Raul castro, the president of cuba will also give a News Conference in his country that will happen at noon eastern time. Of course cnn will continue to follow this breaking news throughout the day. Thank you for joining me today, im carol kos toll low. this hour with berman and michaela starts now. Hello, everyone. Im john berman. And. And im michaela pereira. History is being made at this hour after more than a half century of tension and diplomat diplomatic silence between the u. S. Its releasing alan gross from prison after five years. A series of genuinely breathtaking developments. Cuba is also releasing a u. S. Intelligence asset, a spy, whos been locked up in cuba for more than 20 years. In Return Washington is freeing three cuban spies convicted in 2001 of espionage. That is big in and of itself. It all seems part now of something much, much bigger. President obama will announce major changes in u. S. Policy toward cuba. Officials calling them the most sweeping changes since t
leaders, with the cuban american congressional delegation, both democrat and republican and evan is right. he and i do disagree on some of this. i disagree that the demographics have changed as much as some would like us to believe they ve changed. they ve changed some and after this recent election there were mistaken reports that cuban americans had voted majority for charlie crist and they haven t. in fact, if you take a look at florida, there s not one, one statewide elected official that does not support the embargo. the one congressman, democrat cuban american who did support the embargo just got beat like a drum, his name was joe garcia, by a new generation of cubans, carlos corbello who is in his 30s and supports sanctions on cuba. so i think you won t see any change on the congressional opposition from the cuban american front. and though they are they can
years. president obama set to announce with these wide ranging initiatives, really everything he can do outside of the existing legislation. so we re talking about a relaxing of travel restrictions for americans that means a general license to travel practically anything of terrorism, a resumption of banking between the u.s. and cuban banks, americans k use credit cards on the island. the president also going to announce expanded commercial and export of sales and goods to cuba. and officials say this is not a reward to the cuban regime, the regime of the castros but more an acknowledgement that the embargo is not working and that if the u.s. wants to encourage further reforms on the island it needs to engage more with the cuban government and people. they say they will not let up on human rights and actually as part of this deal cuba has
he landed at andrews air force base a little while ago. he s going on now to try to recover the health that was so badly damaged by five years in cuban prison. but there s a much bigger story here, which is a loosening of decades-long restrictions. cubans are still finding out about this basically from u.s. media that s here. they don t have easy access to the internet or regular access to channels like cnn. and raul castro is due to address the nation here any moment now. the cubans still haven t been told by the official state media that this very important change is taking place. they have to let this change sink in, something most people here never thought was going to happen, which is the u.s. if not lifting the embargo, finally loosening some important restrictions that have kept these two countries divided for so long, wolf. the president of cuba, raul castro, i take it he s about to make a statement on television
we ve come a long way and what is driving this, i think, is demographics, frankly. the fact that you vent v younger cubans that don t feel the embargo has worked. you have older cubans who still support it but younger cubans don t. also since 1980 and the demographic population of students who have come here, they re economic migrants, not because they re fleeing political oppression, i think ana and i would disagree on this but that is also driving this. this is why the obama administration feels that it s safe to do something like this. ana, evan was mentioning where the support for this move today will come from but there is also fierce opposition as well you are living in miami right now. what reaction are you hearing there? well, i have been communicating since the early morning with cuban american