• Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
  • Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State militants in the town of Kobanî, Syria on the Syria-Turkey border capture the strategic Mishtenur hill killing eleven fighters. (BBC)
• Shia insurgency in Yemen
  • Clashes in the Yemeni capital Sana'a leave at least nine dead and 67 injured. (AP)
  • Houthi rebels seize the official Saba News Agency and surround the residence of the Prime Minister. (RT)
• Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital Kinshasa fire on protesters opposing efforts by President Joseph Kabila to delay presidential and parliamentary elections due in 2016 leaving at least four people dead and ten injured. (Al Jazeera)

• The Anne Arundel County, Maryland Fire Department states that six people remain unaccounted for after a fire destroys a mansion in Annapolis, Maryland. The home is the residence of Don Pyle, the CEO of Reston, Virginia-based ScienceLogic. (AP via MSN)

• Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had accused President Cristina Kirchner of covering up Iranian links to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in order to open up trade with Iran, dies of a gunshot wound to the head with the type of death still undetermined. (AFP via Yahoo! News)
• London's Southwark Crown Court hears evidence in the first trial on female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom, where this practice is illegal. (BBC) (Sky News)
• Gyumri massacre:
  • A six-month-old boy dies in hospital of his wounds, becoming the seventh member of an Armenian family dead after a killing spree by a Russian soldier. (Fox News)
• Seminole County, Florida (Orlando-area) prosecutors charge five underage Winter Springs High School students with the alleged gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in November 2014. Prosecutors charge two suspects as adults and three as juveniles. The remaining suspect is as yet uncharged. (The Orlando Sentinel via MSN)

• The city of Grozny in the Russian republic of Chechnya holds a protest with 60% of the population in attendance in opposition to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. (Reuters)

• NASA releases new pictures from the Dawn spacecraft as it approaches from a distance of 238,000 miles of Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn will go into orbit around the dwarf planet on March 6. (BBC)(NASA)

• In alpine skiing, American Lindsey Vonn wins the World Cup super-G at Cortina for her 63rd career World Cup race win, giving her sole possession of the all-time World Cup wins record. (AP via ESPN)