The clock is ticking for President Barack Obama to make good on one of his biggest promises — closing Guantanamo Bay. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough backed the president on Sunday in what would be an enormous moral victory for the Obama Administration. “He feels an obligation to the next president. He will fix this so that they don't have to be confronted with the same set of challenges,” Mr McDonough said on Fox News Sunday.

We visit Havana to find out how politics affects food and how recent changes are being reflected in Cuban cuisine.

The mayor’s son drew on his cigarette, thought back sixty years, paused, and made a chopping motion on his lower thigh—fifteen inches, give or take, from his groin to just above his knee. “The women said, ‘He has a machete.’” The mayor’s son is in his seventies now, but he was a teenager back then, during the years of Havana’s original sin... By Mitch Moxley.

Cuba and the United States have agreed to restore a direct postal service, suspended 52 years ago at the height of the Cold War. A pilot postal service will be launched shortly, but it is not clear when a full service will be implemented. The move is part of the rapprochement process that was announced by Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro on 17 December last year. The two countries have since restored diplomatic ties and reopened embassies.

The new opening to Cuba would not have happened without an old-fashioned swap. Cuban spies were being held in U.S. prisons. And the Cubans were holding an American named Alan Gross. Gross was a U.S. government contractor who was setting up Internet connections in Cuba. But the Cuban government said he was a spy. It has been nearly a year since Gross became the lynchpin for the diplomatic breakthrough.

The Cuban government has shut down the island's only official email service provider and it's not clear when it'll come back. The Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA) announced in an official note Wednesday that it has had to "completely stop email services" in the country. As is often the case in Cuba, the communist government hasn't given an official reason for the shutdown. Service on the island has been spotty for more than a week...

In the first United Nations vote on a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo against Cuba since the two countries renewed diplomatic ties in July, Cuba scored its biggest victory yet as the General Assembly voted 191-2 to adopt the resolution. The only drama was how the United States would vote after its Dec. 17 announcement of a rapprochement with Cuba and its renewal of diplomatic relations with Havana in July after a gap of more than 54 years.

In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, President John F. Kennedy announces that U.S. spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. These missile sites—under construction but nearing completion—housed medium-range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in the United States, including Washington, D.C.

A few years ago some computer gamers based in Havana strung a small web of ethernet cables, from house to house, so they could play video games together. The network has grown quietly and today its called StreetNet: a bootleg internet for Havana with over 10,000 users. It was an innovation forged by necessity in a country where only 5 percent of the citizens have access to the uncensored internet. Watch the why Cuba's internet is stuck in 1995.

As we become a multicultural globally interconnect world, it is important to remember one thing: Cuban food is the best food.

Media smugglers get Taylor Swift, Game of Thrones, and the New York Times to Cubans every week through an illegal network of runners. In Cuba there is barely any internet. Anything but the state-run TV channels is prohibited. Publications are limited to the state-approved newspapers and magazines. This is the law. But, in typical Cuban fashion, the law doesn't stop a vast underground system of entertainment and news media distributors and consumers.

Media smugglers get Taylor Swift, Game of Thrones, and the New York Times to Cubans every week through an illegal network of runners.

Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. Castro’s visit stirred indignation and admiration from various sectors of American society, and was climaxed by his speech to the United Nations on September 26.

The United States on Friday issued regulations easing restrictions on American companies seeking to do business in Cuba and opening up travel in the latest move to weaken the U.S. trade embargo amid warming relations with the Communist country.

On August 18 at 22:00 UTC, I heard a government intelligence agency transferring encrypted messages to spies over the radio. Or at least, that's the most common explanation for what I heard. I dialed to the correct frequency—17480 kHz—using an internet-connected radio tuner maintained by a university in the Netherlands. Suddenly, over waves of static, an eerily-robotic woman's voice began speaking a series of five-digit number sequences in Spanish.

Cuba announced Friday that it is releasing 3,522 prisoners ahead of next week's visit by Pope Francis, the third time Cuba has granted inmates freedom before a papal trip. The Council of State announced in state media Friday that the prisoners to be freed include a mix of women, people younger than 20, inmates suffering from illnesses and people whose terms were coming to an end next year.

The Cuban Council of State has pardoned 3,522 prisoners as a goodwill gesture on the eve of the papal visit to the island.

The only American military installation abroad that's unwelcome to its host government is the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A treaty signed in 1934 leases Guantanamo to the United States in perpetuity, for about $4,000 a year. And the U.S. has no plans to leave, despite the two countries having just restored diplomatic ties.

Cuba has said it will welcome back doctors who deserted while serving on government-backed programmes abroad. The health ministry said doctors who fled in those circumstances would be guaranteed a job in Cuba and would incur no punishment or loss of status. Some 25,000 Cuban doctors are currently working abroad in programmes organised by the island's communist government.

It’s easy to know when you’ve encountered a wifi hotspot in Cuba, if only because they’re the only places that feel even remotely like you’re walking through an American city. It’s here that Havana’s chaotic streets—full of neighbors chatting outside their homes, old men playing dominoes, young lovers enthralled with each others’ presence—turn into places where people stare at their screens, just like most of the world seems to do all day, every day.