For years, American outreach to Cuba came in many forms: mafiosos, poison-drenched wetsuits, toxic cigars. But today we learned of a new tactic in the campaign to undercut the Castro regime: a stealth effort by the U.S. government's humanitarian aid agency to create a Cuban version of Twitter.

The United States is “deeply disturbed” by reports of the death of prominent Chinese human rights activist Cao Shunli, detained in September for staging sit-ins at the country’s foreign ministry, the State Department said on Saturday. The news of her death came on Friday, soon after the start of a session in Geneva of the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body to which China was elected amid controversy last November.

In a rare demonstration of public dissent, dozens of Cuban artisans and vendors protested in the city of Holguín this week, marching to local government offices and demanding the right to work without government harassment, witnesses said.