“The Butler,” Lee Daniels’s adaptation of Wil Haygood’s 2008 Washington Post article about long-time White House butler Eugene Allen, has gained considerable heat at the Cannes Film Festival , where Nicole Kidman is said to be joining a cast that includes Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Jane Fonda. (Fonda will play Nancy Reagan; no word on who Kidman would portray.) Read full article > >

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Nicole Kidman said to star in White House butler movie

For five decades, tight restrictions have governed who can leave the island, who can return and how long they can be gone.

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New Hints at Looser Travel Rules Stir Hope in Cuba

Spain’s Repsol oil company says a first attempt to find oil off Cuba’s northern coast has been unsuccessful.

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Cuban offshore oil attempt fails

The Obama administration granted a visa this week to the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro but rejected visas for nearly a dozen other Cubans to attend an academic conference in California, angering both conservative Cuban American leaders and American scholars seeking to improve U.S.-Cuban academic ties. Read full article > >

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U.S. grants visa to Raul Castro’s daughter but denies visit by Cuban academics

In Havana, a British man and his Cuban wife have just opened the Caribbean island’s first curry house.

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VIDEO: Cuba gets its first curry house

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returns from Cuba, saying his radiotherapy treatment for cancer is over and has been successful.

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Chavez cancer treatment ‘success’

The parents of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American captured by the Taliban nearly three years ago, have made an emotional appeal for the Obama administration to make a deal with the insurgents to release him in exchange for Afghan prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Read full article > >

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Family lobbies for soldier to be included in Taliban prisoner swap

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — The arraignment of five men charged in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks opened Saturday morning with what appeared to be an immediate attempt by the defendants to disrupt the military commission proceeding, including a refusal to speak by the normally loquacious Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Read full article > >

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9/11 detainees seek to disrupt opening of arraignment at Guantanamo Bay

Relatives of some of the victims of 9/11 have arrived in Cuba, ahead of the military tribunal of the man accused of masterminding the attacks.

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VIDEO: 9/11 families seek justice in Cuba

Even with a less storied past than baseball, which has long been considered as Cuban as hand-rolled cigars, soccer has made inroads in Cuba in recent years.

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Havana Journal: Soccer Gains in Cuba, Where Baseball Is King

BETTER LATE than never, a prominent Republican has begun fashioning a stance on immigration policy that breaks from GOP orthodoxy. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who is Cuban American and a possible running mate for Mitt Romney, has broached the outlines of what would be a Republican version of the Dream Act. It would extend legal status — but no clear path to citizenship, as Democrats have sought — to young illegal immigrants brought to America by their parents. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: A Dream Act that Republicans should take up

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez phones state TV to deny rumours he has died while undergoing radiotherapy in Cuba for a malignant tumour.

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Chavez dismisses rumours of death

CARTAGENA, Colombia — President Obama concluded a contentious hemispheric summit on the defensive Sunday as it ended without agreement on whether Cuba’s Communist leaders should be invited to the next meeting, which the United States firmly opposes. Read full article > >

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Obama concludes Summit of the Americas on the defensive about inviting Cuba

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he is going to Cuba on Saturday for more cancer treatment, casting doubt on a trip to the Americas summit.

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Chavez to continue cancer therapy

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says his battle against cancer is “advancing” after he returns home from his latest treatment in Cuba.

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Chavez: Cancer battle advancing