shanghai. and just a quick reminder, you can always catch up on all of the stories we are covering. plenty more for you on super-tuesday which is the day when several u.s. states decide who they want as their party candidate ahead of the u.s. presidential election. aljazeera.com. ♪ it's super-tuesday, across roads in the path to the white house. front runners look to lock in the nomination. >> we are going to make america great again, greater than ever before. >> they have been after me for 25 years, and i'm still standing. >> a chance to breathe new life into campaigns fighting to stay alive. >> football is a spectator sport. democracy is not a spectator sport. >> elect me president and we

will be the authors of the greatest chapter in the amazing story of america. >> we are going to win the general election, beat hillary clinton, and turn this country around! >> reporter: voters across the country give their say as the field to 1600 pennsylvania avenue narrows. ♪ this is al jazeera america live from new york city. i'm richelle carey. millions of americans have already started casting their ballots on the biggest day of the 2016 campaign so far, super-tuesday. a few hours ago bernie sanders voted and he talked about his campaign goals. >> what i have said from day one is that our campaign does well when millions of people stand up and fight back for social justice, economic justice, for environmental sanity. i'm confident that if there is a

large voter turnout today across this country, we are going to do well, and if not, we are probably going to be struggling. >> today could be a potential game changer for sanders and also for some of the republicans. democrats are vying for 865 delegates in 11 states, republicans are competing for 595 delegates. i'll be joined on the set today by lincoln mitchell the national political correspondent for the new york observer, and we have team coverage across the country. jonathan martin is following developments in alabama. and heidi zhou castro is in san antonio, texas where the most delegates are up for grabs. let's start with heidi. texas is the biggest state heading to the polls today. how are the candidates tailoring their messages? rp >> reporter: here we're looking

at a two-man competition when donald trump and ted cruz on the republican side. here on his home turf, cruz is hoping to tap into that tea party base. ted cruz has the endorsement of the current texas governor, and perhaps more importantly, the endorsement of rick perry, and he is attempting to steer his campaign back into the attack of the obama administration. that message has always resinated among texas conservatives, but will it continue to resinate and especially up against donald trump's campaign. trump brings a new energy to this state, judging by the size of his rallies and the chatter on the streets here in texas, trump is a great threat to ted

cruz. >> all right. so both cruz and clinton are expected to win in texas. how close are they to meeting the expectations they have? >> reporter: sure, let's turn to the democrat side for a minute here. hillary clinton leading bernie sanders by 21 points, a significant gap. her campaign hoping to deliver the same sweeping win in texas as we saw in south carolina. to do that, her husband has been cross crossing the state on her behalf, especially speaking with latino voters who the clintons have courted now for deck indicated. you see the evidence of the two-man race i was talking about. donald trump and ted cruz neck and neck. cruz with only a 3-point lead across of trump and that's within the margin of error, and we see marco rubio trailing at a disimportant third. >> thank you heidi zhou castro. once again let's welcome len

done mitchell from the new york observer. should be it that close for ted cruz in his home state in >> no, he would obviously be in a much stronger position. but right now it is the only state where it is that close. but this is a must-win for cruz not only for presidential candidate, but for his political future. if you lose your home state in the primary, that's not a great sign for a guy who should have a future in republican politics. if he wins texas trump is still most likely the nominee. but cruz at least will have bragging rights and sets himself up okay for 2020. >> all right. how do the two of them -- they both play, i think, to similar crowds in texas. so how are people deciding between the two of them. >> they play to similar crowds from the outside, but cruz is a much more conventional

right-wing republican. hawkish interventionist policies in regards to forward-looking. conservative low tax, low spending on economic policies, and a radically conservative social agenda. anti-abortion rights, anti-lbgt rights, et cetera. trump is different. trump has a much more kind of populous, centrist approach. right? so his position on foreign policy much more interventi interventionist. he has said thing that constantly giving tax cuts to rich people isn't the answer. however, he has made a much more nativist appeal, and appealing to white voters who feel angry and have been left out. that is a little bit different

than the more conventional cruz appeal. >> all right. we'll have to see how it turns out. let's hop over to birmingham now. jonathan martin is live for us there. alabama's governor has said that the state will take a difference this time around. so what kind of a turn out are we talking about? and who is leading? >> reporter: yes, alabama is expected to play a bigger role in this year's primary. in past super-tuesday's alabama typically voted after super-tuesday a week after. but their legislature voted to vote with the rest of the states, so that's why they are a bigger player. you see a lot of candidates spending time and money here, and there is expected to be a 40% turnout, which is high, considering there are not a lot of big statewide races on the ballot. donald trump continues to have a

pretty sizable lead in most of the polls. the latest shows him at around 42%. so the forry line is not who will win but who will come in second place. so they hope to win some of those congressional districts, so they can take home of delegates. and then hillary clinton polling at around 70%, a little over 70% over bernie sanders, and she has really spent some time in birmingham and alabama as a whole over the last week or so. she actually visited an historically black college over the weekend, because she is trying to appeal to a lot of those black voters and come out with a big win. >> collectively how many delegates are at stake today? >> well, today is of course super-tuesday but here in the south, people refer to it as the sec primary, because it's like the southeastern conference in college athletics, because you have a lot of delegates at

stake. you have alabama voting, georgia voting, tennessee, arkansas, oklahoma, so when you put all of those states together in this region, you are talking about more than 250 delegates on each side, so that's why you have seen perhaps more than in elections past a lot of the candidates spending a lot of time here. one other thing will be how much of a turn out there will be considering these controversial voter id laws. in alabama and georgia they have the proof of citizenship laws where people have to show their birth certificate, license or passport. some have felt that will disenfranchise a lot of minority voters, so that's another story line to watch here in the deep south. >> thank you, jonathan. talk about that story line, john than martin for us in alabama.

lincoln mitchell i'm going to bring you back in. how will the change in voter id laws effect what is happening in alabama? >> today, i'm not sure it will have much effect. but in the biggest picture it has an effect. these are both solidly red states. but it certainly effects state legislatures, and congressional races, a few, maybe in those states. and given the history of what we know in the deep south and given that we know that voter fraud is essentially non-existent in the united states, this is anything but an effort to keep turnout low. and that helps the people in power on both sides, but it helps the republicans more. >> and they would disagree. >> they would. i'm not sure what data they would muster to show that. they are going at a problem with a tank that doesn't even exist, right?

of all of the problems face democracy in the u.s. voter fraud is not one of them. >> the date for the alabama primary has changed. that's why they call it the sec primary, because there are so many southern states voting particularly on the republican side. is there a strategy there on the republican side to get so many of these states lined up. >> it's a strategy, but also if everyone else is voting and you are not, you want to join. for a mid-sized state like alabama you either bunch yourself up, you go earlier, but it's hard to go earlier, or you go later and have less of an effect. >> all right. lincoln stay close. let's go to another state voting today, vermont, that is the home state of senator bernie sanders,

shihab is live in vermont. the state is obviously expected to go for sanders. >> you are right. everyone loves bernie around here. but beyond that, the sanders campaign is looking at four other states, oklahoma, minnesota, massachusetts, and colorado. then the plan is not to get completely wiped out in the south, because of the proportional delegate aloe indication system that the democratic party has, if the margin of defeat is not too bad he can still pick up loads of delegates even if he loses to hillary clinton. they are in this for the long hall. there are many states they have yet to vote, they are expected to do well in many of those. they are raising more money than any other candidate, some 42 million in february alone, many small donors. the sanders campaign says they

are not going to disappoint them. this could go all the way to the convention in late july, they say. >> he is struggling to appeal to older black voters in the south. is that going to continue to be a problem? >> reporter: it is something that perplexes many, but they know they can't really compete with the name recognition that the clintons have had for so, so many years. although the sanders campaign always points out self-things, not the least how disastrous they have been to the african american community, namely that bill clinton signing the bill that lead to incarceration of millions of african americans. there were industries that preyed on the african american community for profit. in the 60s when hillary clinton

was a goldwater girl, she was supporting a candidate who believed in segregation. bernie sanders was getting arrested for civil rights. in the '70s and '80s, we supported jesse jackson's candidacy. however, because he always focuses on class, his opinion is once you solve that inequality, then racism will automatically sort itself off. sanders now has a very robust platform to combat structural racism in the u.s. he says he has learned. it does seem he still has that enormous problem with older african american voters to whom clinton is the gold standard, and particularly because there is that layer of african american leadership involved with the democratic party.

>> all right. shihab thank you so much. let's talk about georgia now. a group of black students were ejected from a trump rally by the secret service agents. the agents said that trump requested the removal. >> it shows you how racist our own school is. >> reporter: the trump campaign spokesperson denied that trump or his campaign had anything to do with the incident. and more convict in virginia. the presidential candidate was interrupted several times. >> are you from mexico? are you from mexico? [ laughter ] >> right smack in the middle of my punch line! >> reporter: wow, and that was not the only issue, the secret service is now investigating what happened when one of its

agents scuffled with a photographer. the photographer said: i'm joined again by lincoln mitchell, the republican leadership cannot possibly want to be talking about things like this, at a time like this. >> nor do they want to be talking about the ku klux klan or david duke, but this is a problem that they have to deal with. and this is a political party that has played issues of race in a very complicated way, that has tiptoed up to the line many, many times. and when you do that, people who clearly are on the other side of the line are going to think it's okay to demonstrate their views, and candidates are going to appeal to those voters, and to say the problem is donald trump is not a serious answer on the part of the republican party.

if trump is the nominee, they are going to have to do some real sole seeks on how they got to this point. >> paul ryan has stepped into the fray now. and this is what he had to say. he says this kind of moment when we should be having a serious debaited about the policies, instead the conversation has been about white supremacy groups. i try to stay out of the ups and downs of the primary, but i will speak up. if a person wants to be the nominee of the party, there can be no evasion and no gains. they must reject any group that is built on bigotry. will this have any effect? >> no. paul ryan is not going to have much of an impact on this primary. he may be positioning himself for one of the republican fantasies, which is somehow they

get to a convention and turn to paul ryan who is an appealing candidate, but who would never get nominated by a party with 40% of their delegates coming for donald trump. it is not much of an impactful statement. something you have to say as speaker of the house, for sure. and maybe he means it, who knows. >> of course. lincoln stay close. and a reminder we'll have complete coverage tonight right here on al jazeera america. up next, a show down over security. apple and the fbi go before congress in the fight over unlocking the san bernardino shooters phone. and newly released documents reveal what was in social media social media personal letters, and the details of his handwritten will.

>> the attorney general is speaking in san francisco today on the balance between security and technology. ines ferre reports recent tensions between the fbi and apple mean it's unlikely to happen any time soon. >> reporter: ahead of the hearing >> on apple executive wrote an open statement saying: apple has been criticized by some lawmakers. >> i think apple leadership risks having blood on their

hands. >> reporter: but they are standing firm on its position not to write software to help the fbi unlock an iphone. apple says this is not just about one phone. >> the only way we know would be to write a peace of software that we view as sort of the software equivalent of cancer. >> reporter: apples case got a boost on monday. a federal judge in new york said the company does not have to help unlock an iphone used in a drug case. the judge took particular aim at a 200-year-old statute the government was using in its case. in a state, the justice department said it would ask a judge to review the decision, and it said: ines ferre, al jazeera.

the memorial for the late supreme court justice antonin scalia is being held today. scalia died on february 13th in texas. he was 79 years old. and the president will be meeting with republican leaders today to discuss his plan to fill the vacant seat. he will sit down with mitch mcconnell and chuck grassley. both say there will be no vote on anyone the president chooses. white house house spokesman says president obama wants to have a serious discussion about filling the vacancy. more of osama bin laden personal documents seized have been released to the public. one of the papers was the handwritten will. in it bin law din claimed he had around $29 million in personal wealth, the bulk of which he wanted to spend on jihad for the sake of god.

coming up, mission complete. scott kelly prepares to return to earth after nearly a year in space. and another elephant attack in india, this time creating chaos at an annual holy festival. ((úz@úxóxkxñ($9

al jazeera america.xkxñ($9 scary moments here as you can see in india. this is an elephant that broke free. the elephant was one of five lined up during a ritual.

nearly 30 vehicles were damaged, but no injury reported. and less than 24 hours two astronauts will return to earth after nearly a year. >> scott and misha, congratulations for your year of service. >> reporter: over the past 49 weeks, scott and his russian counterpart have taken more than 5400 spins around the earth. taken part in six space walks and carried out experiments. but it's how their own bodies have weathered the long spell of radiation exposure, and weightlessness that researchers will be giving the most attention. kelley says he feels fine physically, but as a keener sense of the social isolation of space travel and after spending almost half of the time in a box the size of a phone booth, kelly points to the challenges for

those designing a human journey to mars. >> making that -- you know, that primate -- that private area as perfect as possible, i think will go a long way towards reducing fatigue and stress. >> reporter: while scientists will record data, it's the american who will be subject to closer examination. together with his identical twin brother. >> so far my job has been to provide samples, blood, saliva, other things i'm not going to go into. [ laughter ] >> and be there for mris, and exams. >> reporter: they are compare the samples to each other, including to their immune systems after both received the same flu vaccine. >> we're using the latest

technology for sequencing to really identify each t-cells in mark and scott, and try to see how they react to the flu. >> reporter: kelly says he should have stayed for another year if necessary, but back on the ground he'll continue to be the focus of close study. tom akerman, al jazeera. take a look at this beautiful picture. kelly tweeted out earlier today. the caption, rise and shine my last sunrise from space, then i got to go. that's gorgeous. supersonic planes could soon be returning to the skies. nasa has awarded a $20 million contract to lockheed martin to develop a new high-speed passenger jet. the planes are expected to be quieter than concord with its famous sonic boom. thank you for joining us. i'm richelle carey the news

continues here on al jazeera, so keep it here. ♪ the race to be president of the united states reached a crucial stage. it's super-tuesday, which could make or break the path to the white house. i'll alan fisher in stafford, texas. the loan star state is the biggest prize on super-tuesday, a day that donald trump can take a massive step towards security the republican party nomination for president. ♪ i'm lauren taylor this is al jazeera live from london. driven out, more refugees are foergsed from the jungle camp in conference call will begin