Congress is taking steps to open Cuba to American travelers, a move that goes against both White House efforts to enforce the travel ban and the four-decade-old US policy of isolating the communist country.
"Today's vote is a clear and undeniable sign that the end is near for the Cuba travel ban," said Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat, after a 59 to 36 Senate vote on Thursday to bar the use of government money to enforce travel restrictions.
The House last month also voted to ease travel restrictions as part of its version of a US$90 billion bill to fund Transportation and Treasury department programs in the budget year that started Oct. 1.
The White House, which recently moved to step up enforcement of the travel ban, has threatened a presidential veto of the spending bill -- which contains money for highway, law enforcement and anti-terrorism programs -- if it contains the Cuba language.
House and Senate leaders must still meet to iron out differences between their two bills, and in the past have used this opportunity to strip out provisions included by either chamber to ease Cuba sanctions.
This year they will be under conflicting pressures from the White House, eager to maintain support among anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida, and a growing number of free trade Republicans disenchanted with the Cuban embargo.
Nineteen Senate Republicans joined nine Democrats and one independent in the vote to ease travel restrictions.
"It's really hard for the president to make this his first veto" since assuming the presidency, said Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat who is a chief sponsor of the travel amendment. In neither the Senate nor House did the Cuba vote reach the two-thirds margin needed to overturn a presidential veto.
"After 40 years of trade and travel sanctions, Fidel Castro is still as brutal and undemocratic as ever," said Republican Jeff Flake, a House leader in the drive to open Cuba. "At some point we need to concede that our current policy is a failure. Let's try a new approach."
But the Homeland Security Department announced this month that it was stepping up embargo enforcements, using "intelligence and investigative resources to identify travelers or businesses engaged in activities that circumvent the embargo."
The Treasury Department estimates that about 160,000 Americans, half of them Cuban-Americans visiting family members, traveled to Cuba legally last year. Humanitarian and educational groups, journalists and diplomats also are allowed visits, but thousands of other Americans visit illegally, by way of third countries.
Tourism officials have estimated that as many as one million Americans might visit Cuba in the first year after the lifting of the embargo.
President John F. Kennedy imposed the travel ban in 1963, a year after the Cuban missile crisis. President Jimmy Carter let it lapse in 1977, but it was reimposed by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. Violators could face criminal penalties of up to US$250,000 and 10 years in prison.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS