NPR National News

After months of campaigning and millions of dollars in TV ads, the first presidential primary is Tuesday in New Hampshire. Audie Cornish talks with NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson about what to expect when the results roll in.

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Last week in Boston, 7,000 mathematicians, math teachers and math enthusiasts from all over the world converged for something called the Joint Mathematics Meeting. Naturally, there was a lot of this...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: C plus S minus two.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Well, S is A plus B and C is two.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: Right.

BLOCK: But reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro also found a lot that he wasn't expecting.

Melissa Block talks to NPR's Ari Shapiro, who is covering the campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Romney is the frontrunner in polls leading up to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.

Audie Cornish and Melissa Block talk to NPR correspondents covering the New Hampshire primary. NPR's Don Gonyea is covering the campaign of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. NPR's Robert Smith is covering the campaign of Texas Rep. Ron Paul. NPR's Tovia Smith is covering the campaign of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. And NPR's Andrea Seabrook is covering the campaign of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

When the current president of South Korea Lee Myung-bak took office four years ago, he turned a cold shoulder to engagement with North Korea. The conservative wing in South Korea opposed improving relations with Pyongyang. But that has proven to be an unpopular policy, and now Lee finds himself in the difficult position of appealing for closer ties in this unpredictable transition period in North Korea. Lee goes to Beijing Monday to seek Chinese backing for this policy shift.

In Israel, it might become a crime to use Nazi comparisons to criticize someone. As the AP puts it, a bill under consideration by parliament would "would impose penalties of up to six months in jail and a $25,000 fine for using the word 'Nazi' or Holocaust symbols for purposes other than teaching, documentation or research."

Not too long ago Nokia was the largest tech company in Europe. Its market cap rivaled Microsoft's. It helped create the mobile phone industry as we know it. But the emergence of a new generation of smartphones — led by Apple's iPhone and Android-based offerings from Samsung, HTC and others — left Nokia behind.

Eight colleges in Georgia will now become four, the State Board of Regents announced today. The move wil affect about 36,000 students and was proposed in an effort to save money.

Binge drinking in America looks to be an even bigger problem than we thought.

About 1 in 6 Americans, or 17 percent of the population, went on at least one drinking binge in a month last year, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That works out to 38 million people.