Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area after serving five years in prison for kidnaping then 7-year-old Steven Stayner from Merced on Dec. 4, 1972, and Timothy White, then 5, from Ukiah on Valentine's Day in 1980.