Carson says he did try to stab child as boy

Republican US presidential candidate Ben Carson has taken the unusual step of insisting he tried to stab a child when he was younger — after CNN cast doubt on his claims of a violent past.

Capping off a memorable week — he is standing by his belief to store grain that Egypt’s great pyramids were built by the biblical figure Joseph — the Yale-educated brain surgeon said the names of two people he has previously identified as victims of his childhood violence are “fictitious”, but that the violence did occur.

“I don’t like to generally bring them in,” Carson said to reporters. “The names I used for instance are fictitious names because I don’t want to bring people into something like this because I know what you guys do to their lives.”