By David Adams MIAMI (Reuters) - A visit by American pop star Beyonce and rapper husband Jay-Z to Havana last week was a cultural trip that was fully licensed by the U.S. Treasury Department, a source familiar with the itinerary said on Monday. The longstanding U.S. trade embargo against Cuba prevents most Americans from travelling to the communist-led island without a license granted by the U.S. government.

Cuba's best-known dissident, journalist Yoani Sanchez, received a hero's welcome on Monday from the Cuban-American exile community in Miami, her latest stop in an 80-day tour of more than a dozen countries. It was the largest and most politically unified reception in at least a decade for a dissident from the island by Miami's Cuban-American exile community, which has often clashed with opposition figures in Cuba over political strategy. With many leaders of Miami's Cuban-exile community in attendance, Sanchez was introduced as “an authentic defender and heroine” of human right

Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez paid a visit to Miami on Monday, home to the biggest community of Cuban-Americans, who welcomed her with cheers -- and some concerns. Here since Thursday as part of an international tour that also included a stop at the White House, the award-winning blogger and journalist spent some bittersweet time over the weekend meeting with relatives who had left the Americas' only communist country for the United States two years ago.

Miami, Apr 1 (EFE).- Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez on Monday issued a call to Cuban exiles to help forge a feeling of unity among all Cubans and to end the existence of "Fidel's Cubans and Miami's Cubans." "There is no you and us, there is only us. We won't permit them to remain separate," she said from Miami's Freedom Tower, an emblematic site for Cubans who left the island after Fidel Castro took power in 1959.