Washington, DC - President Obama announced on July 1, 2015, the historic decision to re-establish diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States of America, effective July 20. The U.S. Department of State also notified Congress of its intent to convert the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba to U.S. Embassy Havana, effective on the same date. These are important steps in implementing the new direction in U.S.-Cuba relations announced by President Obama on December 17, 2014.

Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "I am pleased to extend warm wishes to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the occasion of his 80th birthday on July 6.

Stanford, California - The safety net that Congress created to protect children who suffer from vaccine injury is not working as intended, a Stanford law professor has found.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Instruments that measure the properties of light, known as spectrometers, are widely used in physical, chemical, and biological research. These devices are usually too large to be portable, but MIT scientists have now shown they can create spectrometers small enough to fit inside a smartphone camera, using tiny semiconductor nanoparticles called quantum dots.

San Diego, California - There may be far fewer galaxies further out in the Universe than might be expected, suggests a new study based on simulations conducted using the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, with resulting data transferred to SDSC Cloud at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, for future analysis.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - The days of wasting condiments - and other products - that stick stubbornly to the sides of their bottles may be gone, thanks to MIT spinout LiquiGlide, which has licensed its nonstick coating to a major consumer-goods company.