Word: ra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...fittingly, don't expect much of a charged observance on either side of the Straits of Florida this week. It looks unlikely that the ailing, 82-year-old Fidel Castro, who ceded Cuba's presidency to his younger brother Raúl this year, will be fit enough to attend the celebration in Santiago de Cuba. In Miami, exile hard-liners are wrestling with a new Florida International University poll showing that a majority of Cuban-Americans there think the embargo should end. The question now is whether Washington and Havana can smell the cafe cubano, leave their cold...
Fortunately, the signs are looking better as U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's Jan. 20 Inauguration nears. Obama, who has said he's willing to talk with Raúl Castro, is poised to end the Bush Administration's restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to Cuba. That could (and should) be the first step toward dismantling the ill-conceived, 46-year-old embargo (which Obama surely knows is also the aim of many pro-business Republicans in Washington). Either way, such gestures make it harder for the Castros to rail against gringo imperialism. For his part, Ra...
...problem, of course, is the scores of jailed dissidents in Cuba and the island's lack of free speech. Raúl Castro said this month he would consider releasing some of those prisoners as a prelude to talks with Obama. He wants U.S. reciprocation, however - like freedom for the Cuban Five. They are Cuban agents who were convicted in Miami in 2001 of espionage but, Havana insists, were in the U.S. only to monitor exile groups that had allegedly aided in bombings of Cuban tourist hotels. A swap release of the five isn't likely. (A U.S. appellate panel...
...September 2006. While Salazar drew praise from representatives of the oil and mining industries as well as some conservationists, his appointment disappointed a cadre of environmental groups and prominent scientists, more than 100 of whom had signed a petition urging President-elect Barack Obama to tap Arizona Representative Raúl Grijalva. Salazar seemed undaunted by the criticism, promising to work with Obama to "take the moon shot on energy independence...
...true, those potential reserves could make Cuba a major petro player in the hemisphere. (The U.S. has reserves of 29 billion bbl.) And it could render the embargo an even more ineffective means of dislodging the aging Castro brothers, Fidel and current President Raúl. "If it really is 20 billion, then it's a game changer," says Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba oil analyst at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. "It provides a lot more justification for changing elements of the embargo, just as we did when we allowed agricultural and medical sales to Cuba" a decade...