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San Francisco, New York and other cities across the country and the globe are hosting gay pride festivals this weekend, capping off a week of legal decisions cheered by advocates for gay rights.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. On Friday, California couples lined up to wed after a federal court of appeals lifted the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

Moscow isn't on the list of cities hosting pride events, as a court has banned gay pride parades there for the next 100 years. So in lieu of a physical march, Russian LGBT activists are holding a virtual one online. As the New York marchers start making their way down Fifth Avenue at noon Sunday, their counterparts in Moscow will take virtual steps toward Red Square along a route marked with supportive tweets tagged #virtualpride.

The online march comes at a particularly difficult time for Russia's gay community. Two men were beaten to death recently in attacks authorities say were prompted by their sexual orientation.

And while U.S. attitudes toward gay people have grown significantly more positive over the past decade, Russia seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to sign into law a bill that would make it a crime to provide children with information about homosexuality.

People protesting the bill in St. Petersburg and Moscow were attacked by anti-gay demonstrators, and in the neighboring former Soviet republic of Georgia, a recent gay rights rally ended in mob violence.

Putin is also expected to sign a bill that bans the adoption of Russian children by same-sex couples and single people in countries where same-sex marriage is legal.

Igor Yasin, a gay rights activist in Moscow, told NPR's Corey Flintoff that the ban on so-called "homosexual propaganda," which proponents say is meant to protect children, will harm youth.

"This law will make the lives of LGBT teenagers very difficult, because it will be difficult for them to get proper information about their sexuality," he said.

Against this backdrop of anti-gay sentiment at home, expatriates from the former Soviet Union will ride the first-ever Russian-themed float at Sunday's New York pride march. They're putting a new spin, organizer Pasha Zalutski told PRI's The World, on the Soviet phrase "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live."

The activists behind Moscow's virtual pride march would likely agree that "Russian gays were, Russian gays are, Russian gays will be."

As Egyptians gathered Sunday in Cairo and other cities for what are expected to be the largest protests so far against the year-old government of President Mohammed Morsi, some in the streets were telling NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson that they expect he will be toppled in much the same way as President Hosni Mubarak was in February 2011.

One protester told Soraya that Morsi is a "wounded lion in a corner ... if he attacks us, he loses ... if he doesn't attack us, he loses."

At midday in Cairo, Soraya said on Weekend Edition Sunday, things were peaceful. But there were concerns that pro-Morsi Egyptians might clash with the protesters later in the day. Many eyes, she said, are on the Egyptian army. Its leaders have said they will "protect the will of the people." Protesters say that means the army will defend them, as it did at times during the Arab Spring protests against Mubarak. But Morsi's supporters say it means the army will stand up for the democratically elected president.

Being "born with a silver spoon in your mouth" has long been known to have advantages. Apparently, eating off a silver spoon also has its perks — it seems to make your food taste better.

That's the word from a group of researchers who've been studying how cutlery, dishes and other inedible accoutrements to a meal can alter our perceptions of taste. Their latest work, published in the journal Flavour, looks at how spoons, knives and other utensils we put in our mouths can provide their own kind of "mental seasoning" for a meal.

"Some of my wine-drinking colleagues would have me believe that flavor is really out there on the bottle, in the glass or on the plate," says Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University. "But I think it is much more something that we ... understand better through looking at what's happening inside the brain, and not just the mouth of the person eating or drinking."

Alterations in taste perceptions aren't necessarily the result of the cutlery itself, he says, but of the mental associations we bring to a meal. "Silver spoons and other silver cutlery, I'm guessing, are more commonly associated with high-quality food in our prior eating experiences," Spence says.

In recent years, psychologists have found that the color and shape of plates and other dishes can have an impact on the eating experience. Studies have found, for example, that people tend to eat less when their dishes are in sharp color-contrast to their food, that the color of a mug can alter a drinker's perception of how sweet and aromatic hot cocoa is, and that drinks can seem more thirst-quenching when consumed from a glass with a "cold" color like blue.

So why study cutlery? For starters, there wasn't any real scientific literature on the topic, Spence tells Linda Wertheimer on Weekend Edition Sunday.

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Shortly before midnight last Thursday, in front of a cheering crowd, 31-year-old Hussein al-Deik was picked as the president of Palestine.

It wasn't a real election; just the grand finale of a TV reality series, shot in front of a live audience. Suheir Rasul, co-director of the Jerusalem office of Search for Common Ground, the organization that put on the show, said the goal is to get young people excited about the democratic process.

"The word is to reenergize and reignite the people, to remind them that we can be democratic, we believe in democracy, and the youth have a voice," Rasul explains.

But Palestinians have held only two presidential elections since the Palestinian Authority was established almost 20 years ago. The current president, Mahmood Abbas, has stayed on several years past the end of his term.

Palestinian political analyst Daoud Kuttab says a lack of elections leads to a lack of legitimacy.

"In most political events, you need a kind of election cycle to create leaders," Kuttab says.

The lack of elections also makes restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations difficult. Secretary of State John Kerry has been in the region for the past three days, trying to convince leaders on both sides to come together for talks.

Palestinian political leaders have long had their roots in militias who fought against Israel, but Kuttab says people are beginning to look for leadership elsewhere.

Parallels

'Arab Idol' Win Unites Palestinians In Jubilant Celebration