This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm David Greene.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
It's the third and final day for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the Obama health care overhaul. The justices hear arguments today on what parts could remain in effect if the court rules the individual mandate of the health care law is unconstitutional. After yesterday's arguments, that seemed more likely than most experts had expected.
And the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, whose construction has been delayed over environmental concerns, could now face some competition.
As NPR's John Ydstie reports, two companies have announced plans to build pipelines that would carry out the same service as the XL, channeling oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
Kenya strikes oil - that was the headline in Nairobi's Daily Nation newspaper this week. It's the first time such a discovery has been made in the East African nation. Kenya's energy minister quickly held a press conference with oil company executives. Holding up a glass bottle of crude oil, he pledged to make sure that oil is a blessing for the people and not a curse.
And we're joined now by the BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi to talk about this discovery. Well, good morning.
NPR's business news starts with new owners for the L.A. Dodgers.
One of the more legendary athletes here in Los Angeles, basketball's Magic Johnson is leading a consortium of investors to buy the Major League baseball team.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
This is a $2 billion deal. And that shatters the record for the most money paid for a North American sports franchise. The NFL's Miami Dolphins went for $1.1 billion three years ago.
Pope Benedict stuck to mostly spiritual themes on a visit to communist Cuba's most sacred shrine. This morning, the pontiff leads a mass in Havana's Plaza of the Revolution. As Nick Miroff reports from Havana, so far even Benedict's gentle push for greater religious and political freedoms for Cubans has been rejected by the government.
Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world. Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. It's part of what Lomax envisioned for the collection — long before the age of the Internet.
Duke freshman Austin Rivers, seen here in the Blue Devils' loss to Lehigh in the NCAA tournament, is leaving school for the NBA draft. The trend of athletes spending only one year in college has hurt the sport, says Frank Deford.
This year's Final Four seems more like Best in Show at the Westminster. Such pedigree: Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio State and Louisville –– four of the very top dogs in the history of the sport. Well, it's a Meryl Streep kind of year, isn't it?
But if the Final Four might delight fans by giving them aristocracy in its teams, unfortunately the whole of college basketball is plagued by anonymity in its players, and external issues that have diminished the popularity of the game.
Good grief. This year, there has been more buzz about Mad Men than about March Madness.
Fukumoto in one of the numerous period costume dramas he has acted in for the Toei Company's film studios since he began work there in 1959.
Credit Toei Kyoto Studio Park
Seizo Fukumoto (right) falls to the sword of the leading man in one of Japan's chanbara or samurai films. Fukumoto is known as Japan's leading kirareyaku, or "chopped-up actor."
Credit Toei Company
Over a career spanning five decades, Fukumoto has been killed more than 50,000 times on screen in samurai and ninja films, with some work in gangster flicks as well.
Japan is home to Asia's oldest and largest motion-picture industry, with its own unique genres and traditions. While every film industry has stuntmen, only Japan has a class of actors whose main job is to be sliced and diced by samurai sword-wielding protagonists. But the decline of period dramas means that this class of actors is literally a dying breed.
It took a while, but guards at Canada's Glenbow Museum finally noticed a new acquisition in the gallery: An oil painting of a semi-nude woman. An anonymous note said the donor's late father did the painting and had always wanted his work in a museum.