Globe Trot: Obama preps for historic Cuba trip

CUBA: With President Barack Obama easing travel restrictions and making his own visit to Cuba March 21-22, Americans already are eyeing Cuba as a travel destination. Here’s a truer picture from filmmaker John Northrup (with photo credit to my husband Nat Belz): Most Cubans try to make ends meet on about $20 a month. Paul Northrup, John’s father, started Iglesia Las Buenas Nuevas 60 years ago, a church that’s grown into an evangelical denomination of 75 brick-and-mortar churches and more than 300 house churches around Cuba.

IRAQ: The Obama administration faces a March 17 deadline to declare Islamic State (ISIS) activity against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East genocide. Columnist Kirsten Powers makes a thorough plea in USA Today. Some Iraqi Christian leaders say they’re confused over all the focus on genocide legalities. And, frankly, my bet is the administration will take a pass and say it’s not bound by a spending-bill stipulation, having already communicated it won’t make a difference in U.S. protection (currently about zero) to targeted areas. I hope I’m wrong. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a testy exchange at a Capitol Hill hearing last week, seems at least inclined.

BURMA/MYANMAR: Htin Kyaw, a Burmese writer and scholar who’s never held an elected office, was chosen by parliament to head the government as the country’s first civilian head of state in decades. He will be joined by vice president Myent Swe, picked by the military “reserve” of parliament (and a hardliner prohibited from traveling to the United States), and Henry Van Thio, second vice president and a Christian from the country’s Chin ethnic minority.

NORTH KOREA: Spring breakers, better not mess around in a country without diplomatic relations with the United States.Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia student, has been sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor for “subversive activities,” i.e., stealing a propaganda banner from a hotel.

RUSSIA: The United Nations stripped Maria Sharapova of her UN goodwill ambassadorship after the tennis great failed a drug test ahead of the Australian Open.

CORRECTION: The convent attacked in Yemen affiliates with the Catholic order Missionaries of Charity (see March 11 “Globe Trot”).