Now in The Washington Post online. Tomorrow in the paper edition. "U.S. will expel 15 Cuban diplomats, escalating tensions over mystery illnesses" 

The Hill reports that Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) wants reciprocity in U.S. Cuba relations: "I just think it is fair and, and reciprocal for us to require a proportional drawdown of the Cuban Embassy and the Cuban diplomatic presence in the United States," he said.  ABC News reports that Tour companies, airlines, cruises and others in the travel industry will continue taking Americans to Cuba despite a dramatic safety warning issued Friday by the U.S. State Department.

When Raul Castro attempted to smuggle war planes to North Korea during the Obama Administration, the State Department response was that it was really not that significant. Ibid. for other anti-American actions carried out by the regime including Russian spy ships back in Havana. There are still Obama holdovers in the foreign policy machinery of the United States, but the sonic attacks on American diplomats in Cuba could not be swept under the rug after CBS Radio reported the story and the Department of State was forced to acknowledge it.

Fox says Trump’s Cuba policy stalls perhaps due to lack of resources and staff at Treasury. Why not reassign whatever federal funds are required?  If the holdovers from the previous Administration remain in control, President Trump could issue an Executive Order, just like he did on Venezuela recently.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told CBS ’s “Face the Nation” recently that the U.S. is thinking about closing its Embassy in Havana in response to mysterious acoustic attacks on U.S. personnel that have injured at least 21 Americans.

More than a week after the hurricane caused havoc in Cuba, despite pleas from many for the regime to relax custom fees so that the much needed food, medicine, clothing, foot wear, and supplies to rebuild the country would come in much larger quantities, the government has yet to respond. What the government has done is to sell food to some of the families impacted by the hurricane. There have been protests. We publish here an article "Cubans Hope For Customs Moratorium After Irma" published on the 19th by 14ymedio.
 

It had both striking rhetoric and a sound argument. In his speech to the United Nations, President Trump very successfully met the political and intellectual challenge he faced. He reminded the delegates that the United Nations was never meant to be a gigantic bureaucracy that would steadily become a world government. Rather, he said, it is an association of sovereign states whose strength depends “on the independent strength of its members.” Its success, he argued, depends on their success at governing well as “strong, sovereign, and independent nations.”

The strange case of U.S. diplomats in Cuba who suffered hearing loss and brain injury from mysterious sound waves emitted as they worked at the U.S. embassy in Havana seriously tests the emerging relations between the two countries.

“The State Department did not talk publicly about the incident until August, months after the problems were uncovered,” according to The Washington Post. 

Five Republican senators are urging Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to punish Cuba after U.S. diplomats stationed in the island nation were harassed and injured under mysterious circumstances.

• The Hill: US still searching for explanation for diplomats’ brain injuries in Cuba
• The Guardian: Cuba's crumbling infrastructure no match for might of Irma
• 14ymedio: Hundreds of Havanans Protest in Neighborhood Five Days Without Electricity or Water / Updated

The State Department reported Tuesday that it has catalogued additional recent incidents involving harm to American diplomats in Cuba but said that the cause remains unknown.

Holidaymakers returning from Cuba have hit out at the lack of communication from travel firms as Hurricane Irma sweeps across the Caribbean — and the fact that travellers are still being taken to the region. 

Earlier today, the Miami Herald reports that “the U.S. imposed its first economic penalties against Venezuela, hitting the South American country’s financial sector in an attempt to starve President Nicolás Maduro’s government of cash. The Trump administration banned trades of Venezuelan debt, prohibiting Maduro’s government and its state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA, from selling new bonds to Americans or in U.S. financial institutions. President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving the sanctions Thursday.” 

CubaBrief:  Additional details are now available on the targeting of American and Canadian diplomats by Cuban security services in Havana. Reuters said yesterday that “Cuba 'incidents' reportedly caused brain injury, nerve damage to diplomats.” As reported earlier, two Cuban diplomats were expelled as a result.

Last year, while President Barack Obama concentrated on the final touches of his Cuba legacy, American diplomats at the US Embassy in Havana reported mysterious “headaches, nausea and hearing loss.” Today the number of victims, including Canadian diplomats injured by the alleged sonic attacks continues to increase.

Looking for “the forgotten Caribbean paradise,” a professor, writing in The Hill, discovers that in Cuba, time did not stand still – it went backward.”

Quoting newswire services, Havana based 14ymedio said on 16 August 2017that “The effect of the Venezuelan crisis on the Cuban economy is greater than expected, judging by the latest data from the National Statistics Office (ONE) that reveals a 70% fall in trade between the two countries in only two years.” 

CubaBrief: The latest episode on the University of Miami soap opera can be summarized as follows: Dr. Julio Frenk, UM President, met with a group of prominent Cuban Americans today which included writer Carlos Alberto Montaner, Facts About Cuban Exiles’ Sam Verdeja, business entrepreneur and civic leader Diego Suarez, Humberto Arguelles president of the Brigade 2506, and others. The meeting went over serious concerns by the Cuban American community about the future direction of Cuban Studies at the university. Later in the day UM released a statement indicating that the university will not establish exchanges with Cuban universities. 

In this CubaBrief: Ben Rhodes, President Obama's fomer speech writer says that"“It just doesn’t strike me as something the Cuban government would do” about the sonic attack on the U.S. diplomats in Havana while The Washington Free Beacon reports that the State Departmenthideskey details of mystery attacks on American diplomats in Cuba from Congress.

In this CubaBrief we are focusing on the ongoing Venezuelan tragedy. While President Maduro visits Cuba, press reports indicate that Venezuelan soldiers have crossed into Guyana asking for food.