Huge queues formed yesterday outside polling stations in the US state of Virginia as residents took advantage of the first day of in-person voting, defying fears that the coronavirus pandemic would keep people away.
Only half of Americans are now willing to take a vaccine for Covid-19, a significant drop due to growing concerns the approvals process will be rushed.
Donald Trump's re-election campaign has denied a report in The Guardian that a former model accused the New York real estate developer of sexually assaulting and groping her at the US Open tennis tournament in 1997.
Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya demanded an international mission to document what she called "atrocities" during crackdowns on anti-government protests - but said she was ready to talk to end weeks of violence.
An anthropologist who tested an urban legend by fashioning a knife out of frozen human faeces, and a man who found that spiders oddly give scientists who study insects the heebie-jeebies, are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel prize.
Five more countries are seriously considering peace deals with Israel, the White House has said, as a close confidant to the king of Bahrain claimed that the Gulf states now see Israel as their most important ally in the region.
The financial peril facing the country's three main team sports has been laid bare at an Oireachtas Special Committee on the response to Covid-19 debate with IRFU chief executive Philip Browne delivering the starkest warning that rugby's "infrastructure built over the past 150 years is under threat".
