All Things Considered

It's clear Chris Thile has an ear for music: The 31-year-old mandolinist, best known for his bands Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers, has been playing music his entire life.

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

The writer Nora Ephron has died. Over the course of six decades, she chronicled the lives of women in newsprint, in books, on the stage and on screen. She was 71 years old, and died of complications from a blood disorder. She's best known for romantic comedies such as "Sleepless in Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally," but she also brought to the big screen Karen Silkwood and Julia Child.

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At long last, big-time college football has a playoff, if you want to call four teams a playoff. Today, a committee of university presidents agreed to a system that replaces the current Bowl Championship Series beginning in 2014.

NPR's sports correspondent Tom Goldman joins me now. And, Tom, this is something that college football fans have wanted for years. President Obama has said he wants this championship game. What do you know about the deal?

Congressional leaders on Tuesday said they were close to a deal to solve two big issues facing lawmakers — student loan interest rates and federal highway funding.

Both issues with looming deadlines have high stakes for middle-income Americans: If Congress fails to reach agreements by this weekend, the federal highway program would come to a halt, and student loan interest rates would double, to 6.8 percent.

Student Loans

President Obama has been hammering on the issue of student loans for days.

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Researchers at Google's secretive X Labs say they've built a network of 16,000 computer processors as an experiment designed to emulate the powers of the human brain. Turned loose for three days on 10 million YouTube clips, and this brain did what any of our brains would do: It learned how to recognize a cat.

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When the Supreme Court ruled on Arizona's immigration law yesterday, it left in place what might be called the centerpiece of that law. That's the provision that requires law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of people who are stopped for other reasons.

Roberto Villasenor is police chief for the city of Tucson. We've been talking with him periodically about SB1070, as the law is known. And he tells us today that what the court left in place is the most problematic provision for his police force.

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You know the ads that poke fun at the hapless, square PC compared with the hip and clever Mac?

(SOUNDBITE OF AN AD)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Hello, I'm a Mac.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: And I'm a PC. And I feel inadequate.

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A group of young musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area is taking a journey to explore the roots of jazz. The Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble is in Cuba right now. The ensemble has a long history and a long list of all-star alumni.

Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr, of member station KDFC, spoke with some of the musicians before they left for Cuba.

JEFFREY FREYMANN-WEYR, BYLINE: Twenty eager young musicians rehearse "Cubauza," a piece that combines bebop with Afro-Cuban rhythms.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CUBAUZA")