All Things Considered

The FCC is expected to put out new Internet traffic rules that would let content providers negotiate for better service. NPR's Melissa Block talks with Wall Street Journal reporter Gautham Nagesh.

President Obama kicked off the first leg of his tour of Asia on Wednesday with some sushi diplomacy.

He dined with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a revered and tiny temple of sushi in Tokyo called Sukiyabashi Jiro. The subterranean restaurant, with just 10 seats at the counter, was made famous by the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

For decades, researchers and submarine crews in icy waters off the coast of Antarctica have been picking up a mysterious quacking sound.

The "bio-duck," as its called, has been heard on and off since Cold War patrols picked it up on sonar during the 1960s.

"It goes 'quack, quack, quack, quack,' " says Denise Risch, a marine biologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. "It has this almost mechanical feel to it."

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This next story is literally about the word...

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Literally.

CORNISH: ...literally. As in a literal sense or manner.

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That's also the name of a free Internet browser extension created by New York programmer Mike Lazer-Walker.

MIKE LAZER-WALKER: So all it does, you install it in your Web browser, and then any website you visit, any time the word literally is printed, it instead replaces it with figuratively.

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

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And I'm Melissa Block.

Spring is the time house hunters expect to see a slew of listings. But in many parts of the country, inventory is pretty low. When that happens, home prices go up. WSHU's Kaomi Goetz takes a look at the housing market. She checked out a listing that led to a history-making home sale in Connecticut.

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ALEXANDRA HALL, BYLINE: ...side of the port town that tourists often don't see.

MARGARITA GATILLON: (Foreign language spoken)

HALL: This is Margarita Gatillon. She's talking about the tents - all of the tents that have replaced her neighbors' houses. Driving by, they're hard to miss: residents sleeping in campsites underneath the frames of what used to be their homes. Margarita's house, however, is the last house standing at the top of the hill.

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Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned today that his country would respond if its citizens or interests came under attack in Ukraine. The warning came as the interim Ukrainian government ordered a new offensive against pro-Moscow militants occupying government buildings across Eastern Ukraine. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports from Donetsk.

John Eric Goff, the chair of the physics department at Lynchburg College, explains the science of the 2014 World Cup soccer ball. The Adidas Brazuca is expected to perform better than the version used in South Africa in 2010.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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Caetano Veloso has been making music for over 40 years, and he's among the best known singers in his native Brazil. Banning Eyre says that Veloso's new album, Abracaco, is one of the most engaging in his epic career.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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Ten years ago Tuesday, former NFL star Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. Steven Elliott was one of the Army Rangers who fired on Tillman, and he told his story recently on ESPN's Outside the Lines.