Odds and ends

• How the Cuba trade issue is playing in this year’s Kansas GOP Senate primary.

• Omara Portuondo concerts canceled in Washington and Miami Beach.

• Reuters: The Bolshoi performs in Havana for the first time in 30 years.

• Things look very different from a distance: As the Russian foreign minister visits Havana, here are Russian views of Cuba’s place in the world, and Moscow’s and Washington’s relations with Cuba.

• Former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez says that an open and secure Internet can “help lead the world from these troubled times into a new age of peace and prosperity.” He also says that detained USAID contractor Alan Gross was assisting “Jewish nonprofits in setting up Internet access for [Cuba’s] Jewish community.”

• The New York Times reviews “A Little Bit of Cuba,” a restaurant in Freehold, New Jersey.

• Cuban Colada takes us through an article in Granma that explains how recent bread shortages coincided with a period of increased bread production. With a link to the original.

• Granma: U.S. sanctions thwart a French windsurfer’s plan for a Key West-Havana trip. English version here.