US President Donald Trump has stoked false claims that Democratic vice-presidential contender Kamala Harris is ineligible to hold that office because her parents were foreign born.
The claims about Ms Harris - who was born in the US, making her constitutionally eligible to be both vice president and president - echo a baseless theory that Trump long promoted about his predecessor Barack Obama.
"I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements," Mr Trump said at a White House news conference on Thursday, referring to an August 12 opinion piece in Newsweek.
The article by conservative law professor John Eastman says that "before we so cavalierly accept Senator Harris' eligibility for the office of vice president, we should ask her a few questions about the status of her parents at the time of her birth."
Mr Trump said that Mr Eastman, of Chapman University, "is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer. I have no idea if that's right".
Mr Eastman was also an unsuccessful Republican challenger, losing in the primary for the 2010 California attorney general's election won by Ms Harris, who served in that post before becoming a US senator.
Ms Harris, 55, was born in Oakland, California, to a mother from India and a father from Jamaica. She is the first black woman and woman of South Asian heritage to be granted the honour of a place on the ticket of a major US party.
Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, 77, who on Tuesday named Ms Harris as his running mate, blasted Mr Trump's rhetoric on Friday, with his campaign calling the false claim "abhorrent".
Mr Eastman's article followed claims shared thousands of times on Facebook that Ms Harris could not become president because her parents hailed from abroad.
Article 2, Section 1 of the US Constitution says that "no person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States" shall be eligible for the presidency. They must also be at least 35 years old.
And Section 2 of the 14th Amendment says that: "All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
Under that clause and an 1898 Supreme Court ruling, "anyone born on US soil and subject to its jurisdiction is a natural born citizen, regardless of parental citizenship," Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute says.
Ms Harris could not become vice president if she failed to meet requirements for the presidency.
David A Super, Carmack Waterhouse professor of law and economics at the Georgetown University Law Centre said that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States," according to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution.
This means, Mr Super said in an email to AFP, that "someone who is not a native-born US citizen, or someone who is not 35 years old, could not take office as vice president."
As Mr Trump parlayed his TV fame into a political career, he adopted and promoted the "birther" lie that Mr Obama, America's first black president, was not born in the United States.
Mr Obama was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a white American mother. Mr Trump grudgingly acknowledged late in his 2016 presidential campaign that Mr Obama was American-born.
Since then, Mr Trump has faced accusations of racism, and has embraced other conspiracies.
Polls show him losing the November vote.
On Wednesday, he praised Georgia Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, a follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory who has called white men the most oppressed group in America.
Abdul Jabar Qahraman was meeting supporters in his campaign office in the southern Afghan province of Helmand when a bomb hidden under a sofa exploded on Wednesday.
The blast in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah killed the Afghan election candidate and at least another three people, Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak told reporters. Another three were wounded, while three suspects were detained, he said.
The Taliban – which controls much of Helmand and has vowed to disrupt the October 20 parliamentary elections – claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mr Qahraman was at least the 10th candidate killed so far during the campaign season, and the second from Lashkar Gah this month. Another candidate, Saleh Mohammad Asikzai, was among eight people killed in a suicide attack last week. Most of the slain candidates were murdered in targeted assassinations, including Avtar Singh Khalsa, the first Afghan Sikh to run for the lower house of the parliament.
The same week the Taliban warned candidates to withdraw from the elections. On Wednesday the group issued fresh warnings, calling on educational workers to stop schools from being used as polling centres.
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The specs: Lamborghini Aventador SVJ
Price, base: Dh1,731,672
Engine: 6.5-litre V12
Gearbox: Seven-speed automatic
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It's Monty Python's Crashing Rocket Circus
To the theme tune of the famous zany British comedy TV show, SpaceX has shown exactly what can go wrong when you try to land a rocket.
The two minute video posted on YouTube is a compilation of crashes and explosion as the company, created by billionaire Elon Musk, refined the technique of reusable space flight.
SpaceX is able to land its rockets on land once they have completed the first stage of their mission, and is able to resuse them multiple times - a first for space flight.
But as the video, How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster, demonstrates, it was a case if you fail, try and try again.
How does ToTok work?
The calling app is available to download on Google Play and Apple App Store
To successfully install ToTok, users are asked to enter their phone number and then create a nickname.
The app then gives users the option add their existing phone contacts, allowing them to immediately contact people also using the application by video or voice call or via message.
Users can also invite other contacts to download ToTok to allow them to make contact through the app.
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
ULTRA PROCESSED FOODS
- Carbonated drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, confectionery, mass-produced packaged breads and buns
- Margarines and spreads; cookies, biscuits, pastries, cakes, and cake mixes, breakfast cereals, cereal and energy bars
- Energy drinks, milk drinks, fruit yoghurts and fruit drinks, cocoa drinks, meat and chicken extracts and instant sauces
- Infant formulas and follow-on milks, health and slimming products such as powdered or fortified meal and dish substitutes
- Many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pasta and pizza dishes, poultry and fish nuggets and sticks, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products, powdered and packaged instant soups, noodles and desserts
