National News from NPR

Teacher Dave Rowlands is talking to his students in a kindergarten class at Imagine Japan, an English-language school in the Miyagi Prefecture of Sendai City. The school is just a short walk from pre-fabricated homes built for families who lost more than just property in the earthquake and tsunami last year.

"What came after the earthquake, was what?" Rowlands asks. "A tidal wave. In Japanese, what do we say? Or in English, actually, tsunami is now used around the world in many languages. Tsunami. We kind of leave the 't' off of there."

Rhino poaching has been on the rise in the past few years. In South Africa and other regions where rhinos run, poachers have been killing or darting rhinos with tranquilizers for their horns.

Rather than adorning walls, many horns are ground up into medicines, sold mostly in Southeast Asia. A possible — yet controversial — way to stop poaching may be rhino ranches, where the horns are harvested for sale and the animals are allowed to grow new ones.

In Afghanistan, the killings are called "green on blue" — that's when an Afghan soldier or police officer turns his gun on a NATO ally.

There was a wave of such violence just last month after U.S. soldiers accidentally burned Korans. Over the next week, six Americans were killed, apparently at the hands of Afghans working with the U.S.

The top U.S. and NATO commanders in Afghanistan think they have some answers to this recurring problem, and it's up to U.S. soldiers like Capt. Joe Fritze to see if they work.

This is from a few days ago, but we missed it until The Atlantic pointed it out today.

We know Congress is divided. But how much so?

Here's a graph The Atlantic dug up from data The National Journal has put together using data they've collected for about 30 years analyzing congressional votes:

Meet Willow Tufano, age 14: Lady Gaga fan, animal lover, landlord.

In 2005, when Willow was 7, the housing market was booming. Home prices in some Florida neighborhoods nearly doubled from one month to the next. Her family moved into a big house; her mom became a real estate agent.

But as Willow moved from childhood to adolescence, the market turned, and the neighborhood emptied out. "Everyone is getting foreclosed on here," she says.