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A judge held an unusual hearing in New Jersey on Tuesday: a lawsuit brought by an 18-year-old who says her parents kicked her out of their house. Rachel Canning is seeking to force her parents to give her financial support and money for college, in addition to pay for tuition at her private school.

Superior Court Family Division Judge Peter Bogaard, who heard the case in Morristown, N.J., on Tuesday afternoon, denied Canning's requests in what's seen as the first round of hearings in the case.

"All requests by plaintiff for emergent relief at this point are denied," tweeted Michael Izzo of the Daily Record, which was apparently the first news outlet to report the news of the lawsuit.

The judge set a date of April 22 for a hearing to consider other issues in the case, such as Canning's legal status, the Daily Record reports.

In discussing the case after nearly two hours of testimony, the judge cited an email from Canning to her parents in which she said, "I'm my biggest enemy ... And do realize that a change has to be made," Izzo says.

Bogaard also "noted that Rachel Canning's behavior over the past year has been in question," reports CBS 2 TV: "one or two school suspensions, drinking, losing her captaincy on the cheerleading squad and being kicked out of the campus ministry."

The news station says the judge also told the Cannings that they should have tried to get help for their daughter instead of cutting her off.

Bogaard said the question of public policy must be considered, Izzo reported, as the case might set a precedent in which children can flout their parents' rules and then demand money from them.

Court documents filed by Rachel Canning alleged that her parents abandoned her. But her lawsuit stopped short of seeking full emancipation from them – if that connection is removed, her parents would cease to have an obligation toward their daughter.

"We're being sued by our child," Sean Canning told CBS 2's Christine Sloan Monday. "I'm dumbfounded. So is my wife, so are my other daughters."

Rachel Canning, a senior at Morris Catholic High School, is on the honor roll and the cheerleading squad; she plays lacrosse and has a $20,000 scholarship, according to multiple reports. She has been accepted at several colleges and reportedly hopes to attend the University of Vermont.

Since leaving her parents' home, Canning has been living with a friend whose father helped her sue, as The Asbury Park Press reports:

"Since the alleged "abandonment" by her parents, Rachel has been living in Rockaway Township with the family of her best friend and fellow student Jaime Inglesino, whose father is attorney and former Morris County Freeholder John Inglesino. Inglesino is funding the lawsuit and hired attorney Helfand, who included in the lawsuit a request that the parents pay their daughter's legal fees that so far total $12,597."

In late December, Canning's parents' attorney wrote a letter stating that the parents would continue to pay for Rachel's health insurance and saying she is entitled to money from a college fund they created, reports the The Star-Ledger.

"I know Rachel is a) a good kid, b) an incredibly rebellious teen, and she's getting some terrible information," Sean Canning told CBS 2.

He told the TV station that his daughter left home in November. The Canning household isn't a strict one, he said, noting that curfew is often after 11 p.m. Several local media outlets have reported that the Cannings did not approve of their daughter's boyfriend, whom the Daily Record has identified as a fellow senior at Morris Catholic.

Tuesday afternoon, Sean and Elizabeth Canning and their daughter came to court to discuss her lawsuit against them. They sat "at opposite ends" of the same table, Fox News' Rick Leventhal tweets. "All look miserable."

For today's hearing, the parents were "required to produce information about their incomes, including their 2011 and 2012 tax returns and their last three pay stubs," reports the The Star-Ledger.

The newspaper adds that Sean Canning currently works as a business administrator for the Township of Mount Olive; Elizabeth Canning is a legal secretary.

An intense discussion of the case is underway at the Asbury Park Press, where the top-rated comment came from a woman warning Rachel Canning that she was putting her future at risk. When people learn about her past, reader Emily Ruman warned, "they will most likely put on you on their 'she was crazy then, she is probably still crazy' list of people that they don't hire, date, befriend or otherwise associate with."

Another comment reiterated a time-honored rule: "If you don't like the rules here, move out."

Update at 6 a.m. Wednesday: The Scholarship
There's confusion over whether Canning's $20,000 scholarship comes from the University of Vermont or Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., with several local and national media reports asserting each version. We've reworded part of this post to reflect that uncertainty.

One of Bitcoin's largest trading exchanges shut down Tuesday, and you probably couldn't care less.

So what if rumors are circulating that millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin are stolen? If you don't understand Bitcoin in the first place, it's hard to figure out why this matters. So we're using this as an opportunity to go back to the basics: what this b-word means, where it came from and why it just might matter.

The Birth Of Bitcoin

This is the stuff of a Dan Brown novel.

Bitcoin emerged from the work of Satoshi Nakamoto. The hook is, no one actually knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. (It's inaccurate, of course to say "no one," but the people who do know aren't talking.) In 2008, he/she/they released a detailed concept for a self-regulating crypto-currency and wrote a whole bunch of incredible code to support it. But Satoshi Nakamoto stopped responding to emails in 2011. It's been a wild goose chase ever since.

Satoshi Nakamoto's concept is that of a democratically organized currency: no government regulation, no centralized bank. It's been embraced by, among others, libertarians trying to undermine monetary regulation policies and entrepreneurs trying to avoid financial corruption in developing countries.

While it's a difficult concept to grasp — we'll get to that in a second — it's worth at least getting familiar with because Bitcoin will continue to be covered regardless of whether the media understands it, says Vili Lehdonvirta, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.

"It's the perfect story. It has the mysterious background, started by a pseudonymous character," he says. "As humans, we like to dream about how things could be different. ... I think that for many people Bitcoin allows them to dream those dreams."

Not to mention, there's a lot of money involved. After all, it fundamentally is about money. Think of this as a Hollywood "inspired by a true story" blockbuster waiting to happen.

We recommend: Motherboard's Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto, The Creator Of Bitcoin?

OK, I'm Hooked. So What Is It?

In the great words of Shrek, Bitcoin is like an onion: It has layers. At its most superficial, it's a virtual currency, allowing you to transfer money to other people anywhere in the world without any physical exchange of dollar bills — just as you can with, say, PayPal or online credit card payments.

But the system behind it is much different. There's no central organization, like a bank or government treasury, organizing and keeping track of it. The bookkeeping is completely decentralized and is supposedly impossible to bamboozle, the way a bank could cook its books without anyone else looking. There's no intrinsic value, the way you could make a necklace out of gold, or government backing, the way modern "fiat" money has. And it's completely anonymous — you never have to give anyone your name or Social Security number or credit card number.

The whole process is made much more complicated by the technical aspects of how it works on a molecular level. There's lot of encryption and computational power involved. I don't pretend to be an expert in it, so I'll refer you to the source: Satoshi Nakamoto's original whitepaper.

We recommend: Medium's Explain Bitcoin Like I'm Five and, once you've mastered that, Quartz's By reading this article, you're mining bitcoins. If you want to delve into the murky world of Bitcoin mining, check out the New York Times' Into The Bitcoin Mines.

Trials, Tribulation

Ready for more of the Hollywood blockbuster plot line? Bitcoin's intrinsic anonymity makes it a prime currency for shady dealings. A Texas man who allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme used Bitcoin. An online black market called Silk Road, which the FBI shut down in October, used Bitcoin.

Silk Road got back into business shortly after, but earlier this month, hackers allegedly exploited a Bitcoin glitch to steal millions from customers. The value of Bitcoin fluctuates wildly, at one point dropping from $1,200 to less than $600 per coin after the Chinese government denounced it.

On top of all these, the failure of one of its largest exchanges, Mt. Gox, led some to speculate that this would ruin Bitcoin's legitimacy for good. But William Luther, an economics professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, says this might actually help Bitcoin in the long run because it forces people away from this first-generation business to more sophisticated exchanges.

"Now there will be an air of professionalism surrounding Bitcoin that wasn't there before," Luther says.

Bitcoin is also accepted by a growing number of businesses — including Overstock.com, two casinos in Las Vegas and a Subway sandwich shop in Allentown, Pa. Overstock's executive vice chairman, Jonathan Johnson, says the Mt. Gox news won't affect whether the company continues to accept the currency.

In fact, he says, Bitcoin has been great for business. It brings in new customers and prevents online shopping fraud. And Overstock converts bitcoins to dollars immediately after payment, so the fluctuations don't really affect the company.

It also has cut Overstock's credit card transaction fees, Johnson says. That's a benefit that could very well appeal to everyday consumers, too.

We recommend: NPR reporter Alan Yu's How Virtual Currency Could Make It Easier To Move Money

The Bigger Benefit

This stumbling and growing revolution has done something remarkable: In order to truly wrap your head around the concept, you are forced to contemplate how money works.

Is assigning value to a piece of paper any different than assigning value to encrypted electronic signals? Can we have a sustainable currency without the backing of powerful people assuring us that our money's good? Are there ways to secure money outside of banks?

Luther, the economics professor, calls himself a "Bitcoin skeptic" — he's not convinced it will last — but he says questions like these are worth the ride.

"Bitcoin has brought the question of alternative currencies back to the table, and I think that's a good thing," he says. "Money is a very old concept, and it's difficult for me to think that there's not a better way to make transactions."

Members of pro-Russian forces and Ukraine's military have engaged in several tense standoffs in the largely autonomous region of Crimea, but they have also avoided violence in what's widely seen as a dangerous and uncertain situation. Diplomats are still working to find a possible solution.

Crimea's parliament has set a date of March 16 for a public vote on seceding from Ukraine. The region's new leader says pro-Russian forces now control all access to the region. Russia denies its forces are active in Crimea — something the U.S. State Department deride as "President Putin's fiction."

Here are the latest updates from Ukraine – we'll be adding to this post all day Saturday:

A Russian military truck reportedly smashed through the gate of a Ukrainian missile-defense base in Sevastopol, the Crimean port city that is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet, as Scott reported for the Two-Way Friday afternoon.

That confrontation ended without a shot being fired — and with the assaulting force leaving the scene, according to reports. Other incidents have been reported in the past 12 hours, including the capture of a border guard post by pro-Russian forces.

A Ukrainian military office in Simferopol, Crimea's regional capital, was reportedly taken over by around 100 armed men, according to CNN. The network describes the spot:

"A CNN team that visited the scene said it appeared calm. Armed, masked men were at the entrance, and Russian flags were being painted on the gates. Those questioned declined to say what was happening inside."

Another hectic week in the technology space wraps up just as the massive festival for interactive geeks and the marketers who love them — South By Southwest — gets under way in Austin, Texas.

If this is your first All Tech roundup, we organize it in three sections: ICYMI for some highlights from NPR's coverage this week, Big Conversations for what's buzzing across the Internet in the technology and culture space and Curiosities for oddities that piqued our interest. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

ICYMI

#NPRWIT: This week, NPR's Tell Me More launched a celebration of women in technology, during which the field's leading ladies will showcase a day in their lives on Twitter. You can ask questions and participate in the conversation using the hashtag #NPRWIT. Melinda Gates is doing it!

Thanks, technology! Service industry workers should rejoice the likes of Square, an iPad-based cash register. It presents customers with a screen that suggests tip amounts, and "you physically have to hit 'no-tip' — and feel like a jerk — if you want to be stingy," Dan Bobkoff writes. In other news of how technology is changing the world, Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, explores how new car technology is slowly acclimating us to the idea of driverless cars.

Are you following @TellMeMoreNPR’s #NPRWIT conversation? Great look inside the lives of innovative women: http://t.co/vw4cFIyTrK

— Melinda Gates (@melindagates) March 4, 2014