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For Cuban-Americans, Miami's Freedom Tower is almost a holy place — a former immigration intake center where thousands came in the 1960s after they fled the island's communist rule.

But across the street from the hall, where Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez spoke Monday, there were protests. A dozen anti-Castro activists repudiated some of Sanchez's past comments, including her support for lifting the long-standing U.S. embargo of Cuba.

The Connecticut women cruised into the Division I basketball championship's Final Four Monday night with an 83-53 win over Kentucky. In the evening's other matchup, California squeaked by Georgia, 65-62.

The Final Four's other two slots will be filled Tuesday night. Notre Dame faces Duke, while Tennessee takes on Louisville. (Check the brackets here. The games are being broadcast by ESPN.)

Sheryl Sandberg's controversial new book on women and leadership, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, currently tops Amazon's best-seller list in "Business Management and Leadership" alongside Decisive (Chip Heath and Dan Heath),

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

Friends of a New York man planned a surprise party, but he found out. To surprise him, they threw a pillowcase over his head, threw him in a van and drove him to the party in Pennsylvania. Witnesses to the fake abduction called police, who mounted a massive search.

In 1964, Robert Ostertag attended his first of 50 straight New York Mets home openers. That same day, Luke Gasparre began his job as an usher. The New York Times captured quite a moment Monday: Gasparre showed Ostertag to his seat in section 310.

A vow Tuesday from North Korea that it will restart a nuclear reactor that eventually could make about one bomb's worth of plutonium a year further escalates tensions that were already high due to that nation's almost daily threats, NPR's Louisa Lim tells our Newscast Desk.

According to Louisa, who filed her report from Beijing:

David Greene talks to Yvette Aehle, director of the Southwest Georgia Regional Airport, about her plans to shut down the airport's air traffic control tower. Because of sequestration, the FAA will no longer pay for air traffic controllers at 144 smaller airports.

Fans are returning to Major League Baseball parks for a new season. Let's take a break from the intensity of college basketball's March Madness, and talk about the beginning of the long and winding Major League Baseball season.

If it was a sleepy Monday for you, you may have fallen victim to some April Fools' Day pranks. David Greene and Steve Inskeep have a roundup of some of the all-in-fun pranks.