A US woman has pleaded guilty to first-degree child abuse over the beating death of her nine-year-old son over a missing piece of birthday cake.

Donald Trump's Republican rivals have announced shock plans to co-ordinate primary strategies in upcoming states to deprive the front-runner of the delegates he needs to win the party nomination.

Hours after US authorities began investigating the shooting deaths of three people in a home, the man later charged in the case admitted to police that he had “messed up.”

CLUTCHING rosaries, medals and flowers, thousands of people filed past the simple white marble tomb of Pope John Paul II yesterday as the Vatican reopened the grottoes beneath St Peter’s Basilica for the first time since the Pope died.