Cuba

The US flag will be raised over the American Embassy in Cuba for the first time in 54 years despite mistrust and a call from former President Fidel Castro for the United States to pay millions in reparations.
In fact, it is the Cuban government, which seized billions in properties from private US firms and wealthy Cubans.

Secretary of State John Kerry leads a delegation to the embassy in Habana, including members of Congress, selected Cuban-American entrepreneurs and a large contingent of media, as well as retired Marines who last lowered the flag in January 1961.

The Cuban embassy re-opens in Washington, D.C. for the first time in 54 years. The Cuban flag will rise in Washington, D.C., for the first time in over five decades on Monday in the latest step toward normalized relations between the two countries.

The flag-raising will be part of a daylong series of events commemorating the opening of a full Cuban embassy in Washington, about two miles north of the White House.

US removes Cuba from state sponsor of terror list. The following timeline is more specific of this strange evolution.

1960: US breaks off diplomatic relations and imposes trade embargo.
1961: US backs failed Bay of Pigs invasion; Castro calls Cuba a communist state and begins to ally with USSR.
1962: Fearing US invasion, Castro allows USSR to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba. Superpowers brink of war.
1980: Around 125,000 Cubans, many prisoners, flee to the US when Castro temporarily lifts restrictions

The Chief of the Cuban Interests Section José Ramón Cabañas and New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo have announced the first official state trade mission to Cuba since President Obama began the process to normalize diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.

Maryland Representative Chris Van Hollen returned from Cuba with Alan Gross and a new US strategy of engagement with Cuba:

For over 50 years, US officials have tried to bring about positive change and reform in Cuba by attempting to isolate the island nation. It is clear that policy has been a miserable failure. Over the last five decades, the Castro brothers have outlasted over eight American presidents and very little has changed. The oft-cited definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

The governments of US and Cuba are paving the way for a massive overhaul in their political policies.

For more than five decades, US has kept an economic embargo on Cuba, but all of this is now changing under the Obama administration. Today President Obama begins a broad range of diplomatic and regulatory measures that are considered the most sweeping change in U.S. policy toward Cuba since the 1961 embargo was imposed.