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• News-starved viewers watched an Ecuadorean opposition candidate liken the government of President Rafael Correa, one of Havana's staunchest allies, to a moonwalking Michael Jackson: He walks like he's moving ahead, but he's actually going backward.
• On another day Cubans learned a quarter-billion of their fellow Latin Americans have access to the Internet -- something less than 10 percent of islanders can say themselves.
• Cubans even watched a live broadcast of U.S. President Barack Obama's inaugural address.
• Such images would be unremarkable in most countries, but they're a break from the stodgy, tightly scripted state-run television that has long been the only fare in Cuba, with its mind-numbing tributes to efficiency, constant diatribes against the U.S. economic embargo and remembrances of minor anniversaries from the early years of the 1959 revolution.
• ___

• NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- This time, the lights stayed on in the Superdome.
• The glitzy Mardi Gras Krewe of Endymion rolled its parade and super float through the Superdome on Saturday night and Kelly Clarkson performed amid purple, green and gold lights in the first major event at the venue since the Super Bowl blackout.
• While the black tie ball was nowhere near the size of the championship game a week ago, it was a test for dome officials and the stadium's electricity provider, Entergy, which has come under scrutiny since the lights went dark for more than a half hour.
• The bright stadium lights were dimmed for the ball, but there were no signs of any electrical problems.
• Darin Coker and his wife, Jeannine, wondered whether the ball would be affected in any way after the outage.
• ___

• MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- When Ben Brust tied the game at the end of regulation with a shot just from just inside midcourt, his teammate Mike Bruesewitz looked over

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