Word: cuba
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...officially embargoed "enemy" of the U.S., Cuba seems to be getting pretty popular with American tourists and businessmen. There were 29 Yanks officially registered at the Hotel Nacional when a terrorist bomb went off in the lobby of the hotel July 12. Last year 1,500 executives visited the island, up from 200 five years ago. They were not there for a suntan. Yet, insists Richard Newcomb, the Treasury Department official who enforces the U.S. embargo, "Cuba is off limits to nearly all U.S. commercial transactions. There is no front door or back door to Cuba for Americans...
...opening was created in 1994 when Treasury concluded in a little-known ruling, unrelated to the travel industry, that an American company can invest in a foreign firm that has business in Cuba--as long as the U.S. investor is a minority holder and the foreign company doesn't earn most of its money in Cuba...
...also a surprising number of Americans, whom Cuban officials wave in through Mexico or Jamaica--no need to get your passport stamped. Even after years of steady growth, the number of vacationers continues to increase 15% annually, the fastest pace in the Caribbean. Tourism has replaced sugar as Cuba's main source of hard currency. That is one reason tourist hotels were the targets of the antigovernment bombings, which caused moderate damage and three injuries...
Unencumbered by the notion that they may be operating out of expropriated property, foreign hotel companies like Club Med (France), Sol Melia (Spain), Golden Tulip (Netherlands) and Delta Hotels (Canada) grabbed prime spots and locked up lucrative hotel-management contracts. Cuba now has some 200 hotels offering 27,000 rooms--more than Puerto Rico and the Bahamas combined. "It's a profound disappointment that we are enjoined from building hotels and a tourism infrastructure there, while our competitors from around the world are allowed to enter and pick the fine sites," laments Marilyn Carlson Nelson, vice chairman of Carlson companies...
...eastern Pacific, these storms inevitably follow in its path, moving the tropical storm belt from one part of the Pacific to another. The rearrangement has reverberations throughout the atmosphere, causing droughts in places as far-flung as northeastern Brazil, southern Africa and Australia, while other regions, from California to Cuba, can be hit by torrential rains. These effects are variable. El Nino may weaken the Indian monsoon--or barely affect...