Cubans voted in a referendum on a new constitution Sunday with the backdrop of mounting pressure from the United States and continued support for Venezuela's socialist regime.

Facing condemnation for its decades-old embargo on Cuba, the United States will on Thursday try to shift the focus at the United Nations to the communist government's human rights record.

Relations between Cuba and the United States are in decline under President Donald Trump, his Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel said in an interview broadcast Sunday.

The national referendum to ratify Cuba's new constitution will take place on February 24, 2019, state television said Thursday.

The United States ordered the expulsion of 15 Cuban diplomats on Tuesday, accusing Havana of failing to protect their U.S. counterparts from harm in a series of mystery "attacks" on their health.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, however, that Washington would maintain diplomatic relations even though the size of the U.S. mission in Havana would be reduced to a minimum.

President Donald Trump will announce curbs on US firms doing business with the Cuban military and tighter rules on travel to the island on Friday during a visit to the spiritual home of the Cuban-American exile community.

Trump will appear in Miami's Little Havana at a theater named after an anti-communist veteran of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion to launch a move that will begin to roll back his predecessor Barack Obama's outreach to Havana.  

President Donald Trump's administration will press Cuba on human rights progress, a top U.S. official said Tuesday.

There will be no Fidel Castro streets or plazas in Cuba, in keeping with the late revolutionary leader's wishes, as spelled out in a law Cuban legislators passed on Tuesday.

President Raul Castro, 85, said that before dying at the age of 90 on November 25, his brother Fidel had requested that no monuments or statues be erected in his honor, and that no streets or buildings be named after him.

Venezuela's economic crisis pushed Cuba into recession in 2016 for the first time in years, President Raul Castro said Tuesday.

Fidel Castro's ashes were buried alongside national heroes in the cradle of his revolution on Sunday, as Cuba opens a new era without the communist leader who ruled the island for decades.

Capping a week of tributes and mass rallies, Castro was laid to rest near the mausoleum of 19th century independence icon Jose Marti and comrades of his rebellion in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba.