Radio Green Earth on HD2

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

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.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

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.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Florida state investigators are continuing to look into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. His family has been part of a widespread campaign calling for the arrest of the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed the 17-year-old high school student. Yesterday, the parents of Trayvon Martin were up on Capitol Hill attending a forum on hate crimes and racial profiling. NPR's Sonari Glinton reports from the Capitol.

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.

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.

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.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The Pennsylvania capital Harrisburg is more than $300 million in debt. The budget is controlled by a state-appointed custodian. City and law enforcement services are under strain and residents worry violent crime may be growing.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And our last word in business today is: billion euro real estate. That's how much artist Frank Buckley's Dublin apartment cost. In theory, he actually got the materials for free from Ireland's central bank.

The walls, furniture and detailing in his apartment are all made from bricks of shredded euro notes. Buckley estimates each brick contains 40 or 50,000 euro's worth.

FRANK BUCKLEY: I collected two trailer-fulls of shredded notes - 1.4 billion euro.