Tradisional Sabah Borneo

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu soared into Hollywood lore on Sunday, giving Mexico a best director triumph at the Oscars for a stunning third straight year.

The former radio DJ became just the third filmmaker to win back-to-back Academy Awards for best director for his epic story of vengeance and survival, "The Revenant."

He won the best director and best picture Oscars last year for "Birdman." His friend and countryman Alfonso Cuaron won the top director award for "Gravity" in 2014.

Only two other Hollywood legends won two straight best director Oscars: John Ford in 1941 and 1942 and Joseph Mankiewicz in 1950 and 1951.

"I couldn't be more happy. Every film is like a song -- you can't like one song more than the other," Inarritu told reporters after his win.Storytelling is a way for us to confront emotions and possibilities and feel beautiful and horrible emotions. It's a way to control life, to have an oxygen capsule for life without suffering for real."

Inarritu also joins an impressive club of directors who have two golden statuettes: Billy Wilder, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Milos Forman, Oliver Stone and Ang Lee.

"The Revenant" is the result of five years of travel and research that Inarritu dedicated to make the brutal biopic, shot under adverse weather conditions with Leonardo DiCaprio starring as a 19th century frontiersman who seeks revenge after being left for dead.

- Government critic -Inarritu has had an enviable career. His six feature films have all earned some kind of nomination at the Oscars.

With Cuaron and their friend Guillermo del Toro, the trio have been dubbed "The Three Amigos," heading a golden generation of Mexican filmmakers who have scooped up the industry's most prestigious prizes in recent years.

Inarritu has used his international fame to take the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto to task.

When he took the stage last year to accept the Oscar for "Birdman," he urged Mexicans to "find and build the government that we deserve."

Two days later, he doubled-down on his criticism, saying that "the level of dissatisfaction, of injustice, of corruption, of impunity have reached intolerable levels" in his native land mired in a decade-long drug war.

Pena Nieto, who had congratulated Inarritu for his Oscar glory, responded that his government was striving to improve the lives of the Mexican people.

This year, he tackled the thorny row over diversity that roiled the Oscars.

"There is a line in the film that says, 'They don't listen to you when they see the color of your skin'," Inarritu said.

"So what a great opportunity to our generation to really liberate ourselves from all prejudice and, you know, this way of thinking and make sure for once and forever that the color of skin becomes as irrelevant as the length of our hair."

- Music lover -

While Inarritu shot to fame with his 2000 Mexican drama "Amores Perros," and earned his first Oscar directing nomination for 2006's "Babel" starring Brad Pitt, the 52-year-old Inarritu came late to the movie world.

A music lover, the wild-haired director started working for WFM radio in the 1980s while he was still a communications student at Mexico City's Iberoamerican University.

But true to his adventurous spirit -- he traveled the world as a cabin boy in a merchant vessel at the age of 19 -- he took his chances, trading the microphone for a camera.

"I think that I'm a musician before I am a filmmaker -- a frustrated musician," Inarritu, a father of two who lost a third child shortly after birth, once said.

Inarritu left WFM in the 1990s to make television advertisements and short films for his production firm, Z Films, while learning the craft from Polish-born theater director Ludwik Margules.

It was during that time that he met screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, with whom he made "Amores Perros" -- a raw drama in which three stories collide after a car crash in Mexico's sprawling capital.His debut feature earned Inarritu a big ovation at the Cannes film festival, where it won the Critics' Week prize in 2000.

On the back of the film's success, Inarritu moved to Los Angeles, where he directed other somber dramas packed with Hollywood stars.  AFP

A knife-wielding assailant hacked at children in a Chinese schoolyard on Monday, wounding 10 before killing himself, police and reports said, the latest such attack in the country.

Pupils were lining up to go home at the end of the morning session when the man struck, slashing at several children before fleeing, the state-run China News Service cited a witness as saying.

A woman passerby saw several students with their faces covered in blood, apparently from head injuries, being bandaged up, it added.

The victims in Haikou, in the southern island province of Hainan, were six boys and four girls, the report said, two of them severely wounded but neither in life-threatening condition.

"I thought my child would be safe at school; I didn't think something like this would happen," the mother of Liu Qiang, seven, told the Nanhai Online news portal at the hospital where her son was being treated.The assailant was identified as 45-year-old Li Sijun, who later committed suicide, reports said, adding no motive had been determined.

Local police in Haikou confirmed the incident to AFP and said that no children had died.

Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent decades as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor has expanded rapidly.

Studies have also described a rise in the prevalence of mental disorders, some of them linked to stress as the pace of life becomes faster and support systems wither.

In 2014, state media reported that a man stabbed three children and a teacher to death and wounded several others in a rampage at a primary school that refused to enrol his daughter.

That followed a March 2013 incident in which a man killed two relatives and then slashed 11 people, including six children, outside a school in AFP

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian police on Monday arrested a woman who was seen waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station. She is suspected of killing the child when it was in her care, officials said.

Videos posted on Russian news websites show a woman dressed all in black, holding the severed head and shouting "I am a terrorist" in Russian, although most of what she says is incomprehensible. In some of the videos the woman is tackled by men who appear to be police.

The Investigative Committee released a statement saying a woman was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing a child aged 3 or 4 in an apartment near the metro station in northwestern Moscow and then setting the apartment on fire. The woman, a 38-year-old native of one of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, was believed to be the nanny and appeared to be mentally unstable, the statement said.The investigators' report did not link the two incidents. An official in the Investigative Committee, however, confirmed that it was the same woman, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to release the information.

The official report said the child's body found in the apartment showed signs of a violent death. Russian news reports, citing law enforcement sources, said the child had been decapitated.

Investigators said they were trying to determine the suspect's motive. She appeared to have waited until the parents and an older child had left the apartment before killing the younger child, the statement said  AP

Three pro-democracy activists went on trial in Hong Kong Monday over charges relating to mass rallies in 2014, with the movement's student leader accusing the government of "unreasonable" prosecution.

Joshua Wong 19, was the teenage face of the Occupy Movement, which brought parts of the semi-autonomous Chinese city to a standstill for more than two months as protesters called for free elections for Hong Kong's next leader.

Wong and two other prominent student leaders, Alex Chow and Nathan Law, appeared in court on charges of taking part in an unlawful assembly and inciting others to join it.

"It's unreasonable for the government to give us charges... we were just trying to protect our own rights," he told reporters outside the court.

All three pleaded not guilty. They could face up to five years in prison if convicted.We are still confident to get a favourable outcome because we have persisted in peace and non-violence," Wong told reporters.

"We believe finally we can find justice."

Several police officers testified at Monday's hearing and the court saw video footage of protesters climbing over a gate to enter government headquarters.

Wong's lawyer Lawrence Lok said testimony by different police officers about the incident was almost identical.

"How do you explain the phenomenon? Is it a coincidence... was it copying?" Lok asked.

Wong is facing several other charges, including obstructing police, over his participation in the pro-democracy rallies.

He has also been charged with contempt of court for violating an order to clear the Mongkok protest camp -- scene of some of the most violent clashes during the demonstrations.

Wong has said he is the target of "political prosecution" and a "witch hunt" against those at the forefront of the Occupy Movement.

Demonstrators called for fully free elections for the city's next leader. But they failed to secure any concessions from the city government, which supported a Beijing-backed political reform package under which candidates would have been vetted by a loyalist committee.AFP

The trial of former Auschwitz medic Hubert Zafke for aiding in 3,681 murders appeared close to collapse Monday after the 95-year-old failed to attend the German court over health problems.

Chief judge Klaus Kabisch suspended the hearings shortly after they opened, saying a doctor had on Sunday found that Zafke had "suicidal thoughts and was suffering from stress reaction and hypertension".

The defendant was therefore "not in a state" to be taken to the court or to testify, the judge said.

Zafke served as a medical orderly at the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland from August 15 to September 14, 1944, a period when teenage diarist Anne Frank was interned there.Prosecutors charge that Zafke "knew of and willingly supported the industrially organised mass killing people in an insidious and cruel manner".

Of his time as a medical orderly -- a job that for some officers entailed giving lethal injections to inmates -- Zafke has claimed to have only performed first aid and treated prisoners, and had no clue Auschwitz was an extermination camp.

Zafke's defence lawyer, Peter-Michael Diestel, hit out at the decision to take the former SS officer to trial in the first place.

"My client is dying and will soon face his highest judge," Diestel told AFP.

"I find it extremely embarrassing that German justice ... has only done a slipshod job on the Holocaust, and that we're now trying to cover this up with this sort of trial," argued the lawyer, who was also the last interior minister of East Germany during its democratic transition before reunification."We are imposing this on the wrong people after those who were responsible were sent home in the 1960s or 70s with overly lenient sentences, had their cases dismissed or were simply acquitted," he said.

"This proceeding is humanely worrying and questionable from a historical and political point of view."

- Slave camps, gas chambers -

Zafke's ability to stand trial had long been in contention.

A first court had ruled against a trial, finding that he was suffering from dementia, before an appeals court overturned the decision.

It found that, although he suffered "cognitive impairments" and diminished physical capacity, he could be granted regular breaks and close medical supervision.

The prosecution had also sought, but failed, to have the judges recused, arguing they were biased towards declaring Zafke unfit to stand trial.

Prosecutors Monday filed a motion for a second medical opinion. That decision will be heard on the next set court date, March 14.

If Zafke faces trial, he risks between three and 15 years in prison -- but he is considered unlikely to serve any time given his advanced age.

Zafke, a farmer's son who joined the Nazi party's elite police force the Waffen-SS at age 19, initially fought on the eastern front before he was sent to the death camp.

During his time as a medical orderly, 14 trains arrived, delivering prisoners from across Europe to its slave labour camps and gas chambers.

One of the trains brought the family of Anne Frank, whose diary about her Jewish family's life in hiding in Amsterdam has moved millions and remains a worldwide bestseller.Anne Frank survived Auschwitz but died in Bergen-Belsen, shortly before its 1945 liberation by the British army.

Zafke had also served as an SS officer at Auschwitz from October 1943 to January 1944.

After World War II, a Polish court in 1948 sentenced him to a four-year jail term from which he was released in 1951.

- Legal precedent -

For many decades, Germany only tried Nazi officers for atrocities they personally committed and usually required eye-witness testimony for a conviction.

However, a new legal precedent was set in the 2009-2011 trial of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland, who was convicted at age 91 of having aided in the mass killings.Last July, 94-year-old Oskar Groening, known as the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz," was sentenced to four years in prison for being an accessory to the murders of 300,000 people at the camp.

Around a dozen more cases are pending or under investigation, authorities say.

One million European Jews died between 1940 and 1945 at Auschwitz before it was liberated by Soviet forces. AFP

Donald Trump and his rivals brawled on for the Republican presidential nomination Sunday as Hillary Clinton sailed toward "Super Tuesday," her White House hopes lofted by a blow-out win in South Carolina.

With just two days to go before the biggest showdown yet in the US presidential race, Clinton gained crucial momentum in the race for the Democratic nomination after crushing Bernie Sanders 73.5 to 26 percent.

"We got decimated," Sanders conceded in an interview on ABC's This Week show, acknowledging that the outpouring of African American support for Clinton exposed a costly weakness in his campaign.On the Republican side, Trump's trailing rivals desperately tried to raise doubts among voters about the frontrunner's ability to beat Clinton in November.

Senator Ted Cruz suggested in an interview with ABC's "This Week" show that Mafia dealings could be hiding in Trump's tax returns, which the billionaire real estate developer has so far resisted releasing.

"There have been multiple media reports of Donald's dealings with the mob, the Mafia," Cruz said. "Maybe his tax returns will show that those business dealings are a lot more extensive than has been reported."

"We don't know," he added. "But the important point is ... in the general election, Hillary Clinton is going to shine a light on all of this. And Republican primary voters deserve to know."

- Trump's tax returns -

Trump has said he will not release his tax returns because they are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

"You can't tell anything from tax returns because you take deductions, massive deductions and lots of other things," he said on CNN's State of the Union Show.

Cruz also chided Trump for failing to categorically reject endorsements from white supremacist David Duke.

"Really sad.@realDonaldTrump you're better than this," Cruz tweeted.

Asked about the endorsement on CNN, Trump said he knew nothing about it. "You wouldn't want me to condemn a group that I know nothing about. I'd have to look," he said.

At a news conference Friday, Trump appeared surprised by the endorsement. "David Duke endorsed me? I disavow," he said, without elaborating.Polls show Trump, who picked up a key endorsement from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, leading the Republican pack in most of the 11 Super Tuesday contests, but trailing Cruz in his home state of Texas, a top Super Tuesday prize with 155 delegates.

The conventional wisdom is that Trump's rivals -- Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Governor John Kasich -- must at least win their own states to remain in the running. Cruz will be the first to face that test, as Florida and Ohio vote later.

"There is no doubt that if Donald steamrolls through Super Tuesday, wins everywhere with big margins, that he may well be unstoppable," Cruz said on CBS's Face the Nation.

Kasich predicted that Trump would probably win all the Super Tuesday contests, but the governor said he intended to hang on in hopes Cruz and Rubio are knocked out first.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson also has vowed to remain in the race, but support for his candidacy has fizzled.

With the stakes nearing a make-or-break point, Trump, Cruz and Rubio have viciously attacked each other with taunts, accusations and angry tweets that have given the Republican race a distinctly Darwinian flavor."Frankly, we're going to look back on this time and we're all going to shake our heads and say, did we really degrade the process of picking the leader of the free world?" said Kasich, who has generally refrained from joining the free-for-all.

- Redemption -

While the Republicans were hitting all the political talk shows Sunday, Hillary Clinton was quietly savoring her victory in South Carolina.

It was the former secretary of state's first decisive win of the campaign, after a nail-biter victory in Iowa, a thumping loss to Sanders in New Hampshire and then a five-point win in Nevada.

Exit polls in South Carolina showed African-Americans -- who represented 61 percent of all Democratic voters in the primary -- backed Clinton by a stunning 86 percent, more than had supported Obama eight years prior.

Clinton, who now leads in the national delegate count, assiduously courted black voters, partly by praising Obama and promising to build on his legacy.  AFP

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says he would be willing to seek another term in 2018 despite a decline in his poll ratings.

Speaking in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday at an event to mark the 36 years of the governing Workers' party, Silva said he would put himself forward as a candidate "if necessary." He would be 72 by the time of the next election, but Silva said he would have "the desire of a 30-year-old to be president of the republic."

Silva also criticized the opposition and the media, accusing them of attacking him "with lies, leaks and accusations of criminality."

The former president is being investigated over alleged concealment of assets relating to upgrades carried out by construction companies on two properties in Sao Paulo state. Silva told the audience that he would be willing to hand over his banking and telephone records to help the inquiry.

Silva left office with high approval ratings at the end of his two-term limit in 2010 and he has repeatedly expressed his willingness to run again. His latest declaration to party members comes as both his own and the government's poll ratings have slid sharply amid a huge corruption scandal at the state-run energy company Petrobras and a severe economic downturn.

An opinion poll published Wednesday said only 11 percent of Brazilians approve of the government of Silva's hand-picked successor, President Dilma Rousseff. The survey also indicated Silva's reputation had been hit, with 70 percent considering him guilty of corruption. The poll by the MDA polling firm, sponsored by the national transport federation, surveyed 2,002 people in person in 25 states Feb. 18-21. It had margin of error of two percentage points.  AP

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that Europe cannot allow Greece to plunge into "chaos" by shutting countries' borders to refugees, just months after Athens' third huge international bailout.

"Do you seriously believe that all the euro states that last year fought all the way to keep Greece in the eurozone -- and we were the strictest -- can one year later allow Greece to, in a way, plunge into chaos?" Merkel said in a TV interview. AFP

Thousands of Russians marched through Moscow and Saint Petersburg on Saturday in memory of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov who was gunned down near the Kremlin a year ago in the highest-profile assassination of Vladimir Putin's rule.

On a bright sunny afternoon opposition supporters thronged the streets in the Russian capital amid heightened police security as a helicopter hovered overhead.

Some marchers carried Russian flags, placards, flowers and Nemtsov's portraits. Others chanted: "Russia will be free" and "Russia without Putin."

Some 20,000 joined the march including Nemtsov's allies -- top opposition leader Alexei Navalny and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, according to AFP journalists.

Moscow police, which are often accused of downplaying the popularity of opposition events, said 7,500 showed up.

Many protesters said the situation in Russia had got worse since the opposition politician's murder.

"Aggression and xenophobia have gone through the roof," Anastasia Aggression and xenophobia have gone through the roof," Anastasia Osipova told AFP.

"Over the past year things have become so much worse, both when it comes to the economy and freedom of speech," said the 20-year-old, clutching an EU flag.

"The authorities, this regime killed Nemtsov," said Yevgeny Mishchenko, 41.

"The economic situation is worsening. Support for the authorities is crumbling. This will all end in a civil war, like a hundred years ago."Russians also formed a huge line to lay flowers at the Great Moskvoretsky bridge where Nemtsov, a jovial 55-year-old with a mop of black curly hair, was killed.

US ambassador John Tefft was among those who came to pay their respects earlier Saturday, laying a wreath with a ribbon saying "From the American people."

Some said they would come to the makeshift shrine shortly before midnight, the time the politician was gunned down.

- 'Russia's nightmare' -In Putin's hometown of Saint Petersburg, some 4,000 people turned out to honour Nemtsov.

"Putin is Russia's nightmare", one placard read, while some chanted "Putin get out."

"The authorities should know there are opponents," Varvara Mikhailova, 24, said in the former imperial capital. "If we protest, something will change."

Russia's annexation of Crimea, fighting in Ukraine and Moscow's confrontation with the West have left the country deeply polarised.

Most of the population -- who critics say have been under the spell of pro-Kremlin propaganda -- support Putin despite mounting economic troubles, while a minority says Russia is hurtling towards catastrophe.

Smaller commemorative events took place across Russia, while in London, Nemtsov's eldest daughter Zhanna paid tribute to her father with the launch of a foundation in his name.

Backed by ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an opposition leader who spent a decade in prison, the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom Backed by ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an opposition leader who spent a decade in prison, the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom aims to continue Nemtsov's mission of bringing democracy to Russia.

Britain's Europe Minister David Lidington urged Moscow "to ensure that those responsible for this appalling crime are brought to justice."

On the eve of the anniversary, lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov, one of the few independent voices in parliament, suggested that deputies observe a moment of silence in Nemtsov's memory but most of his colleagues refused.

Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister in the government of Boris Yeltsin, was gunned down on February 27, 2015, while walking across a bridge a short distance from the Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral with his Ukrainian model girlfriend.

- 'Who dared?' -

Putin, whose rule has seen the steady suppression of independent media and opposition parties, promised an all-out effort to catch the killers.

"Who dared?" a furious Putin asked his aides after Nemtsov was hit in the back by four fatal shots, the opposition Novaya Gazeta said.

Within weeks five men -- all Chechens from Russia's restive North Caucasus -- were arrested and charged with murder.

The detainees, including Zaur Dadayev, a member of a Chechen interior ministry battalion accused of being the gunman, are now awaiting trial for what investigators say was a carefully planned contract killing.

Nemtsov's family and allies insist the authorities have failed to bring the masterminds to justice and point the finger of blame at Chechnya's Moscow-backed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov -- and the Kremlin itself.  AFP

Irish prime minister Enda Kenny conceded defeat on Saturday following elections that saw the governing coalition punished by voters weary of austerity, leaving the eurozone country in political limbo with no clear winner.

"Clearly the government of Fine Gael and Labour are not going to be returned to office," Kenny, the leader of the centre-right Fine Gael party, told RTE television.

Early indications suggest that Fine Gael and its centre-left junior partner have been hard hit by continued public anger over years of austerity, despite Ireland recording the fastest growth in the European Union.

Many voters turned to independents and anti-austerity parties, and the country now faces the prospect of protracted negotiations as political leaders try to build enough support to form a new governing coalition.

Kenny said the early signs were "a disappointment", as exit polls indicated the coalition would fall far short of the 80 seats needed to form a parliamentary majority.a parliamentary majority.

"Obviously one has to wait now until all the counts are in right across the country to see what the options that must be considered are," he said.

Fine Gael health minister Leo Varadkar added: "I don't think that the obligation to form a government necessarily falls on us automatically."

The centre-right Fianna Fail appeared to have regained some ground lost when the party was routed five years ago in the wake of Ireland's housing crash and economic crisis.

But anti-austerity groups, independent politicians, small parties and left-wing party Sinn Fein are all on course to increase their seats in parliament, as commentators heralded a "seismic change" in politics.

- 'Anti-establishment parties' -

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, who have taken turns ruling Ireland since 1932, would likely have enough seats between them to form a coalition government.

But despite their political similarities, they are bitter rivals whose differences date back to a civil war almost a century ago.

"The option that screams out the most is a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition," said University of Maynooth lecturer Adrian Kavanagh.If neither party can agree a common ground then we're into a period of uncertainty."

Mark Mortell, a senior Fine Gael strategist, said that an alliance could be considered but would be extremely difficult for either party to accept.

"I think the prospect of another election very soon is now very very high," Mortell said.

Initial results showed a turnout of 65 percent, down from the previous election, and the first 41 out of 158 seats to be filled indicated a fragmented political landscape."It's similar to what we've seen in Greece, Spain, in Italy, in Portugal where there's been a swing towards anti-establishment parties," said Kavanagh.

In any negotiations parties will be mindful of the date of March 10, when the newly-elected representatives are due to meet in the lower house of parliament Dail Eireann and, in theory, appoint a Taoiseach or prime minister.

Sinn Fein were set to increase their seats to become the third largest group in parliament, continuing an upward trend in support for the party led by Gerry Adams.It was once seen as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army but has transformed itself into an anti-austerity force south of their power base in Northern Ireland.

- 'An unfair recovery' -

Ireland has become the fastest growing country in the eurozone in recent years, with predicted GDP growth of 4.5 percent in 2016.

Kenny had asked voters to return the coalition to "keep the recovery going", in the first election held since the country of 4.6 million people exited a bailout in 2013 imposed after the financial crisis.

But anger over a housing shortage, rising homelessness and poverty was clear on the streets of Dublin, where thousands marched against austerity on the weekend before the vote calling for an end to a controversial water tax.

"I think overall people felt that there was an unfair recovery in the last five years, that an awful lot of parts of the country didn't feel it," said John Sheridan, a 28-year-old operations manager and Fianna Fail activist.

The impact of the election may be felt far beyond Ireland's borders, according to the Economist magazine, which commented that a Fine Gael defeat with the economy doing well may ramp up pressure on Brussels to reconsider its policy on austerity.AFP

Hillary Clinton is eyeing a decisive win in South Carolina's Democratic presidential nomination race, hoping to gain momentum against Bernie Sanders before the high-stakes "Super Tuesday" contest.

One week after Donald Trump barreled to victory in the state's Republican vote, Democrats took center stage Saturday in South Carolina, where 55 percent of voters in the 2008 party primary were black.

The Republican race churns along as well, with Trump exchanging heated barbs on the campaign trail with rival Marco Rubio, who has finally retorted by launching harsh broadsides against the billionaire real estate mogul.

Rubio accosted Trump for "flying around on hair force one," and having "the worst spray tan in America," continuing the series of mocking attack lines from their Thursday debate clash.

"I want to save the (Republican) party from a con artist," Rubio said at a stop in Kennesaw, Georgia.

Trump pushed back during a speech in Arkansas, one of the dozen states voting Tuesday.

"I watched this lightweight Rubio, total lightweight, little mouth on him, bing, bing, bing," Trump sneered. "I'm a con man, right? I built a great business!"

Among Democrats, Clinton is expected to handily win South Carolina, and leads in the national delegate count at this early stage, having won two of the first three nomination contests -- in Iowa, narrowly, and Nevada.

Polling stations opened at 7:00 am (1200 GMT)and were to close 12 hours later, at which point a projected winner could be announced if one candidate has a clear lead.

While Sanders has support of some high-profile African Americans including film director Spike Lee and rapper Killer Mike, Clinton is backed by many local and state elected officials and black community figures.

The 68-year-old also has the backing of many of the same voters who supported her husband, Bill, whose popularity rivaled even that of Barack Obama.

Both presidents are men whom Clinton knows well, she jokes, and is a part of their political lineage.

"I'm not running to do either one of their third terms, but I do think they really did a good job for America, and it would be foolish not to learn from them," Clinton said Friday.

In South Carolina, Clinton's campaign has worked hard to hammer home the message that she is the only candidate who can break down barriers still preventing minorities from getting ahead.

And the brawling among Republicans may reinforce Clinton's argument that she has the temperament and experience to be commander in chief."It does not help us to form a coalition with them when a leading candidate for president spends half his time insulting them," Clinton said in Birmingham, Alabama, referring to the difficulty in cobbling together a coalition to fight Islamic State extremists in the Middle East.

"You know, when you run for president it's not just Americans who pay attention," said.

- 'Super Tuesday' -

Some Clinton supporters say Sanders, a self-declared Democratic Socialist who represents Vermont in the US Senate, is little known in the South.

Although Sanders, 74, was in South Carolina Friday, his prospects in the state are poor and he has invested less time here than his rival.

Both left the state to campaign in Super Tuesday locales, although Clinton is scheduled to return at night to celebrate the primary.

Sanders headed to Texas, where he told some 10,000 people that he has been this election's comeback kid.We were more than 30 points down in Iowa and it was a virtual tie. We were 30 points down in New Hampshire and we won. We were 25 points down in Nevada and we came within five points," Sanders told the huge crowd at an Austin race track.

"And now we move on to Super Tuesday."

Sanders is also focusing on states like Ohio and Minnesota that vote later in March, when a whopping 45 percent of the delegates who will attend the nominating convention are up for grabs.

Only three percent of delegates for July's nominating convention in Philadelphia will have been awarded by Saturday's end.

But the 11 states that hold Democratic nominating contests next Tuesday will send 18 percent of the delegates to Philadelphia.

Clinton is ahead in most, but Sanders has the edge in Massachusetts and his home turf of Vermont.  AFP