Cuban Surprise: President Obama shocked the world and his Republican opponents announcing yesterday that 50 years of shunning Cuba is a failure and that the US is re-establishing diplomatic relations with the island country just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The US plans to open an embassy in Havana.

“Neither the American, nor Cuban people are well served by a rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born,” Obama said making the announcement. The US broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, two years after the country was taken over by the communist regime of Fidel Castro.

The agreement between the US and Cuba is the result of 18 months of secret talks shepherded by Pope Francis. The final arrangement included a prisoner swap; American spy Alan Gross held for five years in Cuba in exchange for three Cuban spies.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, born to Cuban parents, vowed to undo Obama’s diplomatic reverse. Many Cuban Americans bitterly oppose the Castro regime. Rubio said, “All this is going to do is give the Castro regime, which controls every aspect of Cuban life, the opportunity to manipulate these changes to perpetuate itself in power.”

North Korea Wins: Sony Pictures caved in to threats against movie theaters and cancelled its Christmas Day release of its comedy The Interview. Sony had little choice after the biggest theater chains in the US and Canada, which control more than 19,000 screens, decided they couldn’t show the picture under threat of terror attacks on the theaters. The movie stars Seth Rogen and James Franco as two goofball journalists employed by the CIA to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Hollywood stars and moviemakers have reacted with dismay. Filmmaker Judd Apatow said to the LA Times, “Are we now living in a world where we’re not allowed to say that these are bad people?”

US intelligence officials say they have confirmed that North Korea was behind hacking attacks intended to kill the movie. But it was the outright terror threat that cost Sony millions of dollars and killed the comic assassins.

Fracked: New York State will ban hydraulic fracturing, the controversial technique for extracting oil and gas commonly known as “fracking.” New York’s health commissioner said fracking poses “significant public health risks.” Fracking involves injecting chemicals deep underground to fracture rocks that trap oil and gas.

Small Screen: Nation !!!! Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert takes his final bow on the Colbert Reporrrr tonight. Tomorrow he will be just Stephen Colbert. He’s leaving his show after nine years of playing a right wing political blowhard who’s actually a lot smarter than real right wing blowhards. He’ll be replacing David Letterman on CBS, and political bloviating will never be as smart or funny.

The Obit Page: Richard C. Hottelet, the last of “Murrow’s Boys” who reported for CBS News during World War II and after, has died at age 97. The legendary Edward R. Murrow had collected 11 “Boys,” one of whom was a woman, to cover the war. At 26 Hottelet was the youngest.

Hottelet showed his mettle in Germany even before the war when his stories got him imprisoned by the Gestapo. He spent the war reporting right from the front, dodging bullets with GI’s and even getting shot down in an American bomber. Until 1985, Hottelet was one of the pillars of the old CBS News.

Romeo y Julieta: Among the people happiest about the reopening of relations between the US and Cuba are cigar aficionados who believe hard-to-get Cuban Cigars are the best in the world. “It’s going to be massive,” Christopher Bledsoe, the president and owner of International Cigar Experts told Fortune Magazine. In the near term visitors will be allowed to bring home only $100 worth of cigars, but that will probably change quickly. After 50 years it turns out that Cuba’s primary export may be cigars, not revolution.

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