Democratic front-runner Barack Obama sought to toughen his position on meeting such US foes as Cuban President Raul Castro, outlining his conditions in a delicate pitch aimed at winning over an important voting bloc in the November presidential elections.
Obama's speech on Friday to the Cuban American National Foundation — a foray into delicate political waters — sought to counter stepped-up criticism from rival John McCain. Obama, with an insurmountable lead over rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, is increasingly appearing as the Republican’s challenger for the White House.
On Friday, Obama picked up five more delegates, including one who switched allegiance from Clinton. With an almost 200-delegate lead over the former first lady, Obama is just 61 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination.
McCain also took on a politically sensitive subject, releasing medical records aimed at easing concern that at 71 years old, he is too old to be president. The records showed that the three-time melanoma survivor appears cancer-free, has a strong heart and is in general good health.
Obama’s speech to the Cuban group came three days after McCain ridiculed him in Florida for saying he would meet Castro. Obama had said in a debate last year that he would meet without preconditions with the leaders of Cuba, Iran and Venezuela — all US adversaries.
The first-term Illinois senator said McCain has been “going around the country talking about how much I want to meet with Raul Castro as if I’m looking for a social gathering. That’s never what I’ve said and John McCain knows it.”
Obama said he would meet Castro only at a time and place of his choosing and when there is “an opportunity to advance the interests of the United States and to advance the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.”
He said he would maintain the existing trade embargo to use as leverage for winning democratic change in Cuba. But he said he would lift restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island. The audience of Cuban-Americans applauded his remarks.
Obama was addressing a group known for its tough line against former Cuban president Fidel Castro. But in recent years, frustrated with the lack of change on the island, it has entertained some more moderate views.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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