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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm David Greene.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

And I'm Linda Wertheimer.

When you're filling up a car with gas, chances are you are not looking at the price per gallon and thinking how low it is. And maybe thinking that the government ought to do something about that and raise prices. But the economic wizards at the International Monetary Fund are recommending exactly that, not just for the U.S. but for the entire world.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

And I'm Linda Wertheimer.

In Cyprus today, banks reopened after being closed for nearly two weeks. Customers could see the limits on cash withdrawals last for months, as leaders of the island-nation try to prevent a bank-run. Lots of people there are nervous about an EU bailout agreed to this week. The terms of that deal are a shocking outcome for a country which built its wealth on its banking industry.

The Louisville Cardinals are among the teams dominating at this year's men's Division 1 NCAA basketball tournament, which resumes Thursday night. The team credits harassing, active defense for its wins.

But there's something else at work, too: deflections. The team puts a lot of stock in them, though deflections aren't an officially tracked statistic.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case challenging whether the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) means the federal government can deny marriage benefits to same sex couples in states that allow gay marriage. Same-sex couples had reason to be optimistic afterward. Assuming the court can overcome procedural concerns, it looked as if a majority of justices was ready to strike down DOMA.

A Kalamazoo-area Michigan National Guard unit is returning home after ten months in Afghanistan. More than 90 soldiers in the 1433rd Engineer Company are based in Augusta. They and members of two other units from Iron Mountain and Kingsford were in Afghanistan for what Guard officials call “route clearance missions”.

One of the unit’s soldiers died and four others were injured when a roadside bomb exploded last August.

A welcome home ceremony for the Augusta unit will be held Thursday, March 28th, at 4 p.m. in Western Michigan University’s Read Fieldhouse.

With the Supreme Court hearing arguments this week on same-sex marriage, I'd like to point out a parallel evolution in what I see as a Hollywood mini-genre: films in which gay characters are either taken to court or seek redress in court for issues involving their sexuality.

Arguably the most famous question ever asked in a courtroom about a line of poetry — "What is the love that dare not speak its name?" — was originally put to playwright Oscar Wilde in 1894 by a British prosecutor. It was an attempt to trap Wilde into admitting to then-illegal homosexual conduct.