National and World News from NPR

The creators of the cable TV series Mad Men are known for making sure every detail in the show is historically accurate, but they don't always catch everything.

Spring arrived this past week, and guest host Susan Stamberg offers this musical bouquet for the season by the great jazz singer Abbey Lincoln.

Transcript

SUSAN STAMBERG, HOST:

Carolyn Hopkins is the voice behind public service announcements at airports, subways and theme parks. She tells you a train is coming, to step away from the platform, or to please pay attention to your luggage. And she does it all from her home in northern Maine. Guest host Susan Stamberg talks with Hopkins about her work.

The preparations for Pope Benedict XVI's three-day visit to Cuba have produced some unusual sights and sounds there lately.

A church van with a megaphone drove around one Havana neighborhood recently, calling Cubans out of their homes to a gathering in a nearby park, with the message that God loves them.

The number of churchgoing Catholics on the island is growing again, but it remains less than 10 percent, and the call to gather was a rare exception to the Communist government's ban on public acts of religious proselytism.

A few days ago, a plane carrying members of the 182nd Infantry Regiment touched down in Indiana. The 303 soldiers who were on board are members of an Army National Guard unit that has just finished a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan.

The soldiers, dressed in their combat uniforms and carrying their weapons, bounded down the stairs from the plane. They shook the hands of the generals who had gathered there to welcome them home. It was the middle of the night and raining, but none of them seemed to mind. It had been a long trip and a long year.

Rick Santorum had been expected to win Louisiana's Republican presidential primary Saturday, but the size of the victory was a surprise. The former Pennsylvania senator captured 49 percent of the GOP vote. Mitt Romney, who is the front-runner nationally, finished a distant second with nearly 27 percent. Santorum sees his win as evidence that the party still has big doubts about Romney.

Among those who voted for Santorum was 54-year-old Curt Thurmon in Shreveport.