Odds and ends

• Reuters: Exporters to Cuba are offered terms to settle back payments – five years at two percent, take it or leave it.

• The Economist on U.S.-Cuba relations: “The honeymoon is over before it began.”

• A magnitude 4.3 earthquake, centered 15 miles from Santiago.

• At Global Post, Nick Miroff looks at the impact of Orlando Zapata’s death.

• All I can say about this statement from Israel’s foreign minister is that if it had appeared on April 1, we would all be able to make sense of it.

• Yahoo Sports: a “glut of Cuban defectors” in Major League Baseball.

• Thanks to a reader for providing this link to a story that corrects earlier news reports, which turned out to be big exaggerations about Cable and Wireless plans to run an undersea cable from Cuba to Jamaica. It would make economic sense compared to the Venezuela idea; maybe less bolivariana but one sixth the distance.

• A House Judiciary Committee hearing looks at the “Section 211” Havana Club trademark fight that pits Bacardi against Pernod-Ricard.