to catch up. the question is how long will that really take? and just a quick reminder, you can catch up with all of the news we're covering by checking out our website. the address is aljazeera.com. and you can watch us live by clicking on the watch live icon. aljazeera.com. ♪ soon the country is going to start winning, winning, winning. [ cheers and applause ] >> donald trump makes it three in a row, snatching first place in the nevada caucuses. bernie sanders appeals to black voters in south carolina, and hopes to slow hillary clinton's march to super-tuesday. deadly storms roll through the southeast and the threat is not over. and investigating new cases of zika that could prove it is sexually transmitted. ♪

we weren't expected to win too much, and now we're winning, winning, winning. [ cheers and applause ] >> the country -- and soon the country is going to start winning, winning, winning. [ cheers and applause ] >> reporter: donald trump celebrating his decisive win in the nevada caucuses. it is his hird victory in a row. welcome to al jazeera america. i'm richelle carey. trump is in virginia today. he won nevada with close to 46% of caucus goers. al jazeera's melissa chan is live in las vegas. so trump won big, winning, winning, winning, he said -- it looks like we just lost our signal with melissa, so we will get back to her in just a

moment. let's talk about the democrats. they are gearing up for the south carolina primary this saturday. and last night, hillary clinton, and bernie sanders made their pitch to voters there at a townhall meeting. >> reporter: bernie sanders was up first, his main task to convince voters he is not only a progressive, but can also get things done in washington. >> do we have the guts to take on the power of the insurance companies? do we have on the guts to take on the pharmaceutical industry, who has 1300 paid lobbyists in washington. i believe when the american people stand up and say healthcare is a right of all people, not a privilege, yeah, i believe we can do that. >> reporter: and with vital african american votes in play in south carolina justice reform, another see sanders pledge. >> there is something very wrong when african americans around the country get nervous about

walking down the street or going into their car and being stopped by a police officer. that should not be happening in america. >> reporter: secretary clinton is far ahead in the polls right now including with african americans. sanders need their vote if he is to win. >> my dad as i mentioned came from poland. i'm running for president. >> and guess what, nobody has asked for my birth certificate. >> why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else? [ cheers and applause ] >> i have a record. it certainly is far different than the republicans, because they think, actually, and have said that the cause of the great recession was too much regulation on wall street, which is an absolute joke. >> reporter: she may be ahead among african american voters, but she took no chances asking

mothers who lost their santas gun violence to stand up. >> racism, along with economic issues and all of the rest have to be addressed. >> reporter: and those state department emails the topic just won't die down. clinton was asked to defend using a private internet server in her own home yet again. >> i have turned over 55,000 pages of emails, nobody in any cabinet position has ever been as transparent or open. i am not at all worried about it. lincoln mitchell is the national political kroerd for the new york observer. this townhall meeting it was clear both candidates were making a play for african american voters. can you win the democratic nomination without the support of african american voters? >> it would be very difficult to win the democratic nomination without a substantial chunk.

if you are down to 10, 15, 20%, you can't win the nomination. bernie needs to get into that 30, 35% range. and that is doable. he has got to create a generational cleavage, a gender cleavage where he gets more black men, but it is not going to be easy. he has a message on some levels should resinate with african american voters, when he talks about his history in civil rights -- >> there's pictures that show him being arrested, why is not working? >> pictures of bernie sanders being arrested before someone who is well into middle age like me was born -- >> [ laughter ] >> i'm not sure how much that will resinate. but he was the most visible jewish american politician in the country to support jesse

jackson. and that's a big deal. >> i don't know that the average voter knows that or remembers that. >> the problem is he hasn't done his work. he doesn't have the relationships, and i think for many voters, those relationships are important. for an african american voter who goes to church every sunday and has never seen bernie sanders going to african american churches. if you are a jewish voter, that's a big deal. and that's the work that sanders needed to have done a while ago to get the 35, 40 or more percent that he will need to beat hillary clinton. >> so i'm going to get you to stay here for just a moment. we're going to go back to las vegas for just a second. and then we'll need to talk to you about that. we do have melissa chan now. so let's talk about donald

trump's win. 46%. and it's the demographics that he won. tell us about that. >> reporter: it's really incredible, because one piece of information coming out of this is he took the g.o.p. latino vote. we have to take that information with a bit of grain of salt. the sample size is about 100 to 200 people. but still it is significant. he won in so many categories. he clearly got a lot of support from many different groups, and i think there's definitely a sense that people are very exciting because he is just changing the political call c s calculous. >> now we're going to get greedy for the united states, we're going to grab and grab and grab, we're going to bring in so much money and so much everything. we're going to make america great again, folks.

>> reporter: and you are talking about momentum, well, this morning we have word of two congressmen endorsing him. these are the first endorsements from politics. duncan hunter from california, and chris collins from new york. and talking to people who are donald trump supporters, they said they like the fact that he is honest, that he is a straight talker. and i said what if you disagree with some of the things he said? and one woman said there is never going to be a politician out there who sees eye to eye with me as a voter, and i'm just glad that he is blunt and honest. >> the undeniable reality that the first four states have shown is that the only campaign that has beaten donald trump, and the only campaign that can beat donald trump is this campaign. >> we are going to take our message, our principles, and take them to people that live today the way that i grow up. >> reporter: and you just heard

ted cruz and marco rubio. they obviously making the best of what they can possibly do after nevada. ted cruz positioning himself as the best alternative to donald trump, and marco rubio saying he is the most electable. but even in ted cruz east texas, donald trump is making inroads. and in marco rubio's florida he is beating the senator outright. >> all right. melissa chan thank you so much. lincoln mitchell is still with us. those are two really important points that she just immediate. even in florida, donald trump seems to be beating marco rubio there, it could be a tight race in texas as well. what do these guys have to do on super-tuesday for somebody not to make the case they are completely out of it. >> if donald trump wins 55% or more of the delegates earned on super-tuesday this race is more or less over. that's kind of the threshold. if he gets beyond that, it

becomes extremely difficult to stop him. >> okay. so let's talk about the idea of donald trump as the standard barer for the republican party as it is right now. what could that mean for the republican party? and the type of rhetoric that he has used, lincoln? >> well, this is potentially very damaging for the republican party. but there is a potential upside. trump has spoken to voters who do not like the normal republican rhetoric of cut taxing, help the rich, it will trickle down. the ronald reagan rhetoric, he is saying to people i feel your pain. we're going to make america great again. we spent too much money on wars. we can't just have economics rigged for the rich people.

>> and let's build a wall to keep out mexicans as well. >> and with a strong nate vis and islam phobia rhetoric. but marco rubio and ted cruz are the same polished politicians. he also could lose 45 states to hillary clinton. but that is the challenge of donald trump. the longer-term challenge is what do you stand for as a party. are you holding on to this memory of a country that was whiter and was more protestant. donald trump's campaign slogan might as well be why do i have to press two to hear it in

english. >> wow. okay. we're going to end it there. thank you very much as always. president obama is again defending his right to nominate a new justice for the supreme court. >> i'm going to do my job. we are going to go through a process as we have done in two previous supreme court vacancies, to identify an outstanding candidate that has impeccable legal credentials and would bring the kind of ability and compassion and objectivity and legal reasoning to the court that, you know, the highest court in the land demands. >> the president also says he hopes congress will uphold the constitution and consider his nominee. republicans have repeatedly said they will not hold a vote on any

nominee he puts forward. meanwhile the president is meeting with the king of jordan today. they stat down a short time ago as you see there. they are expected to talk about jordan's role as peace keeper in the region and the border crisis. jordan has taken in more than 600,000 refugees since the war began. new developments in the tensions in the south china sea. these are satellite images of what the u.s. says could be radar facilities installed on those islands. last week the pentagon said beijing installed missile batteries in the area. the top military officer in the region says it is complicating an already delicate situation. >> china is clearly militarizing the south china sea. >> reporter: he says the u.s. is considering putting submarines and other tools in the region.

china says it is committed to non-mall tarrization, and the u.s. and other nations should avoid military action.

a texas court has dismissed a criminal case against former governor rick perry. he was accused of misusing the power of his office. the charge was connected to a veto he made in 2013. the prosecutors said the veto

was intended to force a local district attorney to resign. if he had been convicted it could have brought a prison sentence of up to 99 years. we are learning more about what happened before those deadly shootings in kalamazoo, michigan. the shooter visited a gun shop and bought a tactical jacket just before the attacks. he is charged with murder. police say he killed six people and wounded two others. more severe weather is hitting parts of the country today after dangerous storms brought tornados to the southeast, killing at least three people. hermela aregawi has more. >> reporter: the storms wiped through alabama, florida, mississippi, and louisiana, knocking down trees and turning over vehicles and mobile homes. at least two were killed and dozens were injured. emergency workers in a up to

west of new orleans are still searching for people believed to be trapped under the debris. >> a lot of the debris is piled up in areas. we're hoping the dogs and some of the teams coming in now with more equipment, can get down into those debris piles and try to find people. >> reporter: a third person was killed in mississippi. the storm then moved into southern alabama and northern florida late tuesday night. thousands in alabama were in the dark when high winds knocked down trees. the florida highway patrol closed a 26-mile stretch of highway 10. this morning thousands are still without power. >> that severe storm is now threatening other parts of the country. nick -- nicole has the

forecast. >> we have already seen some of this snow wrapping behind this storm. you see this continues to lift up, more of the snow as the cold air comes in broaden, so we'll see a wider area of that, and more people transitioning from rain to snow. by tomorrow some of this starts to clear out, but you can see spotty showers of snow mostly going through portions of the northeast, again, another area that would switch types of precipitation if all of this goes along. as this pulls northward not as wide of area under risk, but still the same moderate risk for severe weather which means it is likely to see more tornados and wind. wind is going to be a concern, as well, wind damage, as this moves through. in terms of the backside kwlshgs the heavy snow area. closest to the lake is where we'll see the heaviest amount.

but as i mentioned the wind has already kicked some of those winds over the 40 mile an hour range, as we get into the afternoon that could get up to 50 miles an hour. as a all of this moves through it has been dropping temperatures down, so if you are on the east coast, and dealing with the mild stuff, that will be a distant memory after today. the cdc is looking into more a dozen cases of the zika virus that may have been spread through sex. >> reporter: the cdc hasn't confirmed how more than a dozen people contracted zika, but they say it may have been transmitted through sex. >> so it looks like zika virus actually can sort of collect in people's bodily fluids, so it's more easily found in urine, saliva, and also sexual fluids.

so it now appears that it's sexual transmission might be happening a little more frequently than we thought. >> reporter: the virus is typically spread through mosquitos, but it is believed to be linked to thousands of cases of birth defects in brazil. this new information means stopping the spread of zika could be more difficult than previously thought. >> most people don't have symptoms. so it can spread a lot further it is probably more prevalent already than we know. >> reporter: the fda put out new rules to protect the blood supply. it calls on people who have traveled to the infected areas to not donate blood. >> with the right combination of abundant mosquitos infected with a virus, such as zika, a susceptible population that has not seen this virus before, and

a lack of knowledge about the virus, things -- this virus could spread very rapidly. >> reporter: there is no cure or treatment for zika, but researchers are hoping a new rapid test will help defect the virus faster. ines ferre, al jazeera. voters in bolivia rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the president to run for a fourth time. he has been praised for boosting the economy and creating a strong middle class, but his administration was plagued by scandals leading to the amendment. and in cuba, one of the castro brothers has died. still ahead, head coaches

from across tennessee university speak out. and a precedent for privacy, new details in the battle between apple and the fbi. the other times the government canned for help.

when you're on hold, your business is on hold. that's why comcast business doesn't leave you there. when you call, a small business expert will answer you in about 30 seconds. no annoying hold music. just a real person, real fast. whenever you need them. so your business can get back to business. sounds like my ride's ready. don't get stuck on hold. reach an expert fast. comcast business. built for business. al jazeera america. apple fans came out to voice their opinion in the battle with the fbi. the fbi is trying to force apple to unlock an iphone that blonsed

to one of the san bernardino shooters. apple has until friday to file its formal opposition to a court order. coaches at the university of tennessee is joining together. john henry smith has the story. >> reporter: all 16 coaches together, defending their program against claims that the school mishandles sexual harassment cases. the athletic program's reputation, tarnished by a lawsuit filed by six women who claim the university created a hostile environment, and didn't properly investigate claims against male student athletes, specifically in football and basketball. but ut coaches say women on their teams don't feel any hostility. >> i can say i have been here for 18 years, and women have never been treated better than

they are now. the female student athlete has never had more resources and support. >> i think they are problem fwli surprised at what is being said by tennessee in the national media. that's not the tennessee that they live. >> reporter: the head football coach was apologetic. >> everything is about the alleged victims, and we take that very, very seriously. >> reporter: he also got defensive. >> it's easy to sit out there and judge when you don't live our day every day. >> reporter: the university has now gone on its own offensive, filing a motion to have peyton mannings name removed from the lawsuit. he is cited for a 20-year-old incident in which a trainer claims manning sexually assaulted her. in the motion, the lawyers say that mentioning manning in this suit would be, quote, immaterial, impertinent, and

scandalous. today spacex takes another shot at returning a rocket to earth. it will try again to land the rocket on a floating platform in the landic ocean. spacex hopes to eventually use its rockest boosters multiple times, reducing costs. so take a look at this painting that has come to life. the art institute of chicago now offering an air b&b rental now modeled after van gogh's famous painting. it costs 10 bucks, and has the familiar walls chair and bed. it will be available through

may. thank you for watching. i am richelle carey. the news continues next live from london, so keep it here on al jazeera. ♪

>> announcer: this is al jazeera. ♪ hello, i'm lauren taylor. coming up, the u.n. delivers the first aid by air drop to the besieged syrian town of deir al-zour. and people get ready to go to the polls in iran in two elections. a european telecom giant sold surveillance equipment to a secret branch of the egyptian government. and the south korean protest without any