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Blogger in Cuba has Washington's ear

Cuba's celebrated and increasingly brassy blogger Yoani Sánchez emerged Thursday as a player in U.S.-Cuba relations, scoring a lengthy reply from President Barack Obama to her questions and playing a starring role in a congressional hearing on efforts to let American tourists visit Cuba.

Sánchez's blog, Generación Y, posted Obama's responses to seven pointed questions she asked him in what she describes as a foray into ``popular diplomacy.'' She also queried Cuban leader Raúl Castro -- but he hadn't replied as of late Thursday.

Obama broke little new ground in his responses, largely reiterating his administration's stance on Cuba: a desire for more contact between the two governments and its peoples, while insisting that Cuba improve its human rights record.

Cuba fighting blogs with blogs

Cuba is counter-attacking its cyber-foes with government backers calling them mercenaries and CIA agents, but sometimes admitting it's difficult to fight Internet critics like well-known blogger Yoani Sánchez.

``There must be a defense, but how?'' wrote one government supporter on Progreso-Weekly.com ``If you [answer] them, you validate them. If you ignore them, you confirm them. If they are repressed, they are empowered. And if they are not repressed, they are also empowered.''

The answer seems to be to counter-attack. Half-a-dozen posts referring to a ``media war'' and the need to ``man the trenches'' in ``defense of the revolution'' have popped up on pro-government blog sites in the past three weeks.

Is now the right time to open up travel to Cuba?

I n Havana a 50-year dictatorship considers dropping the ration book that has defined its control over a citizenry that has come to depend on its meager allotment of staples like rice, beans and coffee.

In Washington a free society debates whether to allow American tourists into Cuba even if the Castro brothers' government has yet to take a baby step to reciprocate President Barack Obama's initial opening for more travel and remittances by Cuban Americans to the communist island.

The backdrop for these two seemingly disparate moves? A global recession that has Cuba's regime scrambling for cash, and a change in U.S. leadership that has travel providers hoping to cash in on Cuba.

Economic crises, `spy' capers among obstacles to change

An Obama administration that made several friendly gestures toward Cuba, hoping to at least warm 50 years of enmity, wound up its first year with mostly harsh retorts from Havana.

President Barack Obama and Raúl Castro in fact appeared to keep their bilateral relations on the backburner during the year, with both facing grim economic crises at home and perhaps trying to avoid the political risks that a rapprochement might create, analysts said.

``There's been no great initiative from Cuba, and no incentive in the U.S. to change much either,'' said Mauricio Font, head of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at City University of New York.

President Barack Obama lauds Cuba offer to discuss thorny issues

Cuban leader Raúl Castro's recent offer to discuss all issues -- including the fate of political prisoners -- is ''a sign of progress'' that could lead to more deliberate strides toward normalization, President Barack Obama said Sunday.

''We are going to explore and see and if we can make some further steps,'' Obama told reporters shortly before his departure from the Fifth Summit of the Americas.

Among the things Obama said would be viewed by his administration as good faith acts by Havana: freeing political prisoners, reducing fees on Cuba-bound remittances from the United States, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.