Daily Headlines: May 6, 2014

* Cuba: A delegation of four U.S. legislators visited Cuba and called on the Castro regime and U.S. President Barack Obama to “make a serious commitment to engage in negotiations” for the liberation of imprisoned contractor Alan Gross.

* Mexico: In his latest full-page advertisement in Mexican newspapers, acclaimed film director Alfonso Cuarón called for public debates in order to discuss a major energy reform proposal supported by President Enrique Peña Nieto.

* Latin America: Former U.S Secretary of State George Schultz, British deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and five Nobel-prize winning economists became the latest prominent voices to speak out against the “war on drugs.”

* Brazil: Brazil’s main stock index rose to its highest point in nearly five months yesterday after polls showed that President Dilma Rousseff’s odds of winning reelection in the first round have decreased.

Video Source – YouTube user JewishNewsOne (Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor serving a fifteen-year prison sentence in Cuba following a 2011 conviction, went one a seven-day hunger strike last month).

Online Sources – GlobalPost; NBC News; Reuters; Bloomberg