Morning Edition from NPR

Gean Brown Jr. was installing pipes in an attic in Spring Hill, Kan., and somehow he lost his wallet. He never expected to see it again. More than three decades later, Brown received a call last week. The current owner of that house had found the wallet.

Ford is betting technology can help relieve traffic congestion around the world. In a speech Monday, Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. said the company is investing in systems that will bypass traffic jams, locate parking spots and communicate with other vehicles to avoid accidents.

Russia holds a presidential election this Sunday, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is widely expected to win. If he does, he'll return to the office he held from 2000 to 2008. Putin is the subject of the book, The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia. David Greene talks to its author Angus Roxburgh, a journalist who once served as a public relations adviser to the Putin-run Kremlin.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Let's talk now about a different kind of traffic jam: traffic jams on the information highway. All that data flowing through broadband Internet networks is prompting mobile phone companies to throttle some of their customers, especially the heaviest users.

We called up Rich Jaroslovsky, the technology columnist for Bloomberg News and a regular guest here on MORNING EDITION, and we asked him to explain data throttling.

The heightened tensions between Israel and Iran over its nuclear weapons program have some residents in the Jewish state nervous. Israel's leaders have been talking about a possible conflict.