US eases trade and travel restrictions to Cuba — Talk Vietnam

(VOVworld) – New travel and trade rules between the US and Cuba took effect on Friday, as part of the implementation of last month’s agreement on re-establishing diplomatic ties.

A sign shows the departure times for flights to Cuba at Miami International Airport on December 19, 2014. (Photo: Getty Images)

The new rules will allow Cubans to access US telecommunications, construction, and financial services and allow Americans to travel to Cuba without approval from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control.



















US eases trade and travel restrictions to Cuba — Talk Vietnam

Vietnam, Cuba foreign ministries to bolster ties | Look At Vietnam

Vietnam, Cuba foreign ministries to bolster ties

July 10, 2012

Vietnam’s top diplomat has affirmed that the Foreign Ministry will closely cooperate with its Cuban counterpart to implement the agreements reached by the two countries’ leaders to beef up bilateral ties.

FM Pham Binh Minh welcomes his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla. (Photo: VNA)

Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh made the statement in Hanoi on July 9 at a meeting with Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, who accompanies the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) Central Committee and President of the State Council and the Council of Ministers, Raul Castro, on an official friendship visit to Vietnam.
The two FMs agreed on measures to increase high-ranking delegations’ visits and the exchange of delegations between the Parties, States, National Assemblies, ministries, departments and social-political organisations of the two countries.
They reached a consensus on holding an annual political consultation late this year in Havana.
The two FMs exchanged views on international and regional issues and agreed that both countries should enhance coordination and mutual support at international forums in which both countries are members.
FM Minh took the occasion to thank the Cuban delegation for their active participation and contributions to the Vietnam-Latin America Trade and Investment Forum hosted by the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry for the first time.
The Cuban media have given extensive coverage of the meetings between its President Raul Castro with Vietnam ’s top leaders during his official friendship visit to Vietnam from July 8-10.
In its article titled the two countries’ friendship further consolidated, Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, wrote despite geographical distance, Cuba and Vietnam are always two fraternal nations and that was reaffirmed with the official friendship visit to Vietnam by General Raul Castro.
The front page article focused on Raul Castro’s activities with the talks with Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and separate meetings with President Truong Tan Sang and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, which, it said, took place in the atmosphere of wholehearted friendship.
The paper cited Raul in his talks with Party General Secretary Trong as saying that returning to Vietnam this time is his great personal pride. He also highlighted the sustainability of the two countries’ relationship over the past decades although both nations have experienced difficult periods.
For his part, the Vietnamese Party leader affirmed Raul’s current visit aims to lift up the relationship between the two Parties and Governments to a new development stage, the paper said.
Activities by the Cuban delegation in Vietnam were also spotlighted in an article published by the ‘Trabajadores’ or ‘Workers’ newspaper. It quoted Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang as saying that “To receive you and the Cuban delegation, we have the feeling of welcoming brothers home not foreign guests.”
In a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, the two leaders discussed their countries’ socio-economic development. They agreed that President Raul’s visit is significant to both sides to promote bilateral trade and economic ties.
On the morning and afternoon of July 8, the “Cubadebate” online newspaper and the Cuba TV covered all activities by Raul Castro on the day during his first official friendship visit to Vietnam as Cuba’s top leader.
Raul Castro’s Vietnam in Cuban media spotlight
Cuban newspapers have widely covered meetings between Raul Castro, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) Central Committee and Vietnamese leaders during his official to Vietnam from July 8-10.

more info -->>>>   Vietnam, Cuba foreign ministries to bolster ties | Look At Vietnam

Cuba Festival in Havana, Vietnames circus Wins Bronze Metal

Viet Nam wins Grand Prix prize at int”l circus festival

August 17, 2011  about Uncategorized

LookAtVietnam - Vietnamese circus performers achieved great success at the 2011 International Summer Circus Festival (Circuba 2011) which concluded in Havana, Cuba, on Sunday. The Power of the Arms performance by the two brothers Giang Quoc Co and Giang Quoc Nghiep won the Grand Prix prize and the Audience Award, while the Supermen Swing show bagged the bronze medal.
The audience gave a standing ovation when Co and Nghiep performed an incredible move: one man stood on his head, which was amazingly balanced on the head of the other man standing on his feet. They were supported only through their own arms gripping one another.
This was the first time in 20 years that Vietnamese artists have attended an international festival in Cuba.
Since its establishment in 1981, the annual international circus festival has drawn a large number of artists from many countries such as China, Russia, Mongolia and Spain. This year’s event attracted more than 100 artists from 14 countries.
Vu Ngoan Hop, Director of the Vietnamese Circus Federation, said that young Vietnamese artists have won such honourable prizes because of their outstanding performances. They have also helped introduce Viet Nam and its people to international friends.       Photo:Chuck Kuhn
On the occasion, Viet Nam’s ambassador to Cuba, Vu Chi Cong, held a special meeting with the circus performers to congratulate them on their success at the international competition.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News







Photo:Chuck Kuhn 

| Cuba rocks to huge peace concert

Havana is hosting the biggest open-air concert since the 1959 revolution, featuring some 15 top Latin American, Spanish and Cuban performers.
Hundreds of thousands of people - many wearing white - are attending the free event in Revolution Square, Havana.
Colombian singer Juanes, who organised the "Peace without Borders" concert, has received death threats from Miami-based critics of the Cuban regime.
But he has won support from 20 high-profile jailed dissidents inside Cuba.
The BBC's Michael Voss at the concert says there is a mood of excitement, as many residents of the isolated, music-loving island have never seen anything like it before.
AT THE SCENE

Michael Voss, BBC News, Revolution Square
It's absolutely packed here. There's never been a free open-air concert like it ever before.
When Pope Jean Paul II gave his historic mass in this same place just over 10 years ago, there was about 250,000 people here. We estimate there is double that number here now.
This is the centre of power here in Cuba. Normally when I come here, it is to cover the big May Day parades and there are red flags everywhere.
Now, everyone is wearing white. There are white flags, white shirts. That's the message - Peace without Borders.
He says people have travelled from across the island to attend.
Organisers said some 500,000 people were expected.
But our reporter says heat is a problem. He has seen a lot of people being carried away on stretchers.
"Together, we are going to make history," said Puerto Rican singer Olga Tanon, as she opened the concert with the love song, Es Mentiroso Ese Hombre (That Man is a Liar).
"We've been here since 0300 waiting for everyone, waiting for Juanes and for Olga Tanon," Luisa Maria Canales, an 18-year-old engineering student, told the AP news agency.
"I'm a little tired, but I am more excited."
While critics have complained that Juanes is endorsing the island's communist system, the dissidents say the concert is an opportunity for reconciliation.

In pictures: Cuban peace concert
Juanes said the show was about peace and tolerance, not politics.
"It's a message of peace, not only for Cuba. It's for the entire region," he said.
He added that preparations for the concert had not been easy, but "we have all got over our fears".
Our reporter notes that the location of the free concert is highly symbolic.
The headquarters of the communist party is in Revolution Square, along with a giant metal sculpture of Che Guevara's head.
The square was used by Fidel Castro to give five-hour speeches, and is also where Pope John Paul II held a historic open air mass in 1998.
Among the artists taking part on Sunday are Spain's Miguel Bose, Olga Tanon from Puerto Rico, the Cuban performers Silvio Rodriguez and Los Van Van.

Robert McNamara died today age 93. Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis

Robert McNamara, who served as US defence secretary during the Vietnam war and the Cuban Missile Crisis, has died aged 93.

Mr McNamara, who served under presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson, was also an architect of the US policy of nuclear deterrence.

After leaving the Pentagon he became president of the World Bank.

His wife Diana said he had suffered failing health for some time and died in his sleep at home in Washington DC.

Before taking up the post as Pentagon chief in 1961, Mr McNamara was the president of Ford Motor Company, turning the company around in the post World War II era.

He is most closely associated with overseeing the involvement of the US in Vietnam from 1961 to 1968.

Robert McNamara 1916: Born in San Francisco 1946: Hired by Ford Motor Company 1961: Appointed US defence secretary 1968: Became President of the World Bank 1981: Retired Obituary: Robert McNamara

Mr McNamara became to many anti-war critics the symbol of a failed policy that left more than 58,000 US troops dead.

Even his son, as a Stanford University student, took part in protests against the war while his father was running it.

However, in his 1995 memoirs In Retrospect: The Tragedies and Lessons of Vietnam, Mr McNamara wrote of his regret over his Vietnam role.

He described the war as "terribly wrong" owing to a combination of the anti-communist climate of the times, mistaken assumptions of foreign policy and military misjudgements.

He spoke frankly about the Vietnam war and the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 2003 documentary "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara."

With the US in the first year of the war in Iraq, it became a popular and timely attraction and won an Oscar for best documentary feature.

Bombing criticised

In 1967 Mr McNamara criticised the decision to bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes on US bases in the south.

President Johnson decided to remove him the following year, offering him the presidency of the World Bank. When he left office he was the longest-serving US defence secretary.

In his new role, Mr McNamara devoted great energy to improving life in rural communities in developing countries.

He believed it was a more promising path to peace than the build-up of arms and armies.

Mr McNamara, centre, worked under John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson

After retiring in 1981, he championed the cause of nuclear disarmament.

Lawrence Korb, a former US assistant secretary of defence, told US broadcaster WGBH that he had been brave to admit that the war was a terrible mistake.

But it was something for which he was never forgiven, he said.

"I can't remember a public official with the courage to confess error and explain where the country went wrong," said Mr Korb, who was a friend of Mr McNamara.

"It bothered him for the rest of his life. People forget that after he left the Pentagon he ran the World Bank and did an awful lot in terms of dealing with poverty and hunger around the world.

"Then he dedicated the rest of his life to trying to do something about the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but it's all been lost because of the Vietnam era."

Will U.S. citizens be allowed to travel to Cuba?-02 April, 2009

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill on Tuesday to allow U.S. citizens to travel freely to Cuba and predicted Congress would approve it as a step toward ending the five-decade-old U.S. embargo.

"I think there's sufficient votes in both the House (of Representatives) and the Senate to finally get it passed," Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan said at a news conference.

Dorgan, whose home state of North Dakota could benefit from increased agricultural sales to Cuba, introduced the bill along with fellow Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd and Republican Senators Richard Lugar and Mike Enzi. Seventeen other senators also are sponsoring the measure. A companion bill introduced in the House earlier this year has 121 co-sponsors.

Congressional opponents of any move to ease the embargo promised a tough fight to keep this measure from becoming law.

"This is the time to support pro-democracy activists in Cuba, not provide the Castro regime with a resource windfall," Senator Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican who was the first Cuban-American elected to the Senate, said in a statement.

President Barack Obama said during last year's presidential campaign he favored easing U.S. restrictions on family travel to Cuba and the sending of cash to family members.

But he stopped short of supporting the lifting of the trade embargo, which a growing number of U.S. lawmakers believe has failed to bring about democratic change in communist-led Cuba.

Vice President Joe Biden told reporters "no" when asked in Chile on Saturday whether the United States would lift the embargo, as many in Latin American favor.

Obama is expected to face pressure from regional leaders to improve U.S. relations with Cuba when he travels to Trinidad in mid-April for the Summit of the Americas meeting.

Washington slapped economic sanctions on Cuba in 1960 after Fidel Castro's leftist government nationalized U.S. sugar mills, oil refineries and other assets. A full U.S. embargo was enforced in 1962 as Cuba became a close Soviet ally.

Travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens was banned after the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world close to nuclear war.

Efforts to loosen the embargo remain politically difficult because of the influence of Cuban-American emigres in Florida, a state often important in deciding U.S. elections. Staunch anti-Castro exiles argue that allowing tourism and more trade with Cuba will help prop up communism on the island.

Dodd told reporters there were not enough votes in Congress to end the embargo completely. "My sense at this point is that's a step too far," Dodd said.

U.S. farm and business groups promised to lobby hard for removal of the travel restrictions.

"The U.S. embargo on Cuba is a 50-year failure, and lifting the ban on travel is a good first step toward a more rational policy," said Myron Brilliant, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The United States sold $710 million worth of soybeans, wheat, poultry and other agricultural goods to Cuba last year under a law passed in 2000 that allowed food sales as long as they were paid in cash in advance.

The Bush administration interpreted that law narrowly to frustrate sales and so far the Obama administration has said it would follow the same policy, despite recent legislation passed by Congress to overturn it.

Obama lifts restrictions in Cuba-10 March, 2009

Cubans applauded the passage of a bill today by U.S. Congress that would ease some travel and trade restrictions against the communist island. They hope for more changes under President Barack Obama.

The bill, which appropriates $410 billion to fund the U.S. government, includes provisions allowing Cuban-Americans to visit their families in Cuba more frequently and makes it easier to sell agricultural and medical goods to Cuba.

It undoes some Bush administration rules that toughened the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, a Cold War policy which Havana blames for the perennial economic woes afflicting the island just 90 miles (145 km) from Florida.

In Miami, there were mixed reactions from the Cuban exile community, which is split between those who favor greater contact and opening between Washington and Havana and some anti-communist hard-liners who oppose any easing of U.S. sanctions on Cuba under the rule of Fidel and Raul Castro.

The bill, which Obama still must sign into law, would allow Cuban-Americans to visit the island annually instead of once every three years as the Bush government mandated. They could also stay longer than the current two weeks.

"People-to-people contact is the number one factor of change in a closed society like the one in Cuba. It's also the right of a Cuban to be able to return to his country," Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the Democracy Movement, said in Miami.

He urged President Obama to use his authority to completely lift restrictions on travel. "He can do it with the stroke of a pen," he said.

Source: Reuters

Venezuela, Vietnam set up joint oil refining venture

Venezuela and Vietnam have agreed to create two joint oil refining companies, Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said Wednesday.
"PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela) and Petrovietnam will work together to build the two joint companies -- one to transport oil to Vietnam and the other to refine that oil in Vietnam, at a refinery we jointly own," Ramirez, who also heads state-run PDVSA, said after a meeting with Vietnamese officials.
Vietnam and Venezuela are expected to announce on September 15 a new oil exploration agreement in the oil-rich Orinoco basin in eastern Venezuela, where Petrovietnam already has a concession.
As Latin America's top oil producer and fifth largest oil exporter to the United States, Venezuela a year ago established a joint-ownership system of its oil reserves giving PDVSA a minimum 60 percent control of any foreign venture in the field.
Venezuela says it produces some 3.3 million barrels of oil per day (bpd), 2.7 million of which are for export. The International Energy Agency, however, puts Venezuela's oil production at less than 2.5 million bpd.
Venezuela and Vietnam also plan to build a production facility to make energy-saving lightbulbs in Venezuela, Ramirez said.
"It will meet not only our needs but also those of ALBA members and countries in South America that cooperate with us, including Cuba," he added, referring to the alternative free trade market that Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez is spearheading. ALBA includes Venezuela and fellow leftist regimes in Cuba and Bolivia.
Vietnamese Minister of Industry and Commerce, Vu Huy Hoang, welcomed his government's cooperation with Venezuela, saying it offers "many advantages and great challenges to worldwide trade barriers."