Foreign Policy

Some 57% of Latinos now say they approve of the job that Obama is doing

President Barack Obama’s approval rating with Latinos has jumped 10 points since he announced a new policy of deportation relief for millions of undocumented immigrants, a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll shows.

The new survey of 250 Latino adults shows that 57% now say they approve of the job that Obama is doing, compared with 47% of Latino voters who said the same in September, before the immigration announcement.

And, when asked if they approve of how Obama is handling the issue of immigration specifically, 56% give the president a thumbs up…

Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News

Cuban MiGs shot down their two small, private planes in February 1996

The South Florida families of pilots fatally shot down by Cuba in 1996 are speaking out against the Wednesday release of three members of the convicted spies known as the “Cuban Five” in a prisoner swap — among them one who had been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder over the shootdown.

“For the only person that we had responsible for what happened to be let go — it’s a slap in the face to my dad,” Marlene Alejandre-Triana said at a news conference.

Alejandre-Triana’s father Armando Alejandre, a Vietnam veteran, was one of four pilots killed when Cuban MiGs shot down their two small, private planes in February 1996 in international waters…

Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News

Fallout prompted studio to pull The Interview

American officials have determined the government of North Korea is connected to the hack that left Sony Entertainment Pictures reeling and eventually prompted it to pull a movie critical of the country’s leader, a U.S. official confirmed Wednesday.

Much remains unclear about the nature of North Korea’s involvement. The country, while lauding the hack against Sony, has denied being behind it. There were conflicting reports Wednesday evening, and officials are expected to unveil their findings Thursday. But the U.S. official confirmed to TIME that intelligence officials have indeed determined North Korea was behind the hack, one of the worst cyberattacks ever against an American company.

The New York Times, citing senior Obama Administration officials, reported that intelligence officials have determined North Korea was “centrally involved.” NBC News, also citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported that the Americans believe the hacking came from outside North Korea itself, but that the hackers were acting on orders from Pyongyang.

MORE: The 7 most outrageous things we learned from the Sony hack

The hack exposed reams of company data, including employees’ emails and salaries. A group calling itself the Guardians of Peace claimed credit. And analysts have speculated North Korea was behind an attack that came before the scheduled release of The Interview, a Sony movie that depicts American journalists enlisted by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (North Korean officials have criticized the movie.) Threats of 9/11-style attacks against theaters that show the movie led many theaters to say this week that they wouldn’t screen it, which prompted Sony to cancel the scheduled Christmas Day release altogether.

“We are deeply saddened by this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees and the American public,” Sony said in a statement. “We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome.”

In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, President Barack Obama called the hack against Sony “very serious,” but suggested authorities have yet to find any credibility in the threat of attacks against theaters.

“For now, my recommendation would be that people go to the movies,” Obama said.

President Obama thanked Pope Francis for his role in negotiating a more open policy on Cuba and the release of U.S. citizen Alan Gross from Cuban custody.

In a 15-minute speech announcing that the U.S. would normalize relations with Cuba, Obama said that the pope helped spur the change and personally thanked him. The Vatican then released a statement noting that the Vatican hosted delegations from both countries in October to negotiate the deal after Pope Francis had written to both leaders.

A senior administration official said that the appeal from the Pope was “very rare” and unprecedented.

“Pope Francis personally issued an appeal in a letter that he sent to President Obama and to President Raul Castro calling on them to resolve the case of Alan Gross and the cases of the three Cubans who have been imprisoned here in the United States and also encouraging the United States and Cuba to pursue a closer relationship,” said the official. “The Vatican then hosted the US and Cuban delegations where we were able to review the commitments that we are making today.”

American officials have also noted Francis’ deep familiarity with the Americas, being the first pope from the continent. The letter from Pope Francis “gave us greater impetus and momentum for us to move forward,” a white House official said. “Cuba was a topic of discussion that got as much attention as anything else the two of them discuss.”

The move is perhaps Pope Francis’ boldest foreign policy move yet, but it is not his first.

• He showed letter-writing prowess in September 2013, when he wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin, host of the G-20 Summit which Obama was attending, urging world leaders and the United States to oppose a military intervention in Syria.

• After visiting Bethlehem and Jerusalem in May, Pope Francis hosted both Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican for a joint prayer service for Middle East Peace.

• When he visited South Korea in August, he sent a telegram to Chinese President Xi Jinping when the papal plane crossed into Chinese airspace—a historic step toward improved relations since the last time a pope visited East Asia, Chinese officials did not allow the plane to fly over Chinese territory.

When it comes to Cuba, Pope Francis is continuing the work of his predecessors. Just over half the Cuban population is Catholic, according to the Pew Research Center, and the Vatican stepped up its relations with the country over the past two decades. In 1998, Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit Cuba. Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba in 2012. At an outdoor mass, he urged Cuba to “build a renewed and open society, a better society, one more worthy of humanity and which better reflects the goodness of God.”

The announcement of the Vatican’s role in the U.S.-Cuba negotiations is particularly noteworthy as Pope Francis plans his first trip to the United States in September 2015. The Vatican has not said whether or not Pope Francis will travel to Cuba or other US cities on that trip.

Former Secretary of State Clinton considers the U.S.'s failure to bring Alan Gross home one of her "regrets"

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in her recent autobiography one of her biggest regrets of her tenure was that she was not able to bring home an American who was held as a prisoner in Cuba. Today, President Obama will announce that Alan Gross, a USAID contractor who was arrested in 2009 for bringing satellite equipment to Cuba, will return to the U.S.

In Hard Choices, Clinton calls the Cuban government’s refusal to release Gross unless the U.S. released five convicted Cuban spies a “double tragedy,” saying in part:

It is possible that hard liners within the regime exploited the Gross case as an opportunity to put the brakes on any possible rapprochement with the United States and the domestic reforms that would require. If so, it is a double tragedy, cosigning millions of Cubans to a kind of continued imprisonment as well.

On the embargo, she had this to say:

Near the end of my tenure I recommended to President Obama that he take another look at our embargo. It wasn’t achieving its goals and it was holding back our broader agenda across Latin America. After twenty years of observing and dealing with the U.S.-Cuba relationship, I thought we should shift the onus onto the Castros to explain why they remained undemocratic and abusive.

In an interview with Fusion TV in July, Clinton repeated that the embargo has been a failure and said she would like to visit Cuba one day.

Read next: U.S. and Cuba Move to Thaw Relations After Prisoner Exchange

Alan Gross was convicted of espionage in Cuba while working as a U.S. contractor

Alan Gross's release brings an immediate cooling of tensions

Secretary of State talks military action against ISIS with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

The Obama Administration’s policy on Syria is frequently criticized as muddy — for opposing both the regime of President Bashar Assad and a major extremist faction in that country’s civil war, yet mounting military operations only against the latter, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS. So there was a certain thematic unity in the appearance of Secretary of State John Kerry before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

Kerry came to iron out the constitutional authorization for the administration’s military actions against the Sunni militants. Such weighty legal questions are never easy. In theory Congress could declare war, as Republican Sen. Rand Paul insists the Constitution demands. Tuesday’s proceedings, in fact, were sparked by Paul’s effort to attach a declaration of war to a water bill a few days earlier. “The Constitution is quite clear that this responsibility rests with Congress,” Paul told Kerry, nearly three hours into the marathon hearing.

But as Kerry pointed out in reply, the last time Congress declared war was for World War II. Conflicts since then have been authorized by other legal mechanisms, such as the War Powers Act, passed after the Vietnam War dragged on for more than a decade. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq went forward from separate Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, passed in 2001 and 2002, respectively. The White House maintains that those measures also authorize military action against ISIS, which has been going on since August in Iraq, and since September in Syria. So what was Kerry doing at Tuesday’s hearing?

Being diplomatic, apparently, as befits a Secretary of State. President Barack Obama has said that although he doesn’t really need a new authorization, a buy-in on any sustained military action makes good political and constitutional sense, and so he would welcome a measure specifically naming ISIS, or ISIL, as U.S. officials refer to the group. But as Foreign Relations Committee members complained at length, the White House has failed to provide language for such a bill. “The reason we’re here is a total failure of the President to lead on this issue by sending anything up here,” said Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who serves as ranking minority member, but will become chair next year, when the GOP becomes majority in both chambers. “And we all want the same thing.”

Not exactly, Kerry said: From the administration’s point of view, the measure written by the Democratic Chairman, Sen.Robert Menedez of New Jersey, is a good starting point. But the President would rather remove language that limits the circumstances under which he could send ground troops into action — even though Obama has repeatedly stated ground troops will not be used against ISIS, except to train the Syrian and Iraqi forces that should do all the fighting. “I don’t think anyone wants to get into a long-term ground operation here,” Kerry said. “But we also don’t want to hamstring our generals.” The White House has not produced specific language it desires, however, perhaps to avoid headlines suggesting Obama wants to keep boots on the ground as an option.

Whatever the reason for the reticence, it irks members of both parties. “If he wants authority to win the fight, he’s got to tell us what the fight looks like,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican. Christopher Coons of Delaware, a Democratic Senator, complained the White House was turning its back on support from its own party: “We can’t go home and defend what the strategy is.”

The entire exercise, in a Lame Duck session, was academic at worst, and at best a dress rehearsal for the new year, when the Republicans will take control and — given the hawkish tenor of the GOP members — likely give Obama all the freedom he asks. Except for Paul, who scolded the administration on strict constructionist grounds, the harshest words were from Sen. John McCain, who called the hearing “kind of a charade.” The Arizona Republican stormed out after refusing to concede Kerry’s suggestion that more moderate Syrian rebels the administration has promised to arm are not, in fact, being left to die — owing, Kerry hinted, to secret measures that could not be discussed in a public setting. “More is being done, and more is being done than I can talk about in this hearing,” he said.