russian rebels are battling ukrainian government forces, we are joined now via skype from donetsk by peter leonard, who is reporting there for the associated press. peter, what one of the more striking events that's happened recently is in the small down of-- and i'm going to try to say this correctly-- debaltseve is the fighting ceased for a short period of time so civilians could evacuate. both sides stopped fighting. first of all, what's the significance of this town, and why stop the fighting? >> to begin with, the significance of the town is essentially is lies along a railway line that connects the two main rebel cities and so if these rebel territories are ever to be economically sustainable and to exist as independent entitiesa as they would like they really have to have all of the trappings of a functional state which is to say, a transportation infrastructure and various other kind of industrial concerns. and so this is why the rebel offensive has concentrated so much on capturing this city. now in what came as a clearly unusual development the ukrainian and the rebel side agreed to susp

leonard nimoy passing away. present obama said in a statement, "i love spock." peteris on capitol hill to talk about what the house is going to do now that the first vote on home and security funding has failed. >> john boehner and his leaders meeting behind closed doors. he was defeated by democrats and 52 house republicans not backing this three-week extension. his main options now according to republicans, either a short-term spending bill that gets into the weekend or perhaps take up the bill that passed the senate that fully funds the dhs through the end of september. >> peter, thanks. we will have the latest information on that. for phil, for me, for john, for everyone else here at cpac. stay tuned for more results including the straw poll results. up next here, "taking stock." live long and prosper. ♪ >> hello i am pimm fox. a surprise from the u.s. house of representatives. john boehner failed to get the necessary votes to stop ace stopgap measure that would get the department of. top funding expires at midnight. nancy pelosi wasn't a fan from the start. >> it

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