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WRITING ASSESSMENT: You have six sources of information in front of you. Write a 500-word story about President Barack Obama s planned trip to Cuba. Please use AP Style and proper attribution. Include a headline and dek (subhead). 1) Obama planning historic trip to Cuba to cement warmer ties WASHINGTON (AP) President Barack Obama is planning an historic visit to Cuba in the coming weeks, senior Obama administration officials said Wednesday, becoming the first president to step foot on the island in nearly nine decades. Obama's brief visit will be part of a broader trip to Latin America that the White House will announce Thursday, said the officials, who requested anonymity because the trip hasn't been officially announced. The visit is expected to take place in mid-march, one official said. Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced in late 2014 that they would begin normalizing ties after a half-century of Cold War opposition. The Obama administration is eager to make rapid progress on building trade and diplomatic ties with Cuba before Obama leaves office. 2) US, Cuba sign deal on commercial flights HAVANA (AP) The United States and Cuba signed a deal Tuesday restoring commercial air traffic for the first time in five decades, allowing dozens of new daily flights to bring hundreds of thousands more American travelers a year to the island as early as this fall. Immediately after the signing, the U.S. Department of Transportation opened bidding by American air carriers on as many as 110 U.S.-Cuba flights a day more than five times the current number. All flights operating between the two countries today are charters.
Barring other major announcements, the restart of commercial flights will be the most significant development in U.S.-Cuba trade since Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced in late 2014 that they would begin normalizing ties after a half-century of Cold War opposition. The Obama administration is eager to make rapid progress on building trade and diplomatic ties with Cuba before the president leaves office. The coming weeks are seen as particularly crucial to building momentum ahead of a trip he hopes to make to Havana by the end of March. "Today is a historic day in the relationship between Cuba and the U.S.," U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said after he and Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez signed the deal in a ceremony at Havana's Hotel Nacional. "It represents a critically important milestone in the U.S. effort to engage with Cuba." The U.S. Department of Transportation expects to award the new routes by the summer. The winning airlines then must negotiate their own deals with Cuba. The agreement allows 20 regular daily U.S. flights to Havana, in addition to the current 10-15 charter flights a day. The rest would be to other Cuban cities. Commercial flights make travel to Cuba far easier for U.S. travelers, with features such as online booking and 24-hour customer service that are largely absent in the charter industry. U.S. visitors to Cuba will still have to qualify under one of the travel categories legally authorized by the U.S. government. Tourism is still barred by law, but the number of legal reasons to go to Cuba from organizing professional meetings to distributing information to Cubans has grown so large and loosely enforced that the distinction from tourism has blurred significantly. Commercial travel will give travelers the ability to simply check an online box on a long list of authorized categories. 3)
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President Obama is going to Cuba. Here s why: (Excerpt from Medium, by Ben Rhodes) There is much more that can be done by the United States, and by the Cuban government to advance this opening in ways that will be good for Cubans, and good for the United States. That is why President Obama is traveling to Cuba. We want to open up more opportunities for U.S. businesses and travelers to engage with Cuba, and we want the Cuban government to open up more opportunities for its people to benefit from that engagement. Ultimately, we believe that Congress should lift an embargo that is not to advancing the Cuban people s individual wellbeing and human rights, and remove onerous restrictions that aim to dictate to Americans where they can and cannot travel. Even as we pursue normalization, we ve made clear that we will continue to have serious differences with the Cuban government particularly on human rights. While Cuba released Alan Gross, a number of political prisoners and recently hosted the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, we continue to oppose and speak out against restrictions on rights like freedom of speech and assembly and space for independent civil society that the United States supports around the world. While we do not seek to impose change on Cuba, we strongly believe that Cuba will benefit when the Cuban people can exercise their universal rights. President Obama has raised these issues in his discussions with President Castro, and will continue to do so. As the President has said, Cuba will not change overnight, nor will all of the various differences between our countries go away. But the guiding principle of our Cuba policy our North Star remains taking steps that will improve the lives of the Cuban people.
5) Video excerpt from a CNN Republican town hall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh5ipvuhfak 6) Statement by the President on Cuba Policy Changes, Dec. 17. 2014. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/statement-presidentcuba-policy-changes