Odds and ends

• BBC: Two months after the policy change, no Cuban post offices have been equipped to give Cubans full Internet access. Reporter Fernando Ravsberg chalks it up to the “slowness that is typical of the Cuban bureacucracy.” In his story, he follows a Cuban who gets full web access by paying for it at the Hotel Nacional, and he notes that Cuban bloggers are using these hotel facilities to run their blogs.

• AFP finds a woman who sells pizza and ice cream from her house on Obispo street, and whose business is booming since the nearby finance and internal commerce ministries closed their cafeterias.

• The LA Times profiles first baseman Kendry Morales, who hit .306 this season with the Angels and is headed with his team to the playoffs against Boston.

• Reuters: Cuba publishes statistical reports showing a 30 percent cut in tobacco acreage.

• A bit of history: the 1965 testimony of Fidel’s sister, Juanita Castro, before the House Un-American Activities Committee. (H/t Penultimos Dias.)

• AP: Singer Omara Portuondo has a U.S. visa and will perform in California later this month.

• Senator Dorgan, displeased with the Treasury Department’s decision regarding the New York Philharmonic’s travel license, wants the agency “to think straight just a bit.” Cuban Colada reports that orchestra officials will try again, and tells us the program that would have been played.

• USA Today: Charles Hill, an American fugitive in Cuba, looks at prospects for normalized relations and what it would mean for him.

• The Herald reviews the Obama Administration’s approach to granting licenses to Americans to travel to Cuba, and visas for Cuban academics and others to come here.