New possibilities with the Cuba thaw

December 19, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

As with President Nixon's opening with China, President Obama's with Cuba could have far-reaching consequences.

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Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev returned to court Thursday for the first time since he was arraigned in July 2013, and he received a shout of encouragement from the mother-in-law of a man who was shot and killed while being questioned by law enforcement after the bombings. Security was tight at the federal courthouse in Boston for Tsarnaev's final pretrial conference. Tensions ran high, and one bombing victim had a testy exchange with protesters outside. During the brief court hearing, US District Court George O'Toole Jr. made no rulings, saying he would rule in writing on pending motions, including the defense's latest push to move the trial out of Boston.

Islamic extremists killed 35 people and kidnapped at least 185 in an attack near the town where schoolgirls were taken hostage in April, witnesses said Thursday. In Sunday night's attack on the village of Gumburi, most of the kidnapped were young women, children and members of a civilian defense group fighting Boko Haram, according to residents, a security official and a local government officer. News of the attack took days to emerge because the militants have destroyed communications towers and people walked for days to avoid areas under extremist control.

The renewal of ties between Cuba and the United States complicates matters for Havana's chief ally, Venezuela, which has been moving in the opposite direction, becoming more stridently anti-American. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and leaders across Latin America applauded Cuba's decision to swap prisoners with the US and Washington's easing a longstanding embargo on Wednesday. But analysts said the news is bound to shift geopolitical relations across the region and leave Venezuela more isolated.

Cuba was once a haven for sun-seeking American tourists. But the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro and the subsequent Cold War embargo of the communist island nation put an end to that. President Obama's announcement Wednesday of plans to re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba doesn't suddenly lift the ban on US tourism. It does, however, give hope to airlines, hotel chains and cruise companies — all which have been quietly eyeing a removal of the travel ban — that they soon will be able to bring US tourists to the Caribbean nation.

In the aftermath of Michael Brown's death, legal activists suggested that some of the raw anger that erupted in suburban St. Louis had its roots in an unlikely place – traffic court. It was there, they said, that low-income drivers sometimes saw their lives upended by minor infractions that led to larger problems. If left unpaid, a $75 ticket for driving with expired tags could eventually bring an arrest warrant and even jail time. So courts began an experimental amnesty program designed to give offenders a second chance by waiving those warrants. But the effort is attracting relatively few participants, despite a renewed emphasis on municipal court reform after Brown's death last summer in Ferguson.

Ford Motor Co. has agreed to government demands to expand a driver's side air bag inflator recall to the entire US. The move announced Thursday adds 447,000 Ford vehicles to the list of those recalled due to driver's inflators made by Japan's Takata Corp. The inflators can explode with too much force, spewing shrapnel into drivers and passengers. Ford’s action puts pressure on BMW and Chrysler, the only two automakers that haven’t agreed to national recalls. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration made the demand of five automakers, saying the inflators are dangerous. Honda and Mazda already took their recalls national.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

To send a comment to the Editor, email editor@csmonitor.com.

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