The News: The Rooney Report departed for Cuba on the news that many years ago a knife was found on the property when OJ Simpson’s old house was torn down, breathing new life into the never-ending saga of OJ and the murder of his ex-wife and a restaurant waiter. The construction manager says it was probably a hoax.

The internal warfare in the Republican party goes on. We’ll ignore that for a while.

And we note the death of Pat Conroy, the best-selling Southern author of “The Great Santini,” “The Lords of Discipline” and “The Prince of Tides,” died on Friday at age 70. Conroy had been traumatized by his father, a Marine, and the themes of abuse and family conflict played through his novels.

The Cuba Diaries: You learn a little something about Cuba before you even board the airplane in Miami. The Cubans who are allowed to visit the States return with giant plastic-wrapped bundles of goods they can’t buy at home. They have car parts, laptop computers, and big flat screen televisions. One man checked in with a rack and pinion steering system in a box. The large anonymous bundles are wrapped in plastic so they don’t get rifled by baggage handlers arriving in Cuba.

We were warned that things go wrong in Cuba. On landing in a Havana Air at Jose Marti airport, it took mechanics 45 minutes to open the door and let the passengers out. In Cuba you go through airport security entering the country. They put you through a screening machine and pat you down.

It took about three hours to clear the airport. Half of our party had to wait an hour to get their luggage because a 55-inch television screen had jammed the luggage conveyor.

The road into Havana is lined with Soviet era industrial buildings, many of them abandoned. When the Soviet Union broke up Cuba was abandoned and the industrial economy crashed. A sign on the fence said, “socialism or death.”

Traffic is light and brand new Chinese passenger buses share the road with American cars from the 1950s and 60s. It’s the cliché to note that Cuba has these old cars, but it is surprising how many of them there are, and that they are used as everyday transportation. They have Buicks, Chevys, and Cadillacs with big rounded curves and tail fins. The legend is that when the cars owners left Cuba during the Revolution, they took their keys with them and many of the old cars are permanently hotwired.

Our local guide is Pavel, who speaks near flawless English, as well as Russian and German. His name is Russian-influenced from the days when they were a big presence here. Pavel is young, handsome and very smart. Pave learns about America by watching television shows over the Internet. He likes Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Conan O’Brien is his favorite. “I love that guy, he’s very funny. Pavel says Jon Stewart should be president and he thinks Donald Trump has gotten too far in the American elections.