COMMUNISTS: No Comment

Monday, Sep. 17, 1951

Andrei Gromyko is not a funny man, but off the speaker's platform he often does what he can to be agreeable. At the diplomatic reception at San Francisco's Palace Hotel last week, the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister's small talk consisted largely of terse platitudes on the weather, a grunted "no comment" in answer to searching questions, and an occasional joke, filed away during his earlier visits to the U.S. One of his favorites:

Obstetrician: Mrs. Jones, I have very good news for you.

Patient: I am not Mrs. Jones, but Miss Jones.

Obstetrician: Miss Jones, I have very bad news for you.

"That," says Andrei Gromyko stonily, "is very good, very clever."

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"What you do from this day forward will write, or rewrite, the story of AIDS across Africa."
MICHEL SIDIBE, UNAIDS executive director, to South African President Jacob Zuma, just before Zuma announced that the country would treat all HIV-positive babies and expand testing; South Africa has the most HIV-infected people in the world
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