Super Tuesday voting underway amid high turnout
Voting has begun in Virginia on Super Tuesday with a slew of other states to follow with their primaries and caucuses in the next few hours.
Polling stations in Virginia opened at 6am on Tuesday with some centres attracting lines from the start.
At the Lake Braddock Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia, there was a steady stream of voters coming in to cast their ballots. Election workers at one station estimated that they were getting two votes per minute - unusually high for a primary election.
Osama Bin Laden left millions for jihad in handwritten will
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had millions of dollars stashed in Sudan and wanted most of it to be used to fund jihad, according to a handwritten will released on Tuesday (March 1).
The document was among a tranche of newly declassified files that had been seized by Navy Seals on May 2, 2011 when they descended on Bin Laden's hideout in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad and killed him.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released dozens of documents, including one they said was bin Laden's will that deals with monies in Sudan.
Italy court lets lesbian couple adopt each other's children
A court in Rome has allowed a lesbian couple to adopt each other's children, their lawyer said on Tuesday, less than a week after the Italian parliament threw out a bid to give gays limited adoption rights.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had promised to open the way for stepchild adoption as part of a larger reform aimed at giving legal rights and protection to same-sex couples.
Much to the anger of gay rights groups, he dropped the adoption clause following fierce opposition from within his centre-left coalition. However, Tuesday's ruling highlights the fact that Italy's courts are prepared to step into the breach in the absence of clear-cut legislation.
Pakistan blast kills two local US consulate employees
At least two local employees of the American consulate in the Pakistani city of Peshawar have been killed in an explosion while out on an anti-narcotics mission, United States Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday.
The top American diplomat said several Pakistani soldiers also died in the blast involving an improvised explosive device (IED).
"Just this morning I woke to the news that we have lost two local employees in Peshawar who worked with our consulate there who were going out on an effort to eradicate narcotics fields," Kerry said at an event.
IOC no longer in charge of doping cases at Olympics
The judging of doping cases at this year's Rio de Janeiro Olympics and all future Games will be handled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) instead of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The IOC said on Tuesday that their Executive Board had approved the decision to remove itself from the process of judging suspected dopers in an effort to add more credibility to judgments.
"The IOC will no longer hear these cases. This is taking the IOC out of result management and out of hearings," CAS President John Coates, who is also an IOC member, told reporters.
