President Barack Obama has said the US seeks a "new beginning" with Cuba and an "equal partnership" with all the nations of the Americas. He is seeking to thaw US-Cuban relations. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed an offer for talks from Cuban President Raul Castro, saying the old US policy had failed. Mr. Castro said that he was ready to talk about "everything" with the US, including human rights, political prisoners and freedom of the press. His comments came after the US eased restrictions, allowing Cuban-Americans to visit relatives in Cuba and send money home more easily.

Speaking to leaders gathered at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Mr. Obama declared: "I know there is a longer journey that must be travelled to overcome decades of mistrust, but there are critical steps we can take toward a new day," he said.

Under former US President George W. Bush, measures were put in place to support Cuban opposition and "hasten the end" of the Castro regime. That policy has appeared to do nothing other than entrench communism even more.

March, 2009 - The U.S. steps to ease travel to Cuba fall short of the pledge by President Barack Obama, which would lift curbs on visits by Cuban-Americans to the island.
The U.S. Senate did cut off funds for enforcing Bush’s stricter rules on Cuban-Americans visiting Cuba. While praising the new provisions, which were included in a $410 billion spending bill, the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights said they did nothing to remove existing restrictions on travel to Cuba.
"This does not address the issue of Cuban-American travel, it certainly does not address the issue of American travel (to Cuba)," Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of the Miami-based group, told Reuters.

President Raúl Castro of Cuba began one of the biggest government shakeups in decades in March 2009. He explained the move simply as an attempt to streamline the government.
He fired a half-dozen top functionaries including two internationally prominent ministers: Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister, and Carlos Lage, the vice president and de facto economics czar which showed that under Mr. Castro, politics and decision-making are likely to remain as centralized and tightly controlled as they were under his brother, Fidel. Rather than dismantling Cuba’s socialist framework however, Raúl Castro seems to be trying to make it work more efficiently.

Seizing the momentum from recent meetings with Latin American leaders, the Obama administration is quietly pushing forward with efforts to reopen channels of communication with Cuba. Informal meetings are being planned between the State Department and Cuban diplomats in the United States to determine whether the two governments could open formal talks on a variety of issues, including migration, drug trafficking and other regional security matters. The administration is also looking for ways to open channels for more cultural and academic exchanges between Cuba and the United States, the officials said. The details and scope of the administration’s outreach to Cuba are still being worked out.
Mr. Obama has faced mounting pressure from Latin America and from his supporters in this country to do more to reverse the United States’ 47-year-old trade embargo against the Castro dictatorship. Cuba has become the litmus test by which many Latin American nations measure the United States’ commitment to improving relations with the region.

Despite all the pressure to change the embargo’s restrictions on trade against Cuba, The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the agency charged with harassing Cuba’s suppliers has just levied a $20,950 fine on Lactalis USA, a U.S. affiliate of the French giant Lactalis.
They imposed the fine on the cheese and dairy company for violating blockade regulations by “making electronic financial transactions in which Cuba or a Cuban citizen had an interest” between February 2004 and March 2007, according to media reports in Miami, Florida.
It was the first fine imposed by the Treasury Department on a company for ties to Cuba since President Barack Obama took power, and it reaffirms the policy of blockading the island.

The importance of integration in facing the current economic crisis and the search for new models of development, particularly those for fighting poverty, were at the center of the address given by Honduran President José Manuel Zelaya at the 11th International Economists’ Conference on Globalization and Development problems..
"Our economies are virtually isolated in the context of the international discussion by groups that monopolize trade, but when we are integrated we can find alternative answers," he said.
He recalled that when his country decided to become part of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which he described as "an action without precedent in Honduras," they began to implement large joint cooperation projects that aim to eliminate illiteracy, rural poverty, and boost the agrarian processes of small producers in the countryside, among others things, the president said.
Zelaya emphasized that the crisis has served to expose the system’s deficiencies and flaws and has shown its vices, its addictions, its frailty, and its weaknesses, affecting the structure of all components of the capitalist model. "It began as financial speculation in the United States and ended up affecting the banks, the multinational companies, and the world," he added.
At the end of his speech, he sent special greetings to the Cuban government and people. "We admire and respect Cuba, we have recognized its struggle" and he condemned "the absurd blockade" that the United States has imposed for five decades against the island.