Odds and ends

·      Just in: an academic paper that speculates on the possible cause of the sounds heard by U.S. diplomats in Havana, but not on the cause of the harms.

·      Cuba turns to SES Networks of Belgium to expand its connection to the global Internet and to improve connectivity internally. The contract is described in the company’s press release and in Granma.

·      Dissident Eliecer Avila, on extended stay in the United States, praises the U.S. health care system after his first child was born in a Virginia hospital. Medicaid covered all the costs.

·      From Max Boot’s new biography of the CIA’s Edward Lansdale, an excerpt on Operation Mongoose and the “remote, romantic myth” of creating a Cuban opposition movement from the outside. It turns out that Lansdale hated the Cuba assignment and wanted out the whole time.

·      A sharply written first-person article in Granma on a section of Cuba’s central highway in Villa Clara that is in disrepair and causing fatal accidents.

·      A new anglicism, “buldoceada,” in a Granma story about the war against marabu. The Real Academia doesn’t recognize it, but it means “bulldozed.”

·      In Cubadebate, a progress report on the Mariel economic zone.

·      As we debate Russian interference in the 2016 election, Granma scoffs that we’re getting a taste of our own medicine.