Italian owned MSC Cruises will be the first major cruise line to homeport in Cuba, with the 2,120-passenger MSC Opera embarking on week-long cruises from Havana starting December 22, reports Travel Weekly.
Carnival Corporation, the world's biggest travel and leisure firm, plans to launch cruises to Cuba in May, following the historic thaw between the Castro brothers nation and the United States. US Treasury Department and Commerce Department granted the company approval for the plans, Carnival announced Tuesday, though it has yet to receive Cuban authorization.
United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday that his chamber is unlikely to approve a US ambassador to Cuba, sending a quick rebuff to President Barack Obama and his drive to normalize relations with the U.S. neighbor and longtime Cold War foe.
President Obama formally announced on Wednesday that the United States and Cuba have both agreed to open embassies in each other’s capitals following more than a half-century of hostilities between the two nations.
President Obama will announce on Wednesday that the U.S. and Cuba have reached an agreement to open embassies in Havana and Washington, an administration official has confirmed. The announcement marks a major step in ending hostilities between the longtime foes and an opportunity to re-establish formal diplomatic relations and apparently will be simultaneous from Havana.
The Princess of Asturias Award for Literature has gone to the Cuban novelist and journalist Leonardo Padura. There were 27 nominations from around the world for the prestigious award which has been won in the past by people of the stature of writer John Banville, Leonard Cohen and dramatist Arthur Miller.
After two years of absence, the Spanish airline Iberia on Monday resumed flights to Havana. The Cuban tourism ministry confirmed last Friday that on June first, the flight marking the resumption of operations between Madrid and Havana would arrive at the Jose Marti International Airport.
U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday announced his intention to nominate Roberta Jacobson, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America and the chief U.S. negotiator at the talks to resume diplomatic relations with Cuba, as the new ambassador to Mexico, the White House announced in a communiqué.
The United States on Friday formally dropped Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, the US State Department said in a statement. The removal of Cuba from the US terrorism list eliminates an obstacle toward restoring diplomatic ties between the United States and the communist-led Caribbean island state after 54 years.
President Obama is looking to travel to Cuba’s capitol city of Havana before his tenure ends, White Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Thursday, the same day a Florida bank announced that the State Department has given them permission to make diplomatic transactions between the two nations.