U.S. and Cuban officials said on Wednesday they had made important headway in a months-long effort to restore scheduled flight service between the countries after half a century of confrontation. An agreement would pave the way for U.S. airlines to schedule fl... More »
HAVANA Cuba on Wednesday launched an initiative to protect sharks in some of the most pristine habitat for the predators whose populations have been in steep decline. The action plan, reached through two years of collaborative research with the New York-based ... More »
HAVANA Amnesty International on Tuesday declared a Cuban graffiti artist as the country’s only prisoner of conscience, demanding the release of a man held for “disrespect of the leaders of the revolution” over a satire of Fidel and Raul Castro. Danilo Maldonad... More »
NEW YORK President Barack Obama will meet with Cuba’s President Raul Castro on Tuesday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, a White House official said on Sunday. The official was speaking aboard Obama’s plane as he flew from Wa... More »
HAVANA Pope Francis met Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Sunday, hours after warning Cubans to beware the dangers of ideology and the lure of selfishness as their country enters a new era of closer ties with the United States. Latin America’s first ... More »
HAVANA Cuba and the United States on Friday set an agenda for improving relations, putting a priority on more easily attainable agreements while leaving aside difficult issues such as the U.S. trade embargo and naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba said. Official... More »
TORONTO U.S. rhythmic gymnast Laura Zeng increased her gold medal haul to five, women’s baseball made a landmark debut and hosts Canada had their least productive day at the Pan American Games on Monday. The 15-year-old Zeng, her focus fixed firmly on the 2016... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday welcomed the “new beginning” of ties between the United States and Cuba but said many differences remained between the two nations and that full normalization will be a long and complex process. Kerry, in... More »
WASHINGTON The top Senate Republican said on Sunday that Congress is likely to block any nominee that President Barack Obama names as ambassador to Cuba and retain broad economic sanctions, even as Obama moves to establish diplomatic and economic ties with the... More »
HAVANA Brazilian football great Pele said he was pleased Tuesday’s friendly between the Cuban national team and his former club the New York Cosmos might help foster better relations between the United States and Cuba, which have embarked on detente. The Cosmo... More »
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama will nominate Roberta Jacobson, a top State Department official who has been leading U.S. talks to restore relations with Cuba, as the new U.S. ambassador to Mexico, the White House said on Monday. (Reporting by Roberta Rampto... More »
ROME Pope Francis’ hard-hitting criticisms of localization and inequality long ago set him out as a leader unafraid of mixing theology and politics. He is now flexing the Vatican’s diplomatic muscles as well. Last year, he helped to broker an historic accord b... More »
CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro said on Monday night there was no recovery in oil prices forecast this year, stressing the OPEC country’s dwindling dollar income should be “correctly” administered. “This year there’s no recovery in oil p... More »
KINGSTON, Jamaica (Reuters) – President Barack Obama arrived in Jamaica on Wednesday to attend a Caribbean summit seeking to reassert U.S. leadership in the region at time when oil-producing Venezuela’s economic clout may be receding. As the first U.S. preside... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Born to a Cuban mother, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson spent summers in Miami, Florida, while growing up, speaking fluent Spanish and returning often as an adult. Today, Wilson, who is the co-founder of online luxury e-tailer Gilt.com, visits Mia... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – Nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives met Cuban Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Thursday, marking the first time Cuba’s heir apparent to power has received an official American delegation. Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and e... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Eight Republican and Democratic U.S. senators introduced legislation on Thursday to repeal all restrictions on U.S. citizens’ travel to Cuba, the first step in Congress toward ending the U.S. embargo since President Barack Obama moved to... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – The United States and Cuba moved closer to restoring diplomatic relations on Thursday with historic, high-level talks, but the Americans noted the two sides must overcome more than 50 years of mistrust to normalize trade and travel. The talk... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – The highest-level U.S. delegation to Cuba in 35 years begins talks on Wednesday aimed at restoring diplomatic ties and eventually normalizing relations between two adversaries who have been locked in Cold War-era hostilities. The two days of... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – The United States helped a Cuban spy imprisoned in California artificially inseminate his wife back in Cuba, a goodwill gesture while Washington and Havana were engaged in secret talks on restoring diplomatic ties, U.S. officials said on Mon... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – For decades, it was Cuba’s first response to criticism. Poor economic performance? An obvious effect of a U.S. trade embargo that amounted to a blockade of the island nation by a bullying superpower. Arrests of dissidents? A legitimate act o... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton knows a political gift when she sees one. She was quick to embrace the step this week when President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat no longer having to face an electorate,... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans in Congress searched on Thursday for a strategy to sink or at least slow President Barack Obama’s plan to normalize U.S. relations with Cuba, drawing a shrug from the White House. They floated ideas to fight the Democrat Obam... More »
HAVANA/GENEVA (Reuters) – A Cuban doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and was cured after experimental treatment in a Swiss hospital vowed on Saturday to return to West Africa and continue treating patients. “I will finish what I started. I am returnin... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – In Bob Nederlander Jr.’s mission to export Broadway to new markets around the world, he found an old one where the American art form lay dormant for a least 50 years – communist Cuba. After testing the Cuban appetite with a 2011 concert of B... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – An American government contractor jailed in Cuba for crimes against the state may be closer to returning home, in part because he has threatened to end his life if he is not released, a U.S. senator said on Tuesday. The detention of Alan Gro... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – A magazine editor who has tested the limits of free speech in Cuba believes the Cuban government has no option but to allow universal Internet access, and he plans to exploit that opening to promote a more pluralistic Cuba. “The government i... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday urged Cuba to speed up and extend market-style economic reforms, saying world investors would respond and that it might be the best path toward better relations with the United States. Cha... More »
MIAMI (Reuters) – One of the world’s leading databases of stolen works of art is offering to help the Cuban government recover dozens of modernist works missing from Havana’s National Museum of Fine Arts. The heist was confirmed late last week by officials wit... More »
MIAMI (Reuters) – Almost 100 Cuban art works have apparently been stolen from the country’s national art museum, and some are turning up in Miami, according to one of the city’s leading gallery owners. Art dealer Ramon Cernuda, a prominent collector of Cuban a... More »
MIAMI (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Friday that it may be time for the United States to revise its policies toward Cuba, against which it has had an embargo for more than half a century. “We have to be creative and we have to be thoughtful and we ... More »
(Reuters) – Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team, is set to go on trial on Monday to face civil charges that he committed insider trading in shares of a little-known internet search company nearly a decade ago. Cuban, 5... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad vigorously defended on Tuesday her record-breaking, 110-mile (177-km) swim from Cuba to southern Florida after skeptics raised questions about the grueling trek. “I swam … in squeaky-clean, ethical fas... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – When Diana Nyad became the first person to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, baby boomer-aged fitness experts greeted the 64-year-old’s achievement with pride and delight but not disbelief. The aging body, they ... More »
GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama should return the naval base at Guantanamo Bay to Cuba, and some detainees could stay on at a U.S.-run jail there, a former U.S. envoy to Cuba said. Obama, by negotiating a deal with Cuban leader Raul Castro about... More »
MIAMI (Reuters) – American long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad had passed the three-quarter mark on her swim across the Florida Straits on Monday, attempting to become the first person to swim from Cuba without a shark cage. Nyad, 64, was “swimming strongly” more... More »
HAVANA (Reuters) – One of Cuba’s top baseball players is reported to have abandoned the Communist-run island to become the latest emigre seeking a multi-million-dollar Major League contract in the United States. José Dariel Abreu, 26, an all-star first baseman... More »
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – The hunger strike that began nearly six months ago at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and spread to include two-thirds of its 166 prisoners has tapered off with a Ramadan pardon that has allowed some p... More »
PANAMA CITY/MIAMI (Reuters) – A U.N. team is due to arrive in Panama next month to inspect a North Korean ship which was seized carrying arms from Cuba, a potential breach of U.N. sanctions that the United States said was “incredibly concerning.” The five-memb... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and Cuba resumed immigration talks in Washington on Wednesday after a two-year hiatus and U.S. officials said they had again pressed for the release of jailed American contractor Alan Gross. The last migration roundtabl... More »
MOSCOW/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Washington pressed Moscow on Monday to do all in its power to expel former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden before he gets the chance to take an expected flight to Cuba to evade prosecution in the United States for espiona... More »
