By: TED JACKOVICS
Media General News Service

An Orbitz.com-Ipsos poll released this morning found 67 percent of respondents favored ending the U.S. ban on most travel to Cuba compared with 23 percent who oppose lifting restrictions.

The findings generally replicate recent polls by ABC News/Washington Post, CBS News/New York Times, Gallup Poll and CNN/Opinion Research Corp., whose findings of support to open U.S. travel to Cuba ranged from 55 to 64 percent.

The Orbitz.com-Ipsos poll also found that 72 percent of those surveyed believed that expanding travel and tourism from the United States to Cuba would have a positive impact on the lives of the Cuban people.

The telephone poll by the online travel agency and independent research group got responses from 1,000 randomly selected people between April 23 and 27 and is said to be accurate within 3.1 percentage points.

Orbitz.com is offering a $100 coupon for Cuban vacation travel for those who sign a petition to President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and Congress at www.opencuba.org, if the travel ban is lifted.

“With President Obama’s relaxation of travel restrictions to Cuba for Cuban-Americans, there may be an opportunity for change,” spokesman Brian Hoyt said.

WASHINGTON – Joe Biden said Thursday he advised his family to stay off airplanes and subways because of the swine flu, a remark that forced the vice president’s office to backtrack, the travel industry to cry foul and other government officials to try to massage Biden’s message.

“I would tell members of my family – and I have – that I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show.

Biden, who has a reputation for off-the-cuff remarks, went beyond any precautions recommended by the federal government. In discussing his personal advice to his family, he said simply, “That’s me.”

Within two hours, Biden’s office issued a statement backing off the remarks and suggesting he was talking about travel to Mexico.

“On the ‘Today Show’ this morning, the vice president was asked what he would tell a family member who was considering air travel to Mexico this week,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander. “The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans: that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico. If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways.”

Biden, who has three grown children and five grandchildren, was asked whether he would advise his own family against flying to Mexico on a commercial flight.

“It’s not just going to Mexico, if you’re in a confined aircraft and one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft,” Biden said on NBC. “That’s me. I would not be at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends avoiding nonessential travel to Mexico. But it isn’t recommending that people avoid other travel because of the swine flu.

The airline and travel industries were quick to criticize Biden’s remarks.

James May, president of the Air Transport Association, which represents airlines, sent Biden a letter expressing “extreme disappointment at your suggestion that people should avoid air travel.”

American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith declined to comment directly on the vice president’s remarks, but said, “To suggest that people not fly at this stage of things is a broad brush stroke bordering on fear mongering.”

U.S. Travel Association President Roger Dow urged the public to “heed the advice of medical experts” and gently chided the vice president without specifically mentioning him.

“Elected officials must strike a delicate balance of accurately and adequately informing citizens of health concerns without unduly discouraging travel and other important economic activity,” Dow said in a statement.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano offered to rewrite Biden’s words for him: “I think the vice president … if he could say that over again, he would say if they’re feeling sick, they should stay off of public transit or confined spaces because that is indeed the advice that we’re giving,” she said on MSNBC.

On Radio Iowa this morning, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, was less forgiving, calling it “a very unfortunate statement by the vice president.”

During his decades as Delaware senator, Biden was a regular on Amtrak, riding the train from Wilmington to Washington.

Asked on NBC’s “Today” show whether the U.S. government should close the border with Mexico, Biden said health authorities advise that would be impractical and noted the new flu is already in the U.S. and several other nations.

Instead, Biden said, the focus should be on slowing the spread of the virus through groups of people in close quarters, such as airplanes, malls, stadiums and classrooms.

“Closing the classroom and closing the border are two fundamentally different things,” he said.

WASHINGTON – Democrats controlling Congress are loosening restrictions on allowing people of Cuban descent to visit their relatives on the island.

A huge bill wrapping up last year’s budget would block enforcement of restrictions imposed by President Bush in 2004 on family travel to Cuba. The Bush rules limit family visits to once every three years for no more than 14 days. Travel spending is now capped at $50 per day.

Once signed by Obama, the legislation would allow Cuban-Americans to travel to Cuba once a year to visit relatives, spend up to $170 a day and visit for an unlimited duration.

The legislation would also expand the definition of family to include first cousins, aunts and uncles.

It would also remove impediments imposed by Bush in 2005 that made it more difficult to finance sales of food and medicine to Cuba.

The bill is slated to pass the House this week and the Senate soon thereafter.

NEW YORK – One is the nation’s top diplomat with a doctorate in Russian studies who has visited more than 50 foreign countries this year alone. The other is the first-term governor of Alaska who may have seen Russia on a clear day and got her first passport just last year.

Yet this week in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Sarah Palin have become unlikely foreign policy rivals as the Republican vice presidential nominee embarks on a crash course to acquire international credentials.

With only four months left in office, the highest-ranking woman in the Bush administration has found herself jockeying for world leaders’ time with a woman who could become the nation’s first female vice president – a job for which Rice was once considered a hot prospect.

On Tuesday, former national security adviser Rice played second fiddle to Palin on one of America’s most critical relationships, meeting Afghan President Hamid Karzai some three hours after the ex-mayor of Wasilla.

There was no explanation given for the timing that struck some as unusual given that Rice has a long-standing friendship with Karzai, having visited him in Kabul at least five times since she became secretary of state and seen him on numerous other occasions elsewhere.

Rice spent much of the day trailing President Bush, who gave his farewell address to the annual U.N. gathering.

Palin is also seeing six other world leaders – Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in New York this week.
 
It’s a veritable whirlwind world tour for a self-proclaimed “hockey mom” who had never before met a foreign head of state and whose previous experience abroad was limited to a brief trip to Kuwait and Germany to see Alaskan National Guard troops and visits to Mexico and Canada.

Meanwhile, Rice is closing in on the million mile mark in her overseas travels while secretary. As of July 30, she had flown 958,520 miles on 76 diplomatic missions to 79 different countries, according to the State Department.

Rice does have more than her fair share of meetings this week, including some with the same people Palin is seeing. Her schedule is packed with scores of individual and group sessions with her foreign minister colleagues. On Monday, she crammed in a whopping 14 of these.
 
There are no plans for Palin to meet Rice while both are in New York. Rice has said she liked the Alaska governor’s national debut speech during the Republican convention but asked directly if Palin has enough experience, Rice demurred.

“These are decisions that Sen. McCain has made. I have great confidence in him,” Rice said during an interview with CNN this month.
  
Rice added that as secretary of state she avoids politics. Rice plans to return to a teaching post next year.

WASHINGTON – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has charged her state a daily allowance, normally used for official travel, for more than 300 nights spent at her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

An analysis of travel statements filed by the governor, now John McCain’s Republican running mate, shows she claimed the per diem allowance on 312 occasions when she was home in Wasilla and that she billed taxpayers $43,490 for travel by her husband and children.

Per diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. State officials told The Post her claims – nearly $17,000 over 19 months – were permitted because her “duty station” is Juneau, the capital, and she was in Wasilla 600 miles away. The governor moved to Juneau last year but often stays in Wasilla and works 45 miles away, in a state office in Anchorage.

Palin’s spending and record in office are coming under intense scrutiny as she is presented to the nation as a champion of ethics reform and frugal use of tax dollars.