Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This past week marked the unofficial start of the general election for President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum's departure from the presidential race cleared the way for Romney and signaled a shift to a new phase of the campaign. For more, we are joined by NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, Mara.

MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi, Rachel.

A year ago this week, photojournalist Tim Hetherington posted this message on Twitter:

Those words ended up being some of Hetherington's last; he was killed in Misrata, along with fellow photographer Chris Hondros.

Monsieur Lazhar is a French Canadian film, a bittersweet comedy about an Algerian immigrant who gently moves into the role of teacher and comforter for a grief-stricken class of middle-school children in Montreal.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2011. (It lost to Iran's A Separation.) But last month it swept the Genies, Canada's national film prizes, winning best picture, director, actor and three other awards.

Idan Raichel first met Malian guitar luminary Vieux Farka Toure in a chance encounter at an airport in Germany. Raichel, an Israeli pop star and keyboard player, had admired Toure's work— as well as that of his father, the late Ali Farka Toure — for many years before they crossed paths.

President Obama emphasized at a summit of leaders from across the Americas that the U.S. would not shift strategies in the war on drugs. His administration had, in recent weeks, faced criticism from some presidents who said the U.S. approach to the drugs trade had simply generated more violence in Latin America.

That wasn't the only thorny issue Obama faced in his trip to Colombia.

Norwegians will be confronted again this week with the terrible details and trauma of the worst peacetime attack in the country's history.

Police say last July 22, Anders Behring Breivik set off a car bomb in the center of Oslo near government offices. The blast killed eight people and spun residents and police into a state of chaotic alarm and confusion.

On-Air Challenge: You'll be given a two- or three-word description of a famous person. The initial letters of the description are also the initials of the person.