The News: Voters go to the polls in four states today. Michigan with 59  delegates at stake and Mississippi with 40 are the big prizes for the Republicans candidates.
Sports: Maria Sharapova, the most bankable star in professional tennis, will serve a suspension for taking a banned prescription drug. Sharpova said that for 10 years she has taken meldonium, a drug developed in Latvia for heart patients that aids blood flow that is not sold in the US. The drug hit the banned list in January and Sharpova says she didn’t know. Nike immediately suspended its promotional relationship with Sharpova.
Permawar: The US bombed an encampment for the Islamic militant al-Shabaab in Somalia, killing as many as 150 extremists.
Cigaronomics: Making a Cuban cigar is like making wine. They make them by hand at the H. Upmann factory in Havana, about 20,000 a day.

Every cigar has five different leaves in it, and the blend master, like the winemaker, chooses them. Shade grown leaves are used for wrappers. The leaf from the top of the plant is for taste, the middle for aroma, the near bottom to make the cigar burn, and the very bottom is for binding.

The leaves are dried and fermented by keeping them slightly moist. The fermenting gets rid of the excess nicotine. And the leaves are aged between nine months and two years — for special cigars, up to five years.

Havana has five cigar factories and together they make 80 million cigars a year for export. The cigar is Cuba’s fourth largest export item. The Upmann factory, founded by a German in 1844,  is in a grand old colonial style building. The workers sit at 50 to 60 year old wooden tables and hand screw presses. It’s a case study of  how Cuba works. The employees are paid the standard of roughly $30 a month. Each worker is given at least four cigars a day to sell on the black market and steals at least 10 more. Our guide tells us that everyone knows this goes on, even the government and the manager. “The manager steals the most,” he says. One of the cigar rollers furtively offered to sell a bundle of cigars to our staff photographer, Mark Litke, for about 20 kooks  — very cheap.

Some workers steal the eaves and roll their own cigars at home. The black market for cigars is evident out in the streets, where men sidle up to foreigners asking “Cigars?, Cigars?”

Our factory guide is very blunt about how life works here. “Nobody lives on their salary in Cuba,” he says. “Everything works in the black market.” Not only does no one live on their salary, but you have to do a little extra to make life work for you. Medical care is free, but it’s a good idea to grease the doctor. A gift of cooking oil, canned tomatoes, soap, or detergent will get you better medical attention.

Working in the cigar factory, though, is a prestigious and coveted job. The workers have a quota for the number of pieces and cigars they complete a day, and get a bonus for any extra. Plus, of course, what they can steal.

It is tradition for one of the workers to sit at the front of the room in the morning and read the newspaper to the cigar roller. In the afternoon, as was done long ago, the reader recites works of literature, and that is how some of the famous cigar brands got their names like Montecristo and Romeo y Julieta.

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