Here and Now

NPR’s Charlie Mahtesian joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to discuss the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and bipartisan reaction in Congress to the crisis in Ukraine.

CPAC came to a close this weekend after Sen. Rand Paul won the conference’s presidential straw poll for the second year in a row. Although Republican officials acknowledged the need for the party to come together on a unified platform, there was little agreement on what that agenda would be.

Forty-four years ago tonight, North Carolina State beat South Carolina 44-39 in double overtime to win the Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball Tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina. That wasn’t supposed to happen. And it left the captain of the team, Bobby Cremins, so heartbroken, he and another player on the team fled into the mountains of North Carolina for several days before they could return to the South Carolina campus in Columbia.

The Los Angles Lakers have won 16 NBA championships, but this season they probably won’t even make the playoffs. Last night they hit a real low point, losing to their neighborhood rivals, the Los Angeles Clippers, 142 to 94.

The 48-point loss was the worst in Lakers history. The Lakers weren’t the only ones who had a bad night. LeBron James of the Miami Heat made only six shots in a loss to the San Antonio Spurs, just a few days after he had poured in 61 points.

The Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act takes effect today. It holds institutions of higher education responsible for the prevention of sexual violence, not just responding to it after assaults occur.

It also establishes standard procedures for disciplining those found guilty, and requires greater transparency on sexual violence policy and procedures, not just about rape but also domestic violence, dating violence and stalking.

We all remember the story of 5-year-old Miles Scott, who is in remission from leukemia. Back in November, Here & Now spoke to the Make-A-Wish Foundation in San Francisco, which organized the entire city to help grant Miles’ wish to be BatKid for a day.

Across the country, traffic is getting worse. That’s a good thing — at least in terms of economic indicators. More people on the roads means more people are headed to jobs and the economy is bouncing back.

One of the cities that has a major problem with traffic is Austin, Texas. Approximately 70 new cars hit the streets daily in Austin, making it one of the top five most congested cities in America, according to a new traffic scorecard by INRIX, a traffic research firm.

On Tuesday, the bitcoin bank Flexcoin was forced to shut down after hackers stole approximately $600,000 worth of bitcoins.

The bank announced it lost all 896 units of the digital currency stored online, and will not be able to come back from the loss.

The theft comes in the wake of the closure of Mt. Gox, another bitcoin exchange, which filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo last week after losing 750,000 bitcoins in a hack attack.

NPR Music writer and editor Stephen Thompson joins us each week to introduce us to a new song. This week it’s “Fall in Love” by New York electronic rock duo Phantogram. Thompson says Phantogram’s sound is catchy but a little bit challenging.

IBM was once one of the country’s largest employers. Considered a major innovator in the high tech world, IBM was also a place where workers could count on having a job throughout their entire career.

But IBM is now going through a major restructuring after sustaining years of losses. These changes could result in some 13,000 layoffs, both in the U.S. and abroad. Some of these layoffs have already started, but the company will not confirm any numbers.