Latest Visa Stories

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Cuba complained on Friday that the United States denied a visa to the head of its delegation to a U.N. AIDS conference, but a U.S. spokesman said he applied too late. Cuba's Public Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera did not receive a visa, while four other members of the Cuban delegation were allowed into the United States to attend the conference. The three-day conference, due to end on Friday, was convened to plot global strategy for battling...

By Doug YoungSHANGHAI -- Chinese students are putting the "world" back into the Worldwide Web, using the Internet to prep each other in ultra-fine detail on the unfamiliar and often laborious process of applying to study abroad.Online chatter in China's cyberspace has intensified to a virtual roar, as many U.S. colleges this month issue admission letters for their Class of 2010.A posting at one of the most trafficked local sites, www.cuus.cn, keeps an ongoing list of the latest...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Turkish police have detained a British researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch for alleged visa violations and intend to deport him shortly, the rights group said on Wednesday. The researcher, Jonathan Sugden, was probing alleged abuses in the predominately Kurdish southeast of the country that involved Turkish police and government-armed local defense units, Human Rights Watch said in a statement. "The desire to cover up human rights abuses is evidently...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush took a look at Slovak Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's broken leg on Monday and joked that now would be a good time for a foot race between them. Bush has largely given up running in favor of mountain biking to ease the pounding on his 59-year-old legs. "This guy's a good runner," Bush told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Dzurinda. "And so now I feel comfortable challenging you to a race. Had you been healthy, I wouldn't...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States apologized and granted a visa on Friday to the Indian-born president of a world science body after he said he was refused entry on charges of hiding information that could be used for chemical weapons. Professor Goverdhan Mehta, 62, an internationally recognized organic chemist, is president of the Paris-based International Council for Science (ICSU) and had been invited to a conference by the University of Florida. The U.S. embassy said his...

By Carlos Quiroga LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivian President Evo Morales criticized the United States on Thursday for canceling the visa of one of his closest confidantes in the leftist leader's first run-in with Washington since taking power a month ago. Sen. Leonilda Zurita, a leader of coca farmers whose battle cry was "Long live coca, Death to Yankees!," found out her multiple-entry U.S. visa, which was valid until 2008, had been canceled when she tried to travel to Miami to...

VIENNA (Reuters) - The European Union urged Washington on Saturday to speed up efforts to extend its visa waiver scheme to new EU members. A report by the executive Commission cited the United States, Canada and Australia as having made no real progress in signing reciprocal accords with the predominantly ex-communist states under which countries waive the need for visas. "Member states don't want at all to open a dispute with the United States, Canada and Australia and nor do we (the...

By Bernd Debusmann LAREDO, Texas (Reuters) - The United States is closing a legal loophole which has allowed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to slip into the country and join the estimated 11 million undocumented foreigners already here. Under long-standing procedure along the U.S. border with Mexico, illegal crossers of nationalities other than Mexican -- dubbed OTMs by the Border Patrol -- have been entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge before they could be...

By Bernd DebusmannLAREDO, Texas -- The United States is closing a legal loophole which has allowed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to slip into the country and join the estimated 11 million undocumented foreigners already here.Under long-standing procedure along the U.S. border with Mexico, illegal crossers of nationalities other than Mexican -- dubbed OTMs by the Border Patrol -- have been entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge before they could be deported.Because of a...

By Bernd DebusmannLAREDO, Texas (Reuters) - The United States is closing a legal loophole which has allowed tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to slip into the country and join the estimated 11 million undocumented foreigners already here.Under long-standing procedure along the U.S. border with Mexico, illegal crossers of nationalities other than Mexican -- dubbed OTMs by the Border Patrol -- have been entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge before they could be...