US President Donald Trump has warned his fellow Republicans their opponents may “steal” November’s election, as his party anointed him as their candidate.
“They’re using Covid to defraud the American people,” Mr Trump told delegates on the first day of the party convention in North Carolina.
Mr Trump repeated his much-disputed claims that mail-in ballots could lead to voter fraud.
Opinion polls suggest he currently trails Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
Addressing delegates in person at a party conference that has been dramatically scaled back by Covid-19, Mr Trump accused Democrats of “using Covid to steal an election”.
“The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” he said. “We’re going to win.”
Mr Trump also warned of a “rigged” election in 2016, as he trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls.
Rats video lands Zambian hospital officials in trouble
Footage of rats crawling freely in a ward at one of Zambia’s biggest hospitals has landed the facility’s administrators in trouble.
The video captured the rats rummaging a plastic bag as a patient lay on a bed next to it at Kitwe Central Hospital in the Copperbelt region.
Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya paid an impromptu visit to the hospital after the video went viral on social media.
The minister ordered disciplinary action against the hospital’s managers.
He said the video was embarrassing to the government and those responsible should be made to answer
Gospel-singing MP ‘ordered pastor spouse’s murder’
A Brazilian congresswoman has been accused of orchestrating the murder of her pastor husband, after multiple botched attempts.
Flordelis dos Santos de Souza’s husband, Anderson do Carmo, was shot 30 times at their home in Rio de Janeiro in June 2019.
Ms de Souza, 59, said her husband, 42, had been killed in a robbery.
But prosecutors say they have unearthed a murder plot, implicating Ms de Souza and several of her children.
Ms de Souza, a celebrity lawmaker for Rio de Janeiro who found fame as a gospel singer before entering politics, has dismissed the allegations, insisting she is innocent.
On Monday, prosecutors announced charges against Ms de Souza and 10 others, including six of her children and one granddaughter. Arrest warrants were issued against nine of the accused.
Israeli youths unearth 1,100-year-old gold coins from Abbasid era
Image: REUTERS
Youths volunteering at an archaeological dig in central Israel have found 425 gold coins that had lain buried in a clay jar for 1,100 years.
Most of the money dates back to the early Islamic period, when the region was part of the Abbasid caliphate.
The coins weigh 845g (30oz) and would have been worth a huge sum when they were buried – enough to buy a luxurious home in one of the caliphate’s cities.
Who owned the cache, and why they never returned to collect it, is a mystery.
“The person who buried this treasure 1,100 years ago must have expected to retrieve it, and even secured the vessel with a nail so that it would not move,” the directors of the excavation, Liat Nadav-Ziv and Elie Haddad of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in a statement.
