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Yes, of course, the ending of the Cuba embargo is a Very Serious topic, but the jokes remain irresistible. From the NYTimes, “How a Cuban Spy and His Wife Came to Be Expectant Parents“:
It was no easy feat to get a vial of frozen sperm from Gerardo Hernández, a Cuban spy serving two life sentences in California, to Panama, where his wife, desperate to have a baby, was artificially inseminated.
Yet the matter became an urgent priority over the past year for the small group of Cuban and American officials who were secretly working to broker a historic thaw in relations. Facilitating the pregnancy, one of the strangest subplots in the annals of secret negotiations between Washington and Havana, fell largely on the shoulders of a Senate staffer who had become central to laying the groundwork for the change in United States-Cuba policy.
Mr. Hernández was one of three Cuban spies who returned home last Wednesday to a hero’s welcome as part of a deal that included the release of Alan Gross, the American subcontractor imprisoned in Havana for five years. Photographs of Mr. Hernández, who had been in an American prison for 16 years, and his pregnant wife became the talk of the town in Havana. He meekly told reporters that the baby was his, but offered no details.
There are plenty of unsung heroes who helped bring about the shift President Obama and President Raúl Castro of Cuba announced last week. But no one seems to have delivered as much as Tim Rieser, a powerful yet unassuming Senate staffer who advises Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, on foreign policy and helps put together the State Department budget each year. Besides taking on the unexpected sperm diplomacy task, Mr. Rieser worked tirelessly to improve the treatment of Mr. Gross, who had become despondent and suicidal…
Seriously, kudos to Mr. Rieser. Who’s already heard every possible variation on “not shaking your hand until I’m sure you’ve washed it”…