State and National News

For this first season of Ask Me Another, we picked the brains of more than a dozen game writers to devise the puzzles you hear each week on the show. Writers from across the country submitted games to be reviewed by our staff for possible use on the air (and getting one past AMA puzzle editor Art Chung is no small task). Every week at the end of the show, we acknowledge and thank all the game writers for that particular episode. But Shawn Kennedy and Dan Schofield, proved invaluable.

About Shawn Kennedy

The key witness in the perjury trial of baseball star Roger Clemens is on the stand this week testifying that he injected Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs. Nina Totenberg talks to Melissa Block.

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

I bet you know this feeling: you bring home a box of perfect, plump, ruby-red strawberries from the supermarket, then you bite into one and you taste absolutely nothing. Close your eyes and you might not even know it's a strawberry at all. Why? Why?

We're hoping Marvin Pritts can help explain. He's a horticulture professor at Cornell University and a berry crop specialist. Professor Pritts, welcome to the program.

MARVIN PRITTS: Thank you. It's good to be here.

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

A new technology makes it possible for a quadriplegic to use only thought to move a robotic arm. According to a report out yesterday, a Massachusetts woman was one of two patients to use the arm. She picked up a bottle with coffee in it and drank it, using a straw. This is the first time in 15 years that she was able to feed herself.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, will address students at Georgetown University tomorrow.

As NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports, that has created one of several controversies this season over commencement speakers.

BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, BYLINE: Sebelius is Catholic. She's also liberal and pro-choice. And the fact that she's speaking to Georgetown's Public Policy Institute makes conservative Catholics, like Patrick Reilly, see red.

When Facebook makes its initial public offering Friday on the NASDAQ, the stock will be priced at $38 per share, a price that's expected to bring in between $16 billion and $18.4 billion to the company. CNBC reports:

"[The price makes] it one of the most lucrative offerings the Street has ever seen. With that valuation taken into consideration, Facebook goes public with the highest valuation — in the $100 billion range — of any company on record at the time of its IPO."