A Kansas man has revealed that hours after buying three tickets in last week's Mega Millions lottery frenzy that swept America, he was hit by lightning, proving the adage about how hopelessly small the chances are of winning.

America was a nation plunged into disappointment yesterday as all but three citizens realised their raids on the penny jar to buy tickets in a lottery with a jackpot of $656m (£409m) had come to nought.

The American soldier accused of massacring Afghan villagers is to be charged with 17 counts of murder, it emerged last night.

In one of the closest fought Republican primaries to date, the polls can't split the main candidates

Rick Santorum has overwhelmingly won the Kansas Republican presidential caucuses, hoping to blunt front-runner Mitt Romney's momentum in the grinding campaign for the nomination to oppose US President Barack Obama in the November election.

Rick Santorum overwhelmingly won the Kansas presidential caucuses, hoping to blunt front-runner Mitt Romney's momentum in the grinding campaign for the nomination to oppose President Barack Obama in the November election.

Super Tuesday could certainly have gone worse for Mitt Romney, front-runner in the race to become the Republicans' presidential candidate. The former Massachusetts Governor did, after all, scoop six of the 10 available states, albeit winning by just a single percentage point in that all-important bellwether, Ohio.

Out of America: Swearing eternal fealty to Reagan, presidential candidates try to outdo each other in an insane stampede to the right – leaving Obama delighted

Like any great military and political leader, Dwight Eisenhower had every right to expect that his likeness would one day be immortalised in bronze or marble and installed prominently in his nation's capital. But that was before Frank Gehry came along.

Speech compared favourably to one that Teddy Roosevelt delivered in same town

Outlook Pirc, the corporate governance group, is unimpressed by the news that Royal Bank of Scotland staff sold hundreds of millions of pounds' worth of shares on Monday, on the first day they were allowed to do so since being awarded the stock for their performance during 2009.

A line of violent thunderstorms roared across middle America, killing six people in two states, with several tornadoes touching down in Oklahoma and high winds pounding rural Kansas.