by Andrea Rodriguez

HAVANA (AP)—Debora Garcia sat at a table in a room choked with smoke, gently rolling an unbanded cigar between her delicate fingers. She used her thumb to measure its width and length, then held it up to her nose to get a sense of its scent. Finally she wrote down her answer and moved on to the next cigar.

LIGHTING UP—Ariadna Gomez smokes a cigar next to an image of Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro during the 13th annual Cigar Festival in Havana, Cuba, Feb. 21. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)

Garcia was one of 27 cigar sommeliers and other experts who took part last week in a blind “tasting” of Cuba’s world-famous smokes—part of the island’s glitzy and glamorous Cigar Festival, which draws many of the biggest vendors from around the world each year.

There were also black-tie dinners, trips to lush tobacco fields, cigar factory tours and lots and lots of schmoozing. The exclusive soirees and jet-set crowd made a strange juxtaposition in a communist country that spends the other 51 weeks of the year proclaiming its egalitarianism and denouncing the excesses of capitalism.

by Maggie Michael

CAIRO (AP)—Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi vows to fight on and die a "martyr," calling on his supporters to take back the streets from protesters demanding his ouster,  he said, shouting and pounding his fist, in a furious speech Tuesday on state TV.

FACES OF REVOLUTION—An army soldier and anti-regime residents pose for photos in front of a tank in the early hours of Feb. 22, in Benghazi, Libya. (AP Photo/Alaguri)

Gadhafi, swathed in brown robes and turban, spoke from a podium set up in the entrance of a bombed out building that appeared to be his Tripoli residence hit by U.S. airstrikes in the 1980s and left unrepaired as a monument of defiance. The speech, which appeared to have been taped earlier, was aired on a screen to hundreds of supporters massed in Tripoli's central Green Square.

Shouting in the rambling speech, he declared himself "a warrior" and proclaimed, "Libya wants glory, Libya wants to be at the pinnacle, at the pinnacle of the world."

Numbers released by the Independent National Electoral Commission suggest states in Nigeria's north have more than 36 million voters, compared to the largely Christian south having 31.6 million. In total, the commission says 67 million voters registered ahead of April's presidential election.

by Michelle Faul

JOHANNESBURG (AP)—Some of the cocoa in that Valentine's Day chocolate probably came from a West African country where the man in power for a decade is still clinging to office. And activists say consumers might also think twice if they knew unpaid 5-year-olds helped produce it.

YOUNG WORKERS—In this June 30, 2005 photo, children living in a cocoa producing village walk back from the fields carrying wood and food stuff on their heads on the outskirts of the town of Oume, Ivory Coast. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, File)

This year, human rights advocates are harnessing the political crisis in Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer, to add momentum to an ongoing campaign to force the world's chocolate makers to improve their labor practices.

Supporters of the internationally recognized winner of Ivory Coast's election also have pushed for a cocoa ban in an effort to financially strangle incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who the U.N. says lost the November election.