State and National News

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."

Several news outlets are reporting that computer giant Hewlett-Packard will announce the elimination of 25,000 to 30,000 jobs. All Things D reports that the announcement will come from CEO Meg Whitman when the company announces its quarterly earnings next Wednesday.

All Things D reports:

Sgt. J.P. Huling, a Marine from Ohio, was killed this month in southern Afghanistan.

It wasn't a roadside bomb or a Taliban sniper that killed him. It was another sergeant — an Afghan soldier known as Sgt. Zabitollah, who like many Afghans went by one name.

It was a grim coincidence that brought these two sergeants together on May 6, a Sunday afternoon, at a mud-walled compound along a desolate stretch of road in a remote corner of Afghanistan.

Battleground states like North Carolina are where the action is when it comes to presidential contests. Thus, they are where political tactics like, say, the anti-Obama ad campaign featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, first reported by The New York Times Thursday (and now disowned by virtually everyone the Times linked to it), are most likely to be rolled out.