It’s a slow day today in export news, so we’re bringing you a grab bag of various items, each interesting but none worthy of an entire post:

• Vanderbilt University has announced that it has hired a new assistant director of export compliance to handle the “new wave of federal export control regulations that is crashing down on Vanderbilt.” Were we asleep and missed a new wave of export control regulations or did Vanderbilt just wake up and discover the export regulations that crashed down on Vanderbilt years ago?
• An article on the Deutsche Welle website indicates that German firms are circumventing sanctions on Iran by doing business in Iran with suitcases of cash to avoid detection. This leads to the day’s most amusing quote from a German businessman living in Tehran:
  

  “If a plane crashes on its way to Tehran from Germany, then the loss of the luggage would be more expensive than the loss of the plane,” he said.

• A spokesman for the State Department testified yesterday in a Senate hearing that in response to the sham electoral victory of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the United States is considering additional sanctions against individuals and government entities in Zimbabwe. Raise your hands if you think these will lead Mugabe to break down in tears, resign his office, and flee the country.

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