Elon Musk’s political group can keep awarding $1m (£722,000) to voters in swing states, a judge has ruled.

The giveaway by Mr Musk’s America PAC is set to end on Tuesday, and the final recipient has already been determined, a lawyer for the billionaire said in a court hearing on Monday.

In a surprising turn, the lawyer revealed that people receiving the money have not been chosen randomly in a lottery-style contest, as many believed, but were selected by the group.

Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner had sued to stop what he called an “an illegal lottery” after Musk announced he would give the money to one voter in a swing state each day until Election Day.

Pennsylvania Judge Angelo Foglietta did not immediately give a reason for the ruling, made a few hours after the hearing, according to the Associated Press.

“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” the lawyer, Chris Gober, said during the hearing, according to the Associated Press. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”

Mr Gober told the court that America PAC has already determined the final recipient will be a voter from Michigan, US media reported.

On Monday, America PAC announced a man named Joshua in Arizona had been awarded the day’s sum.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, which Mr Musk owns, the group added: “Every day until Election Day, a person who signs will be selected to earn $1m as a spokesperson for America PAC.”

But when the world’s richest man unveiled the giveaway last month, many believed it was a random drawing for registered voters who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution.

“We are going to be awarding $1m randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election,” Musk told a campaign event.

A few days later, the US justice department warned that the group could be breaking election laws, which forbid paying people to register to vote. Krasner’s office sued to stop it.

Mr Musk has been aggressively campaigning for Republican White House candidate Donald Trump in swing states across the country, and his committee has been pushing hard in Pennsylvania, where polls suggest Trump is in a tie with his Democratic rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

A lawyer in Krasner’s office told Reuters that Mr Gober’s comments in court were “a complete admission of liability”.

During the hearing, prosecutors played a video where Mr Musk, who is also the chief executive of SpaceX, said that “all we ask” is that the winners serve as spokespeople for the group, Reuters reported.

But Chris Young, the director of America PAC, said in court that the recipients are screened and must have values aligned with the group, US media reported.

Those who receive the money sign non-disclosure agreements that block them from publicly discussing the terms of their contracts, according to Reuters.

Mr Musk did not attend Monday’s hearing.

Also on Monday, Joe Rogan released an episode of his podcast featuring a nearly three-hour interview with Mr Musk.

In a post promoting the podcast on X, he said he would be endorsing former President Donald Trump.

“He [Musk] makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way,” Rogan wrote.

Quincy Jones lived for 50 years after attending his own memorial service.

When the musician suffered a brain aneurysm in 1974, his chances of survival were said to be so slim, and his stature so high, that his famous friends started planning a tribute concert.

Then aged 41, Jones had already made an indelible mark on American music as a performer, arranger, songwriter, producer, soundtrack composer and record executive.

He started out in the jumping jazz clubs of the 1950s; mastered soul, swing and pop on recordings by Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra and Lesley Gore; and reached the top 10 in his own right.

Some of the biggest entertainers in America agreed to perform at his memorial.

When he pulled through, the show went ahead anyway.

Jones went along, accompanied by his neurologist, who gave strict instructions not to get too excited.

“That was hard to do with Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye, Sarah Vaughan and Sidney Poitier singing your praises,” he told Newsweek in 2008.

Even more exciting things were yet to come.

Jones went on to forge an era-defining partnership with Michael Jackson; oversee 1985’s We Are the World, one of the biggest-selling songs of all time; craft hits for acts like Chaka Khan and Donna Summer; and work with the biggest names in hip-hop.

Few branches of American popular music were immune to his influence.

Jones had always been a survivor.

He grew up in the shadow of the Great Depression in the 1930s on the South Side of Chicago. His mother was taken to a psychiatric institution when he was seven and his father worked as a carpenter for notorious gangsters the Jones Boys.

Young Quincy wanted to be a gangster too. “You want to be what you see, and that’s all we ever saw,” he said.

He and his brother were “street rats” and, when he strayed into the wrong neighbourhood at the age of seven, a rival gang member “nailed my hand to a fence”. Another injury came from an ice pick to the face.

His father took the family to Washington state, where one night Quincy and some friends broke into a community centre, looking for food. Inside, there was a piano.

“I touched it and every cell in my body said, this is what you’ll do [for] the rest of your life,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row in 2016.

The encounter “changed my life”, he said in conversation with rapper Kendrick Lamar for a 2018 Netflix documentary, adding that, “I would have been dead or in prison a long time ago” if he hadn’t discovered music.

Quincy immediately began experimenting with instruments at school, settling on the trumpet, and began playing in nightclubs.

At the age of 14, he made friends with another then-unknown musician called Ray Charles, who became a lifelong collaborator.

He also played with Billie Holiday at 14, and got taken under the wings of bandleader Count Basie and trumpeter Clark Terry. He went on to accompany Dizzy Gillespie and appeared in the band during Elvis Presley’s first TV appearance.

After showing a talent for arranging songs while touring the world with Lionel Hampton’s big band, he was soon in demand in that capacity, too.

But after running up a $145,000 debt on a European tour, he took a day job with Mercury Records in 1961, becoming the first African-American vice-president of a major record label.

While there, he discovered and produced the million-selling single It’s My Party by Lesley Gore. He also released the Big Band Bossa Nova compilation album, which included his own infectious track Soul Bossa Nova, which has since become a staple of parties and film soundtracks, including Austin Powers.

Meanwhile, Sinatra had been impressed with Jones’s work and called on him to arrange and conduct two of his albums in the 1960s. The pair formed a fertile partnership, with Sinatra calling him “a giant” and “one of the finest musicians I’ve ever known”.

The pair became firm friends outside the studio, too. “Seven double Jack Daniels in an hour… [Sinatra] invented partying,” Jones recalled.

Jones also worked with many other big names of the age, including Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis Jr, while his solo album Body Heat reached the US top 10.

Meanwhile, he was forging a career writing soundtracks for TV shows and films including In Cold Blood, The Italian Job and Roots.

In Cold Blood’s author Truman Capote reportedly tried to have Jones removed from the film because he was black. But he remained, and the score earned Jones the first of seven Oscar nominations.

Another soundtrack was The Wiz, the 1978 film musical version of the Wizard of Oz, which starred Diana Ross and a 19-year-old Michael Jackson, who was looking to branch out after finding childhood fame in The Jackson 5.

Jones saw a superstar quality in Jackson and became his producer and mentor, first on 1979’s Off the Wall, which was a major hit, and then 1982’s Thriller, which reached new heights of commercial and critical success, and made Jackson the undisputed King of Pop.

The album was not just the fulfilment of Jackson’s talent, but the culmination of Jones’s career, as he used his peerless musical expertise to define the 1980s with a sleek and polished fusion of R&B and pop.

Jones listened to hundreds of songs to decide which nine should go on the album, and employed a dream team of musicians and songwriters that he had been assembling over the years.

His choice of collaborators was one example of his knack for knowing how to make a good song great. For Beat It, he thought the single needed a rockier edge, so he recruited Eddie Van Halen to contribute a guitar solo. Legend has it that the solo was so explosive that a speaker caught fire in the studio.

And when it came to the title track, Jones didn’t like the original name Starlight, so he asked its writer, Rod Temperton, to come up with something different. Temperton renamed it Thriller and recast it with a spooky theme. Jones topped it off by asking his wife’s friend, horror actor Vincent Price, to record a spoken-word outro.

The album earned Jones and Jackson the Grammy Award for producer of the year, while Thriller was named album of the year and Beat It won record of the year.

Jones used his winning formula in the 1980s with George Benson, Donna Summer and Patti Austin, and produced the decade’s best-selling single when Jackson and Lionel Richie assembled 35 of America’s biggest names for the 1985 charity song We Are the World.

Jones famously posted a message on the studio entrance telling the stars: “Check your egos at the door”.

He had further success under his own name with his albums The Dude and Back on the Block. The latter, released in 1989, featured an all-star cast including many friends from his early career like Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles.

But as well as revisiting his past, he was also firmly in the present, enlisting rappers like Ice-T and Grandmaster Melle Mel to appear on the title track.

It earned Jones another album of the year award at the Grammys.

Although he was in his 50s, he embraced rap music because he saw similarities with the energy of bebop jazz, and because may of its stars had risen out of hardship on the streets.

“I feel a kinship there because we went through a lot of the same stuff,” he said.

And rap stars reciprocated his affection, looking on Jones as an inspirational elder statesman of black American music. Even Kendrick and Dr Dre were awestruck when meeting him for the Netflix documentary, which was titled Quincy and directed by his daughter, actress Rashida Jones.

Jones used his status to try to stem the violence in the hip-hop world, convening the Quincy Jones Hip-Hop Symposium in 1995, where he addressed a room full of the nation’s rap stars.

“I want to see you guys live at least to my age,” he told them.

For Jones, social activism went hand-in-hand with his music.

He met Martin Luther King in 1955, and “from then on, my life was never the same”, he said.

“Civil rights work and political involvement was no longer an activity to do on the side. It became an essential part of life and humanity.”

He set up the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation and launched the We Are the Future project, among support for other causes.

Elsewhere, his redoubtable work ethic saw him launch a record label and hip-hop magazine Vibe, as well as producing films like The Color Purple and TV shows including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

With that workload, and an accompanying longstanding drink problem, his family life and his health both suffered.

He married and divorced three times, having a nervous breakdown after splitting from third wife Peggy Lipton. To recover, he went to stay on the Pacific island owned by actor Marlon Brando, whom he first met in a jazz club at the age of 18.

Jones was also in a relationship with actress and model Nastassja Kinski in the 1990s, and he had seven children in total.

In 2015, he went into a diabetic coma for four days, and the following year went to hospital with a blood clot.

His death on Sunday at the age of 91 has left the music world in mourning.

If there’s to be a second Quincy Jones memorial concert, stars will be queuing up to celebrate the full achievements of a singular talent.

At least 36 people have died and 27 have been injured after a bus fell into a gorge in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand.

Officials said 44 people were on board when the driver lost control and the bus fell into a 50m-deep ditch in Marchula, located in the state’s Almora district.

The state government has ordered an inquiry into the accident.

Buses are the main mode of transport in the Himalayan state and accidents are not uncommon.

The bus was on its way to the state’s Ramnagar district when the accident took place on Monday morning.

Photos and videos from the site showed the badly damaged vehicle overturned at the bottom of a hill.

Several passengers died on the spot, while those injured were taken to nearby hospitals. Rescue operations are still under way.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed his condolences for the families of the victims.

He has announced compensation of 200,000 rupees ($2,378; £1,834) for the families of the deceased and 50,000 rupees to those who were wounded.

Uttarakhand’s Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has also announced financial assistance for the victims and their families.

Buses are a common mode of transport in India, especially between smaller towns and districts. However, operators often flout safety rules and overcrowd them beyond capacity.

Approximately 160,000 people are killed in road accidents in India every year – the highest in the world – mainly due to speeding and careless driving.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has criticised the “cowardly attempts to intimidate our diplomats” in a deepening diplomatic row with Canada.

Both countries expelled each other’s top envoys last month after Canadian officials accused India of being involved in violent acts targeting Indian dissidents on Canadian soil, something the country denies.

Modi’s comments came after violence broke out at a Hindu temple in the Canadian city of Brampton on Sunday, which he has called a “deliberate attack”.

“Such acts of violence will never weaken India’s resolve. We expect the Canadian government to ensure justice and uphold the rule of law,” he wrote on X.

Local police said three people have so far been arrested and charged over the incident in Brampton, near Toronto, but did not provide further details.

The force said “several acts of unlawfulness continue to be actively investigated” by its officers.

Unverified video posted online appeared to show people carrying yellow flags of the Khalistan movement – which demands a separate Sikh homeland in India – clashing with others holding Indian flags.

India’s foreign ministry said “extremists and separatists” were behind the violence, calling on the Canadian government to “ensure that all places of worship are protected from such attacks”.

The North America-based activist group Sikhs for Justice, meanwhile, described the incident as an “unprovoked violent attack on peaceful pro-Khalistan demonstrators”.

Justin Trudeau wrote on X that Sunday’s violence was “unacceptable”, adding that “every Canadian has the right to practice their faith freely and safely”.

Relations between India and Canada have soured since Ottawa accused the Indian government of being behind the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a naturalised Canadian citizen who is labelled a terrorist in India.

India has vehemently denied this and other allegations and maintained that Canada has provided no evidence to support its claims.

Mr Nijjar had been a vocal supporter of the Khalistan movement and publicly campaigned for it.

The rift between Canada and India has raised questions over the impact it could have on the deep trade and immigration ties between both countries.

Bilateral trade is worth billions of dollars, and Canada is home to nearly 1.7 million people of Indian origin.

Neither country has yet imposed tariffs or other economic forms of retaliation, but experts caution that this could change, and that a cooling relationship between India and Canada could hinder further economic growth.

Bangladesh is ramping up payments to Adani Power after the Indian conglomerate cut electricity supplies by half, reportedly over an unpaid $800m bill.

Two senior government officials told the BBC they are already processing partial payments to Adani, which supplies 10% of the electricity used by Bangladesh.

“We have addressed payment glitches and already issued a $170 million [£143m] letter of credit to Adani group,” a senior Bangladesh Power Development Board official told the BBC.

Adani supplies Bangladesh from its 1600 megawatt coal-fired plant in eastern India. The company hasn’t responded to BBC queries about cuts to its supply to Bangladesh, which suffers regular power shortages.

Officials say the company has threatened to suspend all supplies if the money owed to it is not cleared by 7 November. But the Bangladesh Power Development Board official said they did “not believe it would not come to a stage where full supplies are cut off”.

Bangladesh officials told the BBC they will make payments gradually and regularly and are confident of resolving the payment crisis.

“We are shocked and surprised that despite us ramping up payments, supplies have been cut. We are ready to repay and will make alternate arrangements, but will not let any power producer hold us hostage and blackmail us,” said Fouzul Kabir Khan, energy adviser to the interim government.

Bangladesh stepped up repayments from $35m in July, to $68m in September and $97m in October, he said.

The country is already suffering from increased power shortages in rural areas.

Bangladesh has been struggling to generate dollar revenues to pay for costly essential imports like electricity, coal and oil. Foreign currency reserves fell during months of student-led protests and political turmoil that ousted the Sheikh Hasina government in August.

The interim government which replaced her has sought an additional $3bn loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in addition to its existing $4.7bn bailout package.

Adani’s power deal with Bangladesh, signed in 2015, was one of the many under Sheikh Hasina, which the current interim government has called opaque. A national committee is now reassessing 11 previous deals, including the one with Adani, which has often been criticised as expensive.

Besides Adani Power, other Indian state-owned firms also sell power to Bangladesh, including NTPC Ltd and PTC India Ltd. Power Development Board officials confirmed that partial payments of money owed to other Indian power suppliers are also being made.

Bangladesh is restarting some of the gas-fired and oil-fired power plants to bridge the supply shortfall, although experts say it will increase the cost of power. With winter approaching, power demands on the grid is expected to ease as air conditioners are switched off.

“Other coal-fired plants are running at 50% capacity and the country is unable to buy enough coal owing to the dollar crisis, so it is important to continue readymade power supply from Adani. It is marginally more expensive than local producers but it is a crucial supply,” said Dr Ajaj Hossain, energy expert and a retired professor.

Bangladesh is planning to commission its first nuclear power plant in December to diversify its energy mix. Built with Russian assistance, it is costing $12.65bn, mostly financed by long-term Russian loans.

Eight people have gone on trial in Paris accused of encouraging the killer of Samuel Paty, the teacher who was beheaded on the street outside his school four years ago.

Abdoullakh Anzorov, the young man of Chechen origin who wielded the knife, is dead – shot by police in the minutes after his attack.

So the trial is less about the murder itself, and more about the circumstances that led to it.

Over seven weeks, the court will hear how a 13-year-old’s schoolgirl lie span out of control thanks to social media, triggering an international hate campaign, and inspiring a lone mission of vengeance from a self-styled defender of Islam.

On trial are two men accused of identifying Mr Paty as a “blasphemer” over the Internet, two friends of Anzorov who allegedly gave him logistical help, and four others who offered support on chatlines.

Mr Paty’s murder horrified – and petrified – France.

He was a conscientious and much-liked history teacher in a secondary school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the prosperous western suburbs of Paris.

On 6 October 2020 he gave a lesson on freedom of speech – the same lesson he had given several times before – to a class of young teenagers.

Drawing on the tragically famous episode of Charlie Hebdo magazine – how publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad had led to the 2015 murder of most of its staff – he briefly showed an example of the cartoons.

Before doing so he recommended that those who feared being offended avert their eyes.

The next day one of his pupils – the 13-year-old girl – was asked by her father why she was not going to school.

She told him she had been disciplined because she dared to stand up to Mr Paty when he told Muslims to leave the class so he could show a naked picture of the prophet.

It was a triple lie.

Mr Paty had not told Muslims to leave the class. The girl had been disciplined, but not for the reason she said. She had not even been in the room on the day Mr Paty gave the lesson on freedom of speech.

But with the Internet to send it on its way, the lie spread… and spread.

First the girl’s father – Brahim Chnina – made her repeat the claim on videos, which he posted on Facebook, naming the teacher.

Then, a local Islamist – Abdelhakim Sefrioui – created a 10-minute online video entitled “Islam and the prophet insulted in a public college.”

Within a couple of days the school was inundated with threats and messages of hate from around the world. Paty told colleagues that he was living through a difficult time because of the campaign against him.

Meanwhile, the denunciation had reached the attention of an 18-year-old Chechen refugee living in Rouen, 80km (50 miles) to the west.

Anzorov made an initial note on his telephone that read: “A teacher has shown his class a picture of the messenger of Allah naked.”

Anzorov then sought the help of two friends, who are now on trial.

One of them was allegedly present when he bought a knife in a Rouen shop. The other helped him buy two replica pistols on 16 October, the day of the attack, and then drove him to the school.

The four last defendants – including one woman – are people with whom Anzorov conversed on Snapchat and Twitter and who allegedly offered him encouragement.

The defendants admit their connection to the case, but they contest the charges of “terrorist association” or “complicity to commit terrorist murder”.

Lawyers for the girl’s father and the Islamist preacher will argue that though they publicly condemned Mr Paty, they never called for his murder.

In a similar vein, lawyers for Anzorov’s friends – actual and online – will say they had no notion he planned a killing.

For the prosecution, context is key. Samuel Paty’s murder took place at a time of heightened awareness of the jihadist threat. In October 2020, Charlie Hebdo had just re-published some of the cartoons, to mark the start of a trial resulting from the original attack.

The internet was full of new Islamist threats against France, and in late September a Pakistani man had wounded two people with a machete at Charlie Hebdo’s former offices.

In that climate, publicly denouncing a man for blasphemy was tantamount to designating a terrorist target, prosecutors will argue.

A year ago the girl at the heart of the case was convicted in a minors’ court of making false accusations and given a suspended prison term.

Five other pupils were also convicted of identifying Mr Paty for Anzarov in return for money.

The trial is set to run until late December.

Human rights activists have called on authorities in Iran to release a woman who was detained after removing her clothes at a university, in what they said was a protest against the compulsory hijab laws.

A video surfaced on social media on Saturday showing the woman in her underwear sitting on some steps and then walking calmly along a pavement at the Science and Research Branch of Islamic Azad University in Tehran.

In a second video, the woman appears to remove her underwear. Shortly afterwards, plainclothes agents are seen forcibly detaining her and pushing her into a car.

Azad University said the woman suffered from a “mental disorder” and had been taken to a “psychiatric hospital”.

Many Iranians on social media questioned the claim and portrayed her actions as part of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that has seen many women publicly defy the laws requiring them to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothing.

More than 500 people were reportedly killed during nationwide protests that erupted two years ago after a Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody after being detained for not wearing hijab “properly”.

The Amirkabir Newsletter Telegram channel – which describes itself as “Iranian student movement media” and was the first to publish the story – reported that the woman had an altercation with security agents over not wearing a headscarf, leading to her undressing during the scuffle.

It said the woman’s head hit the door or frame of the plainclothes agents’ car while she was being detained, causing it to bleed, and that she was taken to an undisclosed location.

Witness told BBC Persian that the woman entered their class at Azad University and began filming students. When the lecturer objected, she left, yelling, they said.

According to witnesses, the woman told the students: “I’ve come to save you.”

Iranian media meanwhile released a video of a man with his face blurred who claimed to be the woman’s ex-husband and asked the public not to share the video for the sake of her two children. BBC Persian has not been able to verify the man’s claims.

“When I protested against mandatory hijab, after security forces arrested me, my family was pressured to declare me mentally ill,” said Canada-based women’s rights activist Azam Jangravi, who fled Iran after being sentenced to three years in prison for removing her headscarf during a protest in 2018.

“My family didn’t do it, but many families under pressure do, thinking it’s the best way to protect their loved ones. This is how the Islamic Republic tries to discredit women, by questioning their mental health,” she added.

Amnesty International said Iran “must immediately and unconditionally release the university student who was violently arrested”.

“Pending her release, authorities must protect her from torture and other ill-treatment, and ensure access to family and lawyer. Allegations of beatings and sexual violence against her during arrest need independent and impartial investigations. Those responsible must held to account,” it added.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, posted the footage on X and wrote that she would be “monitoring this incident closely, including the authorities’ response”.

Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is currently imprisoned in Iran, issued a statement saying she was gravely concerned about the case.

“Women pay the price for defiance, but we do not bow down to force,” she said.

“The student who protested at the university turned her body – long weaponized as a tool of repression – into a symbol of dissent. I call for her freedom and an end to the harassment of women.”

Scientists believe they have found a quirky way to fight mosquito-spread diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and Zika – by turning male insects deaf so they struggle to mate and breed.

Mosquitoes have sex while flying in mid-air and the males rely on hearing to chase down a female, based on her attractive wingbeats.

The researchers did an experiment, altering a genetic pathway that male mosquitoes use for this hearing. The result – they made no physical contact with females, even after three days in the same cage.

Female mosquitoes are the ones that spread diseases to people, and so trying to prevent them having babies would help reduce overall numbers.

The team from the University of California, Irvine studied Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spread viruses to around 400 million people a year.

They closely observed the insects’ aerial mating habits – that can last between a few seconds to just under a minute – and then figured out how to disrupt it using genetics.

They targeted a protein called trpVa that appears to be essential for hearing.

In the mutated mosquitoes, neurons normally involved in detecting sound showed no response to the flight tones or wingbeats of potential mates.

The alluring noise fell on deaf ears.

In contrast, wild (non-mutant) males were quick to copulate, multiple times, and fertilised nearly all the females in their cage.

The researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who have published their work in the journal PNAS, said the effect of the gene knock-out was “absolute”, as mating by deaf males was entirely eliminated.

Dr Joerg Albert, from the University of Oldenburg in Germany, is an expert on mosquito mating and I asked him what he made of the research.

He said attacking sense of sound was a promising route for mosquito control, but it needed to be studied and managed.

“The study provides a first direct molecular test, which suggests that hearing is indeed not only important for mosquito reproduction but essential.

“Without the ability of males to hear – and acoustically chase – female mosquitoes might become extinct.”

Another method being explored is releasing sterile males in areas where there are pockets of mosquito-spread diseases, he added.

Although mosquitoes can carry diseases, they are an important part of the food chain – as nourishment for fish, birds, bats and frogs, for example – and some are important pollinators.

At least 10 people have been killed after a volcano erupted in eastern Indonesia in the early hours of Monday, officials have said.

Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki, located on Flores Island in East Nusa Tenggara province, erupted at 23:57 local time, according to the Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation (PVMG).

Hadi Wijaya, a PVMG spokesperson, said fiery lava and rocks had hit the villages about 4km (two miles) from the crater, burning and damaging residents’ houses.

According to local officials, the eruption has affected seven villages.

PVMG said fires had “occurred in residential areas due to the ejection of incandescent material” from the volcano.

It has raised the status of the volcano to the highest alert level, warning that a 7km (four-mile) radius from the crater must be cleared.

“We have started evacuating residents since this morning to other villages located around 20km (13 miles) from the crater,” local official Heronimus Lamawuran told Reuters.

Video footage shared with BBC News by eyewitnesses shows people covered in volcanic ash, rock showers and homes ablaze, as well as the scorched aftermath of the disruption.

A spokesperson from Indonesia’s disaster agency warned of potential flash floods and cold lava flows in the coming days.

They added that the local government had declared a state of emergency for the next 58 days, meaning the central government could help provide aid to 10,000 affected residents.

Mount Lewotobi Laki-laki – one of a pair of prominent volcanic peaks at the eastern end of the island of Flores – has been erupting on and off since last December, and there was already an official warning to stay more than 3km away from it.

The prolonged volcanic activity there this year has badly affected the local economy.

Hundreds of people have left their homes and have been sheltering in schools, while cashew nut farmers have complained that their crops have been ruined by the huge quantities of ash which have fallen on the surrounding area.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an area of high seismic activity atop multiple tectonic plates, and has about 130 active volcanoes.

Many communities live dangerously close to the volcanoes in order to cultivate the fertile soil they provide.

Razor wire. Thick black iron fencing. Metal detectors. Armed security guards. Bomb sweeps.

The security at this centre where workers count ballots mirrors what you might see at an airport – or even a prison. And, if needed, plans are in place to further bolster security to include drones, officers on horseback and police snipers on rooftops.

Maricopa County became the centre of election conspiracy theories during the 2020 presidential contest, after Donald Trump spread unfounded claims of voter fraud when he lost the state to Joe Biden by fewer than 11,000 votes.

Falsehoods went viral, armed protesters flooded the building where ballots were being tallied and a flurry of lawsuits and audits aimed to challenge the results.

The election’s aftermath transformed how officials here handle the typically mundane procedure of counting ballots and ushered in a new era of high security.

“We do treat this like a major event, like the Super Bowl,” Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner told the BBC.

The county, the fourth most populous in the US and home to about 60% of Arizona’s voters, has been planning for the election for more than a year, according to Skinner.

The sheriff’s department handles security at polling stations and the centre where ballots are counted. The deputies have now been trained in election laws, something most law enforcement wouldn’t be well-versed in.

“Our hope is that it doesn’t arise to a level of need for that,” he said when asked about beefed-up security measures like drones and snipers. “But we will be prepared to ensure that we meet the level of need, to ensure the safety and security of that building” and its employees.

The election process here in many ways echoes that in counties across the country. Ballots are cast in voting centres and then taken to a centre with new tabulation machines in Phoenix. If they’re mailed in, the ballots are inspected and signatures are verified. They’re counted in a meticulous process that includes two workers – from differing political parties – sorting them and examining for any errors.

The process is livestreamed 24 hours a day.

While much of this process remains the same, a lot else has shifted. Since the 2020 election, a new law passed making it easier to call a recount in the state. Previously, if a race was decided by the slim margin of 0.1% of votes cast, a recount would take place. That’s now been raised to 0.5%.

The tabulation centre is now bristling with security cameras, armed security and a double layer of fencing.

Thick canvas blankets one fence to keep prying eyes out. Officials say the canvas was an added measure to protect employees from being harassed and threatened outside the building.

“I think it is sad that we’re having to do these things,” said Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates.

Gates, a Republican who says he was diagnosed with PTSD after the election threats he received following the 2020 election, doesn’t plan to run for office again once this election is over because of the tensions.

“I do want people to understand that when they go to vote centres, these are not militarised zones,” he told the BBC. “You can feel safe to go there with your family, with your kids and participate in democracy.”

The county has invested millions since 2020. It’s not just security, either. They now have a 30-member communications team.

A big focus has been transparency – livestreaming hours of tests for tabulation machines, offering dozens of public tours of their buildings and enlisting staff to dispute online rumours and election conspiracies.

“We kind of flipped a switch,” assistant county manager Zach Schira told the BBC, explaining that after last time they decided, “OK, we’re going to communicate about every single part of this process, we’re going to debunk every single theory that is out there.”

It’s all led up to Tuesday’s election.

“We may be over prepared,” Sheriff Skinner said, “but I’d rather prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

Some Maricopa Republicans told the BBC they’ve tracked recent changes and said they felt there would be fewer problems this election cycle.

“They’ve made steps that I think will help,” said Garrett Ludwick, a 25-year-old attending a recent Scottsdale rally for Trump’s vice-presidential running mate JD Vance.

“More people are also aware of things now and I think there are going to be a lot of people watching everything like a hawk,” he said, wearing a Trump cap that read, “Make liberals cry”.

One Republican voter, Edward, told the BBC the 2020 cycle caused him to get more involved. He’s now signed up for two shifts at polling locations in Maricopa County on Tuesday.

“Going to a rally or being upset isn’t going to fix things,” he said. “I wanted to be part of the solution.”

Not all are convinced.

“I still think it was rigged,” said Maleesa Meyers, 55, who like some Republican voters said her distrust in the process is too deep-rooted to believe the election could be fair. “It’s very hard to trust anyone today.”

Results in Arizona often hinge on Maricopa County, giving the county an outsized role in the outcome. Officials here estimate it could take as long as 13 days to count all ballots – meaning the expected tight race in this swing state might not be called on election night.

“There’s a chance that in 2024, the whole world will be watching for what the result is in Maricopa County,” said Schira, the assistant county manager.

“Truly the world’s confidence in democracy could come down to this.”

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

• LIVE: Follow updates as election day nears
• All you need to know about election night
• When will we know who has won?

Harris has had a small lead over Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead – as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

Harris saw a bounce in her polling numbers in the first few weeks of her campaign, building a lead of nearly four percentage points towards the end of August.

The polls were relatively stable in September and early October but they have tightened in the last couple of weeks, as shown in the chart below, with trend lines showing the averages and dots for individual poll results for each candidate.

While national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the whole country, they’re not the best way to predict the election result.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.

• What is the electoral college?
• Path to 270: The states Harris and Trump need to win

Right now the leads in the swing states are so small that it’s impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages.

Polls are designed to broadly explain how the public feels about a candidate or an issue, not predict the result of an election by less than a percentage point so it’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the numbers below.

It’s also important to remember that the individual polls used to create these averages have a margin of error of around three to four percentage points, so either candidate could be doing better or worse than the numbers currently suggest.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does highlight some differences between the states.

In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has a small lead in all of them at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but the polls have tightened significantly and it is currently tied in Pennsylvania.

All three of those states had been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same then she will be on course to win the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day that Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in the seven swing states.

In Pennsylvania, Biden was behind by nearly 4.5 percentage points when he dropped out, as the chart below shows. It is a key state for both campaigns as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collects the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

The polls have underestimated support for Trump in the last two elections and the national polling error in 2020 was the highest in 40 years according to a post-mortem by polling experts – so there’s good reason to be cautious about them going into this year’s election.

The polling miss in 2016 was put down to voters changing their minds in the final days of the campaign and because college-educated voters – who were more likely to support Hillary Clinton – had been over-represented in polling samples.

In 2020, the experts pointed to problems with getting Trump supporters to take part in polls, but said it was “impossible” to know exactly what had caused the polling error, especially as the election was held during a pandemic and had a record turnout.

Pollsters have made lots of changes since then and the polling industry “had one of its most successful election cycles in US history” in the 2022 midterm elections, according to analysts at 538.

But Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot in the midterms and we won’t know until after election day whether these changes can deal with the influx of irregular voters he tends to attract.

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

American voters go to the polls on 5 November to choose their next president.

US election results have sometimes been declared within hours of the polls closing, but this year’s tight contest could mean a longer wait.

In some presidential races the victor has been named late on election night, or early the next morning. This time, the knife-edge race in many states could mean media outlets wait longer before projecting who has won.

Democrat Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, and Republican Donald Trump, the former president, have been running neck-and-neck for weeks.

Narrow victories could also mean recounts. In the key swing state of Pennsylvania, for example, a state-wide recount would be required if there’s a half-percentage-point difference between the votes cast for the winner and loser. In 2020, the margin was just over 1.1 percentage points.

Legal challenges are also possible. More than 100 pre-election lawsuits have already been filed, including challenges to voter eligibility and voter roll management, by Republicans.

Other scenarios that could cause delays include any election-related disorder, particularly at polling locations.

On the other hand, vote-counting has sped up in some areas, including the crucial state of Michigan, and far fewer votes will be cast by mail than in the last election, which was during the Covid pandemic.

• Follow live: Final sprint across key states
• US election polls: Who is winning – Harris or Trump?

The 2020 election took place on Tuesday 3 November. However, US TV networks did not declare Joe Biden the winner until late morning on Saturday 7 November, after the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.

In other recent elections, voters have had a much shorter wait.

In 2016, when Trump won the presidency, he was declared the winner shortly before 03:00 EST (08:00 GMT) the day after the election.

In 2012, when Barack Obama secured a second term, his victory was projected before midnight on polling day itself.

However, the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore was a notable exception.

The vote was held on 7 November, but the two campaigns went to war over a tight contest in Florida and the race was not decided until 12 December. The US Supreme Court voted to end the state’s recount process, which kept Bush in place as winner and handed him the White House.

• Visual guide – Harris and Trump’s paths to victory
• The moment I decided on my vote

Across the country, the first polls will close at 18:00 EST (23:00 GMT) on Tuesday evening and the last polls will close at 01:00 EST (06:00 GMT) early on Wednesday.

But this race is expected to come down to results from seven swing states. These are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Polls close at different times in different regions. State-specific rules could prolong counting in some states, while other states may report partial figures moments after the last in-person vote is cast. Also, some absentee and mail-in ballots, including votes by members of the military and Americans living overseas, are normally among the last to be counted.

Georgia – Polls close in the Peach State at 19:00 EST (00:00 GMT). Early and mail-in ballots will be counted first, ahead of in-person votes. Georgia’s top election official estimates that about 75% of votes will be counted within the first two hours, with a full tally possible expected by later in the night.

North Carolina – Polls close thirty minutes after Georgia. North Carolina’s results are expected to be announced before the end of the night, however, complications may arise in areas that were hit by a hurricane in September.

Pennsylvania – Voting ends at 20:00 EST (01:00 GMT) in the Keystone State – the crown jewel of all the swing states in this election cycle. Like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania does not allow counting to begin until the morning of the election, leading to an expected delay in results. Experts agree that it may take at least 24 hours before enough votes are counted for a winner to emerge.

Michigan – Voting concludes at 21:00 EST (02:00 GMT) in the Wolverine State. Michigan allows officials to begin counting votes one week before election day, but they are not allowed to reveal the results until these polls shut. Michigan’s top election official has said that a result should not be expected until the “end of the day” on Wednesday.

Wisconsin – Results should come in shortly after polls close at 21:00 EST for smaller counties. However, it often takes longer for major populations centres to tabulate votes, leading experts to predict that the state won’t have a result until at least Wednesday.

Arizona – Initial results could come as early as 22:00 EST (03:00 GMT), however, they won’t paint a complete picture. The state’s largest county says not to expect results until early Wednesday morning. On top of that, postal ballots dropped off on election day could take up to 13 days to count, according to officials in Maricopa County, the largest district in the state.

Nevada – Votes here could also take days to count, because the state allows mail-in ballots to qualify as long as they were sent on election day and arrive no later than 9 November.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win the electoral college
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: How this election could change the world
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Typically, the votes cast on election day are tallied first, followed by early and mail ballots, those that have been challenged, and then overseas and military ballots.

Local election officials – sometimes appointed, sometimes elected – verify, process and count individual votes, in a process known as canvassing.

Verifying ballots includes comparing the number cast with the number of active voters; removing, unfolding and examining every single ballot for tears, stains or other damage; and documenting and investigating any inconsistencies.

Counting ballots involves feeding each one into electronic scanners that tabulate their results. Some circumstances require manual counts or double-checked tallies.

Every state and locality has rigorous rules about who can participate in the canvass, the order in which votes are processed and which parts are open to the public, including how partisan observers can monitor and intervene in vote-counting.

Once every valid vote has been included in the final results, a process known as the electoral college comes into play.

In each state a varying number of electoral college votes can be won, and it is securing these – and not just the backing of voters themselves – that ultimately wins the presidency.

• What is the US electoral college, and how does it work?
• How are votes counted in the US election?

Generally, states award all of their electoral college votes to whoever wins the popular vote and this is confirmed after meetings on 17 December.

The new US Congress then meets on 6 January to count the electoral college votes and confirm the new president.

After the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede and rallied supporters to march on the US Capitol as Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s victory.

He urged his Vice-President, Mike Pence, to reject the results – but Pence refused.

Even after the riot was cleared and members of Congress regrouped, 147 Republicans voted unsuccessfully to overturn Trump’s loss.

Electoral reforms since then have made it harder for lawmakers to object to certified results sent to them from individual states. They have also clarified that the vice-president has no power to unilaterally reject electoral votes.

Nevertheless, election watchers expect that efforts to delay certification of the 2024 vote could take place at the local and state level.

Trump, his running mate JD Vance and top Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have refused on several occasions to state unequivocally that they will accept the results if he loses.

The president-elect will begin their term in office after being inaugurated on Monday, 20 January 2025, in the grounds of the US Capitol complex.

It will be the 60th presidential inauguration in US history.

The event will see the new president sworn in on a pledge to uphold the Constitution and then deliver their inaugural address.

With just one day to go, the race for the White House is deadlocked – both at the national level and in the all-important battleground states.

The polls are so close, within the margin of error, that either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris could actually be two or three points better off – enough to win comfortably.

There is a compelling case to make for why each may have the edge when it comes to building a coalition of voters in the right places, and then ensuring they actually turn out.

Let’s start with the history-making possibility that a defeated president might be re-elected for the first time in 130 years.

• Harris v Trump poll tracker
• Live updates from the campaign’s closing stages
• When will we know if Harris or Trump has won?

The economy is the number one issue for voters, and while unemployment is low and the stock market is booming, most Americans say they are struggling with higher prices every day.

Inflation hit levels not seen since the 1970s in the aftermath of the pandemic, giving Trump the chance to ask “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

In 2024, voters around the world have several times thrown out the party in power, partly due to the high, post-Covid, cost of living. US voters also seem hungry for change.

Only a quarter of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction the country is going in and two-thirds have a poor economic outlook.

Harris has tried to be the so-called change candidate, but as vice-president has struggled to distance herself from an unpopular Joe Biden.

Despite the fallout from the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol, a string of indictments and an unprecedented criminal conviction, Trump’s support has remained stable all year at 40% or above.

While Democrats and “Never-Trump” conservatives say he is unfit for office, most Republicans agree when Trump says he’s the victim of a political witch-hunt.

With both sides so dug in, he just needs to win over enough of the small slice of undecided voters without a fixed view of him.

Beyond the state of the economy, elections are often decided by an issue with an emotional pull.

Democrats will hope it’s abortion, while Trump is betting it’s immigration.

After encounters at the border hit record levels under Biden, and the influx impacted states far from the border, polls suggest voters trust Trump more on the immigration – and that he’s doing much better with Latinos than in previous elections.

Trump’s appeal to voters who feel forgotten and left behind has transformed US politics by turning traditional Democratic constituencies like union workers into Republicans and making the protection of American industry by tariffs almost the norm.

If he drives up turnout in rural and suburban parts of swing states this can offset the loss of moderate, college-educated Republicans.

Trump’s detractors say he undermines America’s alliances by cosying up to authoritarian leaders.

The former president sees his unpredictability as a strength, however, and points out that no major wars started when he was in the White House.

Many Americans are angry, for different reasons, with the US sending billions to Ukraine and Israel – and think America is weaker under Biden.

A majority of voters, especially men who Trump has courted through podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, see Trump as a stronger leader than Harris.

Despite Trump’s advantages, he remains a deeply polarising figure.

In 2020, he won a record number of votes for a Republican candidate, but was defeated because seven million more Americans turned out to support Biden.

This time, Harris is playing up the fear factor about a Trump return. She’s called him a “fascist” and a threat to democracy, while vowing to move on from “drama and conflict”.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll in July indicated that four in five Americans felt the country was spiralling out of control. Harris will be hoping voters – especially moderate Republicans and independents – see her as a candidate of stability.

• Visual guide – Harris and Trump’s paths to victory
• The moment I decided on my vote

Democrats were facing near-certain defeat at the point Biden dropped out of the race. United in their desire to beat Trump, the party quickly rallied around Harris. With impressive speed from a standing start, she delivered a more forward-looking message that excited the base.

While Republicans have tied her to Biden’s more unpopular policies, Harris has rendered some of their Biden-specific attack lines redundant.

The clearest of these is age – polls consistently suggested voters had real concerns about Biden’s fitness for office. Now the race has flipped, and it is Trump who’s vying to become the oldest person to ever win the White House.

This is the first presidential election since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion.

Voters concerned about protecting abortion rights overwhelmingly back Harris, and we’ve seen in past elections – notably the 2022 midterms – that the issue can drive turnout and have a real impact on the result.

This time around, 10 states, including the swing state Arizona, will have ballot initiatives asking voters how abortion should be regulated. This could boost turnout in Harris’s favour.

The historic nature of her bid to become the first female president may also strengthen her significant lead among women voters.

The groups Harris is polling more strongly with, such as the college-educated and older people, are more likely to vote.

Democrats ultimately perform better with high-turnout groups, while Trump has made gains with relatively low-turnout groups such as young men and those without college degrees.

Trump, for example, holds a huge lead among those who were registered but didn’t vote in 2020, according to a New York Times/Siena poll.

A key question, then, is whether they will show up this time.

It’s no secret that American elections are expensive, and 2024 is on track to be the most expensive ever.

But when it comes to spending power – Harris is on top. She’s raised more since becoming the candidate in July than Trump has in the entire period since January 2023, according to a recent Financial Times analysis, which also noted that her campaign has spent almost twice as much on advertising.

This could play a role in a razor-tight race that will ultimately be decided by voters in swing states currently being bombarded by political ads.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win the electoral college
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: How this election could change the world
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

With just hours until election day, both candidates are concentrating their eleventh hour efforts on Pennsylvania – the biggest prize in the electoral battleground map.

Vice-president Kamala Harris’s election eve schedule includes four appearances in the state, ending with rallies in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia featuring a slate of celebrity guests, including Oprah Winfrey.

Former President Donald Trump is also barnstorming the must-win state, holding two rallies in Pittsburgh and Reading.

According to calculations by elections analyst Nate Silver, the candidate who wins Pennsylvania has more than a 90% chance of winning the White House.

“It’s the granddaddy of all the swing states,” said former congressman Patrick Murphy, who represented north-eastern Pennsylvania as a Democrat from 2007-11.

With its 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania – the fifth most populous US state – is the lynchpin of the swing-state electoral firewalls for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

If the Democrats win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, along with one congressional district in Nebraska, she’s the next president. If the Republicans carry Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, Trump is back in the White House next year.

Without Pennsylvania, there is no way Trump can win without flipping at least three of the states Joe Biden won in 2020.

Nicknamed the Keystone State, Pennsylvania could in fact be the key to the White House.

Pennsylvania is not only the most valuable swing state, it also can be seen as a microcosm of the US as a whole – demographically, economically and politically.

It is a former manufacturing state that has been transitioning to newer industries and businesses, but it has a large energy sector because of its abundant oil shale deposits. Agriculture is still the second-largest industry in the state.

The majority of the population is white, but there are growing immigrant communities. Some areas, like Allentown – the working-class factory city made famous by a Billy Joel song – are now majority Hispanic. The state’s black population, at 12%, is just under the US total of 13%.

As for the politics, the state’s two large urban areas, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, heavily favour the Democrats. Between the two are vast stretches of rural territory where Republicans dominate. And the suburbs that once were reliably conservative are now tilting to the left.

That gives rise to the old quip that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with (deeply Republican) Alabama in the middle.

Somehow, all these political cross-currents and shifting dynamics have kept Pennsylvania at a near dead-even balance when it comes to presidential elections. President Joe Biden won the state by about 80,000 votes in 2020. Donald Trump carried it by about 40,000 in his surprise 2016 win over Hillary Clinton.

Only once in the last 40 years has a candidate won Pennsylvania by double-digits – Barack Obama in his 2008 electoral landslide.

The final New York Times/Siena College poll of the state – published on Sunday – suggested the two were locked in a tie, with both Trump and Harris at 48% of likely voters. Before then, they were locked in a virtual dead heat, with Harris slightly ahead.

Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been pouring enormous resources into Pennsylvania. They are spending more on television advertising there than any other swing state and made regular visits even before the campaigning frenzy on election eve.

Harris introduced her running mate pick, Tim Walz, at a rally in Philadelphia. She spent days preparing for her presidential debate in Pittsburgh. She made a tentpole economic speech in September.

In early October, Trump held a massive rally in Butler, where in July he was nearly assassinated. He was in Biden’s hometown of Scranton and then Reading just a couple of weeks later.

And when the principals aren’t around, both campaigns have other politicians and officials to drum up support.

“A candidate can’t go into a county to talk to 1,200 people,” says former Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. “The state is too big. There’s just not time. That’s what surrogates are for.”

Rendell notes that the current governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, is a big help for Democrats here, as he is very popular in the state and a dynamic speaker – qualities that had made him the odds-on favourite to be Harris’s vice-presidential pick.

For Harris, her keys to victory are to post dominating numbers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and win the suburbs by enough to offset Trump’s margins in the rest of the state.

An essential part of this strategy is to win over moderate voters and some Republicans – including the more than 160,000 who turned out to vote for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the state’s Republican primary, held earlier this year, well after Trump had already locked up the party’s nomination.

“What these people need to hear is ways in which both the past record of Kamala Harris and the future plans of Kamala Harris are basically centrist positions – that she is not this crazy, wild-eyed radical leftist,” said Craig Snyder, former Republican Senate staffer who is running Pennsylvania’s “Haley Voters for Harris” effort.

He added that the Harris campaign is making the most extensive effort to reach Republican voters that he’s seen in a generation.

Trump’s strategy is to squeeze all the support he can out of the conservative parts of the state, including by registering and mobilising those who may not have participated in past elections – a move Trump’s campaign officials say is a central focus of their grass-roots effort.

There are signs their work may be paying off, too. Registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans in the state, but the margin is just a few hundred thousand – the smallest its been since the state first began releasing figures in 1998.

While the college-educated voters in the suburbs may be difficult to convince, the Trump team thinks it can also chip away at traditionally Democratic support among blue-collar union voters and young black men.

“We’ve seen nationally that Trump has made some real inroads with African American men,” said Farah Jimenez, a conservative education activist. “They’re here in Philadelphia, and if you can convince them that he speaks more clearly to the things that concern them, it can at least start to provide a base for Republicans in Philadelphia.”

Four years ago, the results in Pennsylvania took days to come in – due, in large part, to the more than two million mail-in ballots cast because of the Covid pandemic. Major media outlets didn’t project Biden as the winner until four days after the election.

Mail-in voting is expected to be lower this year, but the state reports that it has already received 217,000 completed ballots that, by Pennsylvania law, cannot be opened and tabulated until election night.

Another wildcard is the more than 27,000 military and overseas voter ballots that have been distributed by Pennsylvania state officials so far. If the race is as close as polls indicate, those votes could make a difference – even if they take longer to arrive and be recorded.

“I can’t imagine that it’s not going to take several days after to get a count,” said Snyder. “And if the count is very close, we’re going to get into lawsuits and recounts and all the rest of it. So everybody needs to buckle up.”

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win a US election
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• ANALYSIS: What could be the ‘October Surprise’?
• FACT-CHECK: Debunking Trump claim about hurricane funds
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his twice weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

India recently announced a host of ambitious space projects and approved 227bn rupees ($2.7bn; £2.1bn) for them.

The plans include the next phase of India’s historic mission to the Moon, sending an orbiter to Venus, building of the first phase of the country’s maiden space station and development of a new reusable heavy-lifting rocket to launch satellites.

It’s the single largest allocation of funds ever for space projects in India, but considering the scale and complexity of the projects, they are far from lavish and have once again brought into focus the cost-effectiveness of India’s space programme.

Experts around the world have marvelled at how little Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) Moon, Mars and solar missions have cost. India spent $74m on the Mars orbiter Mangalyaan and $75m on last year’s historic Chandrayaan-3 – less than the $100m spent on the sci-fi thriller Gravity.

Nasa’s Maven orbiter had cost $582m and Russia’s Luna-25, which crashed on to the Moon’s surface two days before Chandrayaan-3’s landing, had cost 12.6bn roubles ($133m).

Despite the low cost, scientists say India is punching much above its weight by aiming to do valuable work.

Chandrayaan-1 was the first to confirm the presence of water in lunar soil and Mangalyaan carried a payload to study methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Images and data sent by Chandrayaan-3 are being looked at with great interest by space enthusiasts around the world.

So how does India keep the costs so low?

Retired civil servant Sisir Kumar Das, who looked after Isro’s finances for more than two decades, says the frugality can be traced back to the 1960s, when scientists first pitched a space programme to the government.

India had gained independence from British colonial rule only in 1947 and the country was struggling to feed its population and build enough schools and hospitals.

“Isro’s founder and scientist Vikram Sarabhai had to convince the government that a space programme was not just a sophisticated luxury that had no place in a poor country like India. He explained that satellites could help India serve its citizens better,” Mr Das told the BBC.

• India makes historic landing near Moon’s south pole
• The year India reached the Moon – and aimed for the Sun

But India’s space programme has always had to work with a tight budget in a country with conflicting needs and demands. Photographs from the 1960s and 70s show scientists carrying rockets and satellites on cycles or even a bullock cart.

Decades later and after several successful interplanetary missions, Isro’s budget remains modest. This year, India’s budgetary allocation for its space programme is 130bn rupees ($1.55bn) – Nasa’s budget for the year is $25bn.

Mr Das says one of the main reasons why Isro’s missions are so cheap is the fact that all its technology is home-grown and machines are manufactured in India.

In 1974, after Delhi conducted its first nuclear test and the West imposed an embargo, banning transfer of technology to India, the restrictions were “turned into a blessing in disguise” for the space programme, he adds.

“Our scientists used it as an incentive to develop their own technology. All the equipment they needed was manufactured indigenously – and the salaries and cost of labour were decidedly less here than in the US or Europe.”

Science writer Pallava Bagla says that unlike Isro, Nasa outsources satellite manufacturing to private companies and also takes out insurance for its missions, which add to their costs.

“Also, unlike Nasa, India doesn’t do engineering models which are used for testing a project before the actual launch. We do only a single model and it’s meant to fly. It’s risky, there are chances of crash, but that’s the risk we take. And we are able to take it because it’s a government programme.”

Mylswamy Annadurai, chief of India’s first and second Moon missions and Mars mission, told the BBC that Isro employs far fewer people and pays lower salaries, which makes Indian projects competitive.

• India names astronauts for maiden space flight
• How important are India’s Moon mission findings?

He says he “led small dedicated teams of less than 10 and people often worked extended hours without any overtime payments” because they were so passionate about what they did.

The tight budget for the projects, he said, sometimes sent them back to the drawing board, allowed them to think out of the box and led to new innovations.

“For Chandrayaan-1, the allocated budget was $89m and that was okay for the original configuration. But subsequently, it was decided that the spacecraft would carry a Moon impact probe which meant an additional 35kg.”

Scientists had two choices – use a heavier rocket to carry the mission, but that would cost more, or remove some of the hardware to lighten the load.

“We chose the second option. We reduced the number of thrusters from 16 to eight and pressure tanks and batteries were reduced from two to one.”

Reducing the number of batteries, Mr Annadurai says, meant the launch had to take place before the end of 2008.

“That would give the spacecraft two years while it went around the Moon without encountering a long solar eclipse, which would impact its ability to recharge. So we had to maintain a strict work schedule to meet the launch deadline.”

Mangalyaan cost so little, Mr Annadurai says, “because we used most of the hardware we had already designed for Chandrayaan-2 after the second Moon mission got delayed”.

Mr Bagla says India’s space programme coming at such low cost is “an amazing feat”. But as India scales up, the cost could rise.

At the moment, he says, India uses small rocket launchers because they don’t have anything stronger. But that means India’s spacecraft take much longer to reach their destination.

• What has India’s Moon rover Pragyaan been up to since landing?
• India’s Sun mission reaches final destination

So, when Chandrayaan-3 was launched, it orbited the Earth several times before it was sling-shot into the lunar orbit, where it went around the Moon a few times before landing. On the other hand, Russia’s Luna-25 escaped the Earth’s gravity quickly riding a powerful Soyuz rocket.

“We used Mother Earth’s gravity to nudge us to the Moon. It took us weeks and a lot of resourceful planning. Isro has mastered this and done it successfully so many times.”

But, Mr Bagla says, India has announced plans to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2040 and it would need a more powerful rocket to fly the astronauts there quicker.

The government recently said work on this new rocket had already been approved and it would be ready by 2032. This Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV) will be able to carry more weight but also cost more.

Also, Mr Bagla says, India is in the process of opening up the space sector to private players and it’s unlikely that costs will remain so low once that happens.

Along a small street in Nepal’s Bhaktapur city stands an unassuming building with a strange name – the Museum of Stolen Art.

Inside it are rooms filled with statues of Nepal’s sacred gods and goddesses.

Among them is the Saraswati sculpture. Sitting atop a lotus, the Hindu goddess of wisdom holds a book, prayer beads and a classical instrument called a veena in her four hands.

But like all the other sculptures in the room, the statue is a fake.

The Saraswati is one of 45 replicas in the museum, which will have an official site in Panauti, set to open to the public in 2026.

The museum is the brainchild of Nepalese conservationist Rabindra Puri, who is spearheading a mission to secure the return of dozens of Nepal’s stolen artefacts, many of which are scattered across museums, auction houses or private collections in countries like the US, UK and France.

In the past five years, he has hired half a dozen craftsmen to create replicas of these statues, each taking between three months and a year to finish. The museum has not received any government funding.

His mission is to secure the return of these stolen artefacts – in exchange for the replicas he has created.

In Nepal, such statues reside in temples all across the country and are regarded as part of the country’s “living culture”, rather than mere showpieces, says Sanjay Adhikari, the secretary of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.

Many are worshipped by locals every day, with some followers offering food and flowers to the gods.

“An old lady told me she used to worship Saraswati daily,” says Mr Puri. “When she found out the idol was stolen, she felt more depressed than when her husband passed away.”

It is also common for followers to touch these statues for blessings – meaning they are also rarely guarded – leaving them wide open for thieves.

Nepal has categorised more than 400 artefacts missing from temples and monasteries across the country, but the number is highly likely to be an underestimate, says Saubhagya Pradhananga, who heads the official Department of Archaeology.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, hundreds of artefacts were looted from Nepal as the isolated country was opening up to the outside world.

Many of the country’s most powerful administrators back then were believed to have been behind some of these thefts – responsible for smuggling them abroad to art collectors and pocketing the proceeds.

For decades, Nepalis were largely unaware about their missing art and where it had gone, but that has been changing, especially since the founding of the National Heritage Recovery Campaign in 2021 – a movement led by citizen activists to reclaim lost treasures.

Activists have found that many of these idols are now in museums, auction houses or private collections in Western countries such as the US, the UK and France.

They also work with foreign governments to pressure overseas institutions to return the pieces.

But there are many hurdles. The Taleju Necklace, dating back to the 17th century, is a case in point.

In 1970, the giant gold-plated necklace engraved with precious stones went missing from the Temple of Taleju – the goddess known as the chief protective deity of Nepal.

Its disappearance was all the more shocking as the temple is only open to the public once a year – on the 9th day of the Dashain Festival.

It’s still unclear how it might have been stolen and many in Nepal had no idea where it might have gone until three years ago, when it was seen in an unlikely place – the Art Institute of Chicago.

It was spotted by Dr Sweta Gyanu Baniya, a Nepali academic based in the US who said she fell to her knees and started to cry when she saw the necklace.

“It’s not just a necklace, it’s a part of our goddess who we worship. I felt like it shouldn’t be here. It’s sacred,” she told the US university Virginia Tech.

“We were shocked to learn after so many years that it was on display in an American museum,” says Uddhav Karmacharya, the chief priest of the Temple of Taleju.

He has submitted documents proving its provenance to Nepali authorities, saying: “The day it is repatriated will be the most important day in my life.”

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, the necklace is a gift from the Alsdorf Foundation – a private US foundation. The museum told the BBC it has communicated with the Nepali government and is awaiting additional information.

But Pradhananga said Nepal’s Department of Archaeology had provided enough evidence, including archival records. On top of that, an inscription on the necklace says it was specifically made for the Goddess of Taleju by King Pratap Malla.

It’s these “tactics of delay” that often “wear down campaigners”, says one activist, Kanak Mani Dixit.

“They like to use the word ‘provenance’ whereby they ask for evidence from us. The onus is put on us to prove that it belongs to Nepal, rather than on themselves on how they got hold of them.”

But overall, some progress has been made, and about 200 artefacts have been returned to Nepal since 1986 – though most transfers took place in the past decade.

A sacred idol of the Hindu deities – Laxmi Narayan – has been brought back home to Nepal from the Dallas Museum of Art almost 40 years after it first disappeared from a temple.

Currently, 80 repatriated artefacts are housed in a special gallery of the National Museum of Nepal, waiting to undergo restoration before being returned to their rightful places. Six idols have been returned to the community since 2022.

The idol of Laxmi Narayan has been brought home and reinstalled at the temple it was originally taken from and is being worshipped daily, just like it was in the 10th century when the idol was first made.

But many worshippers are now a lot more paranoid – putting these idols in iron cages to protect them from going missing.

Mr Puri however hopes his museum will eventually have its shelves wiped bare.

“I want to tell the museums and whoever is holding the stolen artefacts: Just return our gods!” he says. “You can have your art.”

Rumours, misleading allegations and outright lies about voting and fraud are flooding online spaces in unprecedented numbers in advance of the US election.

Hundreds of incidents involving purported voting irregularities are being collected and spread by individuals, as well as both independent and Republican-affiliated groups. A small number of posts are also coming from Democrats.

The US government has also alleged that foreign actors, including Russia, are spreading fake videos to undermine confidence in the electoral process.

The whirlwind of misinformation spreading online poses a challenge to election officials who are having to debunk rumours and reassure voters, while preparing to administer election day on Tuesday.

Many posts alleging election irregularities support the Trump campaign’s false claim that the former president won the 2020 election and suggestions that he will potentially be cheated out of victory again on 5 November.

When asked whether he will accept the 2024 election result, Donald Trump said during the presidential debate in September that he would if it was a “fair and legal and good election”.

A majority of Americans – 70% – expect him to reject the result if he loses, according to a CNN/SSRS poll released Monday.

Just this week, Trump himself claimed widespread fraud in a key swing state.

“Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network. “REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!”

The allegation followed officials in three Pennsylvania counties saying they were working with local law enforcement to investigate some voter registration applications for potential fraud.

While Trump and allies seized on the announcements, the state’s top election official, Republican Al Schmidt, has urged caution and warned voters to be aware of “half-truths” and disinformation circulating on social media.

“This is a sign that the built-in safeguards in our voter registration process are working,” he said.

The BBC has seen hundreds of allegations of election fraud online, on social networks and on message boards and in chat groups. Some of these posts have been viewed millions of times each.

The posts have implied it’s easy for non-citizens to vote, made false claims about voting machines and sowed distrust in the ballot-counting process.

One video claimed to show recently-arrived Haitians voting in Georgia.

The BBC has found clear indications, including false addresses and stock photos, which indicate the video is a fake. On Friday US security officials said it was made by “Russian influence actors”.

Another person on X claiming they were Canadian posted a picture of a ballot and said: “Figured I would drive across the border and vote.”

It, too, is a fake, and part of an effort co-ordinated on the fringe message board 4chan. The ballot shown is from Florida, a state that requires identification to vote in person and is about a 20-hour drive from the Canadian border.

Meanwhile in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, a video was posted on X showing a man dropping off a container of ballots at a courthouse, alleging suspicious activity. It turned out he was a postal worker delivering mail-in ballots, but the video was seen more than five million times.

Experts worry the burst of misinformation just before election day could undermine people’s trust in the results – or lead to threats and violence in the lead-up to the election and beyond.

It’s happened before.

In the hours and days that followed the 2020 presidential election, while votes were still being counted, then-President Trump turned to social media to allege fraud and falsely claim that he was the real winner of the election. “Stop the steal” became a slogan of his supporters’ movement to overturn the results.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?

On social media, chatrooms and during street protests, conspiracy theorists alleged widespread voter fraud, culminating with a riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Meanwhile, in battleground states like Georgia, election officials – civil servants whose job it is to oversee the election – faced death threats.

While false claims about voting ramped up after the 2020 vote, groups that monitor this kind of activity say this year it has started well before election day.

Wendy Via, founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said some far-right and right-wing activists “are preparing themselves for the election to be stolen in a way they weren’t in 2020”.

“We cannot overstate the role of conspiracy theories in all of this,” she said.

These doubts have already reached Trump supporters on the ground. At a rally this week in Wisconsin, another key swing state, a number of people said they believed only illegal activity would prevent the Republican nominee from winning.

“I feel very confident about Trump, as long as there’s no cheating,” said Brad Miller of Green Bay, who mentioned that he’d already heard rumours about fraud. “Our only hope is that it’s not big enough to change the result.”

After the 2020 election, dozens of court cases alleging election fraud were lodged by Trump’s team across multiple states, but none succeeded.

Experts say that isolated incidents of ballot fraud and administrative errors always happen in US presidential elections, which run across all 50 states and in 2020 involved more than 150 million voters.

But real incidents are now being catalogued and shared online to an unprecedented degree and being used, alongside fake posts, as evidence of widespread cheating.

In southern California, dozens of ballots were found in a storm drain. Despite the unknown circumstances around the event, online partisans immediately suspected deliberate fraud.

“They WILL cheat,” says one of the thousands of comments posted.

As cases have cropped up in recent days – including those in Pennsylvania and a Chinese student being charged with illegally voting in Michigan – authorities have repeatedly pointed to their investigations as examples of the robustness of election safeguards.

But those who believe conspiracy theories about widespread fraud see these incidents as evidence of a co-ordinated plan by Democrats to “rig” the election.

“Look at this new cheat voter fraud,” read one typical comment responding to the news from Pennsylvania. “Dems already doing their best to steal another election.”

The overall effect can have a disastrous impact on trust in democracy, experts say.

“These incidents are catnip for those who seek to undermine confidence in the election result,” said Luis Lozada, chief executive of Democracy Works, a not-for-profit group that distributes information about voting.

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The mass of election fraud claims spreading on social media have been aided by a network of groups that crowdsource allegations.

Groups like Texas-based True The Vote, founded in 2009, have long been on the forefront of questioning election security.

On an app developed by True the Vote called VoteAlert, supporters post examples of alleged election irregularities.

They have collected a wide range of claims, from minor security oversights to allegations of deliberate vote tampering. The organisation also has people monitoring live-streamed cameras that have been pointed on ballot drop boxes in a number of states. Many local officials have repeatedly outlined the steps they have taken to make the boxes secure.

“Our hope is we see exactly nothing at these drop boxes,” said True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht during one of her recent regular online meetings for supporters.

But she also hinted that Democratic-aligned groups were aiming to commit election fraud on a vast scale.

“If they want to try to pull the kinds of things that we saw being pulled in 2020, they’re highly unlikely to get away with it because we have, literally, eyes everywhere,” she added.

The BBC contacted True the Vote for comment.

A number of other groups are asking supporters to report alleged irregularities.

Elon Musk’s America political action committee has started a community – akin to a message board – on X, filled with rumours and allegations about voting. With 50,000 members, several posts go up every minute, almost around the clock.

Other efforts include the Election Integrity Network, a group founded by a former Trump lawyer who is challenging voter registrations and recruiting poll watchers – partisan observers who attend polling places.

The volume of messages on these platforms – along with the vagueness of some of the claims, with often anonymous sources – makes it nearly impossible to verify each allegation.

The groups, and the Trump campaign, say that these efforts are solely meant to ensure the integrity of the vote. The BBC contacted the Trump campaign for comment.

The effect of this is unpredictable.

The Department of Homeland Security, in a memo reported on by US outlets including the BBC’s partner CBS, said on Monday that election conspiracy theories could spark action by domestic extremists.

And observers expect the wave of misinformation to continue well beyond election day. Polls suggest the election will be among the closest in modern US history. It may take days to count all the votes and determine the winner.

Luis Lozada of Democracy Works says the election is being conducted in an “ecosystem of distrust”.

But despite the doubts being sown, he says, “accurate information is getting out there”.

“Election officials work very hard to ensure that elections are run properly, as they were in 2020,” Mr Lozada said. “That’s not going to stop folks from taking anecdotes, and trying to punch holes.”

In a small corner of rural Taiwan, set amongst other dye houses and small factories, the start-up Alchemie Technology is in the final phase of rolling out a project it claims will upend the global apparel industry and slash its carbon footprint.

The UK-based start-up has targeted one of the dirtiest parts of the apparel industry – dyeing fabric – with the world’s first digital dyeing process.

“Traditionally in dyeing fabric, you’re steeping the fabric in water at 135 degrees celsius for up to four hours or so – gallons and tons of water. For example, to dye one ton of polyester, you’re generating 30 tons of toxic wastewater,” Alchemie founder Dr Alan Hudd tells me.

“That is the same process that was developed 175 years ago in the northwest of England, in the Lancashire cotton mills and the Yorkshire cotton mills, and we exported it,” he points out, first to the US and then onto the factories in Asia.

The apparel industry uses an estimated five trillion litres of water each year to simply dye fabric, according to the World Resources Institute, a US-based non-profit research centre.

The industry is, in turn, responsible for 20% of the world’s industrial water pollution, while also using up vital resources like groundwater in some countries. It also releases a massive carbon footprint from start to finish – or around 10% of annual global emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

Alchemie says its technology can help solve that problem.

Called Endeavour, its machine can compress fabric dyeing, drying, and fixing into a dramatically shorter and water-saving process.

Endeavour uses the same principle as inkjet printing to rapidly and precisely fire dye onto and through the fabric, according to the company. The machine’s 2,800 dispensers fire roughly 1.2 billion droplets per linear meter of fabric.

“What we’re effectively doing is registering and placing a drop, a very small drop precisely and accurately onto the fabric. And we can switch these drops on and off, just like a light switch,” says Dr Hudd.

Alchemie claims big savings through the process: reducing water consumption by 95%, energy consumption up to 85%, and working three to five times faster than traditional processes.

Developed initially in Cambridge, the company is now in Taiwan to see how Endeavour works in a real-world environment.

“The UK, they’re really strong in R&D projects, they’re really strong in inventing new things, but certainly if you want to move to commercialisation you need to go to the real factories,” says Ryan Chen, the new chief of operations at Alchemie, who has a background in textile manufacturing in Taiwan.

Alchemie is not the only company attempting a nearly waterless dye process.

There’s the China-based textile company NTX, which has developed a heatless dye process that can cut down water use by 90% and dye by 40%, according to their website, and the Swedish start-up Imogo, which also uses a “digital spray application” with similar environmental benefits.

NTX and Imogo did not reply to the BBC’s interview request.

Kirsi Niinimäki, a professor in design who researches the future of textiles at Finland’s Aalto University, says the solutions offered by these companies look “quite promising” – although she adds that she would like to see more specific information about issues like the fixing process and long-term studies on fabric durability.

But even though it’s early days, Ms Niinimäki says companies like Alchemie could bring real changes to the industry.

“All these kinds of new technologies, I think that they are improvements. If you’re able to use less water, for example, that of course means less energy, and perhaps even less chemicals – so that of course is a huge improvement.”

Back in Taiwan, there are still some kinks to be ironed out – like how to run the Endeavour machine in a hotter and more humid climate than the UK.

Alchemie service manager, Matthew Avis, who helped rebuild Endeavour in its new factory location, discovered that the machine needs to operate in an air-conditioned environment – an important lesson given how much apparel manufacturing happens in southern Asia.

The company also has some big goals for 2025. After its test run with polyester in Taiwan, Alchemie is heading next to South Asia and Portugal to test their machines and also try it out on cotton.

They will also have to figure out how to scale up Endeavour.

Big fashion companies like Inditex, the owner of Zara, work with thousands of factories. Its suppliers would need hundreds of Endeavours working together to meet its demand for fabric dyeing.

And that’s just one company – there will be many, many more in need.

On Tuesday, Betsy Linkhorst, 18, will cast her very first vote not just for who should be in the White House, but on the issue of abortion.

Her home state of Florida is one of 10 across the country that will have abortion on the ballot this election.

If passed, Florida’s measure – Amendment 4 – would overturn the six-week abortion ban currently in effect here and expand access to the point of foetal viability, which is about 24 weeks of pregnancy. It could also be later “when necessary to protect the patient’s health”, according to the measure’s wording.

Ms Linkhorst, who said she was “nervous” about living in a state with limited abortion access, told the BBC she was going to vote yes.

“It’s important to vote based on our rights,” she said of her vote both for Kamala Harris and for expanding abortion access in Florida. “I don’t think it’s the government’s right to police women’s bodies.”

Of all the abortion measures on the ballot this week, Florida’s ballot question will be the most closely watched.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?

The state was, for over a year, one of the last places that women in the southern part of the country could get a legal abortion, up to 15 weeks. But in May, Florida enacted an even more restrictive law, which banned abortions after six weeks – with few exceptions – which is before most women know they are pregnant.

Polls suggest a majority of Florida voters are backing Amendment 4. But the amendment must reach a 60% threshold to pass – and surveys are indicating that while it has strong support, the campaign might not quite meet that bar in the fairly conservative state.

If it did pass, that would be viewed as a huge victory for the abortion-rights movement.

“It’s the hardest place in the country to win,” said Kelly Hall, a strategist who works on abortion rights ballot measures and executive director of the Fairness Project. “If we overcome that particular barrier, there’s absolutely nothing holding us back from passing ballot measures everywhere it’s legal.”

• Where is abortion illegal in the US?
• 10 US states will have abortion questions on the ballot

This is the first national election held since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, giving states the right to regulate abortion themselves. Since then, 17 states have enacted bans that restrict nearly all abortions within their borders.

During the 2022 midterms, held months after the top court’s decision, voters in conservative states Kentucky and Kansas voted against restricting abortion, sending a message that access to the procedure is broadly supported by the American people. The issue is also credited with helping the Democrats do better than expected in congressional races.

Now, Democrats hope again that abortion measures in key battleground states like Arizona and Nevada will drive their voters to the polls to back abortion rights – and while they’re at it, propel Vice-President Harris to the White House and their down-ballot candidates to victory.

In a sign of how salient the issue of abortion has been for voters, Republican White House nominee Donald Trump, a resident of Florida, has tried to back away from his once-hardline stance against abortion. Now, he says he thinks the decision on how it should be regulated ought to be left up to states, and voters.

Last August in an interview with NBC, he seemed to indicate he would vote in favour of Amendment 4. But after outcry from his anti-abortion supporters, he said he would vote against it.

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The issue is divisive in the Republican-leaning state.

Nancy Collins, 88, had voted no on Amendment 4 due to her Catholic faith.

“I’ve always been anti-abortion,” she said. “It’s against my religion.”

Ms Collins supported Trump’s current position that abortion policy should be left to individual states, and she hoped Florida would reject any expansion beyond its current six-week ban.

Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has also marshalled the powers of his state government to beat back the measure.

He says the measure would allow children to get abortions without parental consent, a claim that Amendment 4’s backers reject.

Last month he declared the amendment would make “make Florida one of the most radical abortion jurisdictions not just in the United States but anywhere in the world”.

The state’s health department also launched a website opposing Amendment 4. And in October, a judge overturned the health department’s attempts to block a television station from airing an ad in support of Amendment 4.

Abortion measures are not guaranteed to deliver Harris, or other Democratic politicians, the boost they hope to see this year in contested races.

In Florida, which Trump won handily in 2016 and 2020, he is widely expected to win another victory.

A New York Times/Siena College poll suggested that 12% of voters in Arizona and Florida would vote for Trump as well as an abortion rights measure.

Jonel Jones, 37, is a former Democrat who decided to vote for Trump this year. She had been looking for a job for months, and felt the former president had a stronger handle on the economy and could potentially improve her prospects.

She personally did not believe in abortion, she said. But she had read stories from other states like Georgia and Texas about pregnant women who became sick or died after being denied abortion or miscarriage treatment, and did not want a similar situation in Florida.

“I don’t think it’s right,” Ms Jones said.

After ticking the box for Donald Trump, she voted “yes” on Amendment 4.

As millions of people cast their ballots in the US election, claims have been spreading online questioning the integrity of the vote.

Election officials have been quick to reject some accusations of voting malpractice, as well as clarifying some legitimate problems which have been taken out of context.

BBC Verify is tracking and investigating the most widely shared claims – here’s four.

An image on social media shows a person holding a mail-in ballot paper which already had a mark next to Kamala Harris’s name.

The person who posted it on X claims that voting for anyone else would render the ballot void.

One post, viewed more than 3 million times, said the picture showed “weird ballot shenanigans happening”.

BBC Verify spoke to the Kentucky Board of Elections which rejected the allegation.

It said it had mailed out 130,000 ballots so far and had not been made aware of any complaints about mail-in ballots having pre-printed marks in any candidate selection boxes.

“As no one has presented a pre-marked ballot to election administrators or law enforcement, the claim that at least one ballot may have had a pre-printed mark in Kentucky, currently only exists in the vacuum of social media,” it said.

The election board added that for mail-in ballots in Kentucky if more than one candidate choice is marked in ink, then the ballot will still be counted if the voter circles their preferred choice.

A post on X which claims “the Pentagon reportedly failed to send absentee ballots to active military service members before the election” has been viewed over 28 million times.

It references a letter to Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, written by three Republican members of congress, expressing “grave concern” over “deficiencies” in procedures for overseas military personnel to vote.

However the letter does not accuse the Pentagon of failing to send them absentee ballots.

It is not the Pentagon’s job to do this – military personnel can vote abroad through the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) and ballots are sent to them by election officials where they are registered in the US.

If the ballot is in danger of not arriving before the voting deadline, personnel can vote via what is called a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB).

The letter claims an unspecified number of “service members” had requested a FWAB but were told their base had run out. However, it is possible to download and sign one through the FVAP website.

We asked the Department of Defense for details about how many people had been affected by the issue, but it would not comment. It did say that it had trained 3,000 Voting Assistance Officers to support personnel with voting.

Officials in the US state of Pennsylvania have rejected claims that “illegal voters” were able to apply for ballots and vote at an election office in Allegheny County.

They released a statement after posts on X went viral, claiming to show “illegal voters” being guided past US voters who had been waiting in line.

Allegheny County officials told the BBC the group were there to apply for mail-in ballots. It also reiterated that only US citizens can register to vote.

It is illegal for non-US citizens to vote in federal elections, and studies show that cases of this happening are extremely rare.

A video which appears to show someone repeatedly trying and failing to vote for Donald Trump on a voting machine in Laurel County, Kentucky – before a vote appears next to Kamala Harris’s name – has gone viral.

The person posting it says: “I hit Trump’s name 10 times and it wouldn’t work I then began recording and you can see what happened…. Switched it to Harris.”

Another post, viewed nearly seven million times, features the video with the claim: “Voting machines in Kentucky are literally changing the vote from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris. This is election interference!”

Election officials confirmed the video was authentic and the machine did malfunction, but said it was an isolated incident and the voter was able to cast their ballot as intended.

“After several minutes of attempting to recreate the scenario, it did occur. This was accomplished by hitting some area in between the boxes. After that we tried for several minutes to do it again and could not,” the county clerk said in a statement.

The machine in question was taken out of action until it was inspected, and later in the day the county clerk posted a video on Facebook showing the machine working correctly.

“In an election on this scale there are always going to be some problems,” said Joseph Greaney, a voting expert at US election website Ballotpedia.

“It can be one or two machines but people are extrapolating those out into a bigger problems, but I would say with a good degree of confidence that they are isolated incidents and they are caught,” he added.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

“Music is sacred to me,” Quincy Jones once said. “Melody is God’s voice.”

He certainly had the divine touch.

Jones, who has died at the age of 91, was the right-hand man to both Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, and helped to shape the sound of jazz and pop over more than 60 years.

His recordings revolutionised music by crossing genres, promoting unlikely collaborations and shaping modern production techniques.

Here are 10 songs that showcase his versatility and brilliance in the studio, and his ability to draw the best out of the musicians he worked with.

Michael Jackson met Quincy Jones on the set of the 1978 movie The Wiz, and asked him to produce his next album. That record was Off The Wall – a disco extravaganza that established Jackson as a solo star.

They teamed up again for 1982’s Thriller, which arguably remade the pop business. Not only did it produce seven top 10 singles; but it crossed racial barriers, appealing equally to black and white audiences.

Key to the success was Billie Jean, a dark tale about the groupies Jackson met while touring with his brothers. As a producer, Jones wasn’t keen on the track at first – arguing with Jackson about the long instrumental opening.

“I said, ‘Michael we’ve got to cut that intro,’” he later recalled.

“He said, ‘But that’s the jelly! That’s what makes me want to dance.’ And when Michael Jackson tells you, ‘That’s what makes me want to dance,’ well, the rest of us just have to shut up.”

With those words ringing in his ears, Jones kept the arrangement lean and funky. He even instructed sound engineer Bruce Swedien to create a drum sound with a “sonic personality” that no-one had ever heard before. The result is one of the most recognisable intros in the history of pop.

• Listen to Billie Jean

“The friendship was so strong. You can’t describe it,” said Jones of his partnership with Frank Sinatra – which extended far beyond the recording studio.

“Seven double Jack Daniels in an hour… [Sinatra] invented partying.”

After establishing their relationship on 1964’s It Might As Well Be Swing, Jones helped Sinatra re-arrange his signature songs for a four-week residency at the Copa Room in The Sands hotel, Las Vegas.

“It was probably the most exciting engagement I have ever done in my life, since I started performing,” Sinatra later recalled.

Accompanied by the Count Basie Orchestra, the star sounds perfectly at ease, breezing around standards like I’ve Got You Under My Skin, Fly Me To The Moon and You Make Me Feel So Young.

But it’s Come Fly With Me that most perfectly captures the vitality of Jones’s new arrangements, especially in the charismatic interplay between Sinatra and the brass section.

No wonder that it was chosen as the show’s opening number – as captured on the award-winning live album, Sinatra At The Sands.

• Listen to Come Fly With Me (Live)

Lesley Gore was just a teenager when her vocal demos made their way into Quincy Jones’s hands in the early 1960s. Up to that point, he’d been working with jazz singers like Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan – but he heard something he liked on Gore’s tape.

“She had a mellow, distinctive voice and sang in tune, which a lot of grown up rock ‘n’ roll singers couldn’t do, so I signed her,” he wrote in his autobiography.

For their first session, Jones picked It’s My Party out of a pile of 200 demos and got to work. He double-tracked Gore’s voice, adding little flourishes of brass and unexpected chord changes that perfectly evoke the song’s adolescent angst.

He then rush-released the single, after discovering that Phil Spector had plans to record the same song with the Crystals. It duly topped the US charts and went to number nine in the UK.

• Listen to It’s My Party

Recorded by The Lovin’ Spoonful, Summer In The City is a 1960s rock classic, full of ominous organ chords and powerful drum hits that capture the sticky filth of an oppressive heatwave.

Quincy Jones version, recorded for his 1973 album You’ve Got It Bad Girl, is almost unrecognisable as the same song. Lazily chilled-out, the Hammond organ is played with a featherlight touch, and the drums are gently brushed.

Most of the lyrics are excised and, when they arrive at the 2’30” mark, they’re sung with almost heavenly serenity by Valerie Simpson (of Ashford and Simpson fame).

Originally released as a b-side, it’s become one of Jones’s most influential songs. According to WhoSampled.com, it’s been sampled on 87 other songs, including tracks by Massive Attack, Eminem, Nightmares on Wax and The Roots.

• Listen to Summer In The City

Another example of how Jones’s skill as an arranger could completely change a song.

Mad About The Boy was written by Sir Noël Coward, for the 1932 revue Words and Music. In the original, it was sung by four different women, each expressing their love for an unnamed film star (rumoured to be Douglas Fairbanks Jr) as they wait in line to see one of his films.

It’s funny and quirky and clever – but when Dinah Washington covered the song in 1961, Jones slowed it down and switched the time signature from 4/4 to 6/8, allowing the singer to prowl through the lyrics with a newfound carnality.

Overlooked at the time, it gained a new lease of life in 1992 when it was used to soundtrack a Levis advert and crept into the UK charts for the first time.

• Listen to Mad About The Boy

Written in just 20 minutes, Soul Bossa Nova was inspired by an early-60s fad for Brazilian music, sparked by the success of João Gilberto and Stan Getz’s Desafinado.

Jones is in his element here – with chirruping flutes and big trombone slides that capture the joie de vivre of the carnival. He also makes prominent use of a cuíca, the Brazilian drum that produces what sounds like a very happy monkey in the opening bars.

The bossa-craze may have been short-lived, but Jones’s song endured, most memorably in the opening dance sequence of Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery.

• Listen to Soul Bossa Nova

From the beginning, Jones and Jackson planned to make Thriller a blockbuster pop album.

“We went through 800 songs to get to nine,” Jones said. “That’s not casual.”

The work was exhausting. At one point, they were working in three studios simultaneously… until the speakers caught fire.

Beat It was crucial to the project – because it was designed to get Jackson played on US rock radio, an unheard of prospect in the heavily-segregated music industry of the 1980s.

Jones had told Jackson to write “a black version” of The Knack’s My Sharona – the 1979 hit song that sold more then 10 million copies. But Jackson was one step ahead. He had a demo that fit the bill, albeit without a hook or lyrics.

While Jackson worked on those elements (you can hear his first, wordless attempt at the melody on his YouTube channel), Jones called on Eddie Van Halen to perform the guitar solo.

“He came in and he stacked up his Gibson [guitars],” Jones later recalled.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you what to play… Let’s try three or four takes. Some of it will be over-animated, some of it will be long, and we’ll sculpt it.

“And he played his ass off.”

The song, with its West Side Story-inspired video, landed just as MTV took off, making Jackson a permanent fixture in living rooms across America.

But for all the commercial focus of the Thriller project, Jones always maintained that the music came first.

“I’ve never, ever in my life done music for money or fame – because that’s when God walks out of the room,” he said.

• Listen to Beat It

Jones discovered guitarist George Johnson and bassist Louis Johnson when he heard them playing on a demo by Chaka Khan’s sister, Taka Boom.

He hired them to play on the soundtrack for the celebrated TV mini-series Roots, placed them in his touring band, and helmed their 1976 debut album Look Out For #1 (including a sublime cover of The Beatles’ Come Together).

But the brothers didn’t achieve mainstream success until 1977, with the release of Strawberry Letter #23.

Originally recorded by Shuggie Otis, Jones’s version toughens up the production, with a strutting bassline and soaring backing vocals – but George Johnson struggled to recreate Shuggie’s original guitar solo, which was full of complicated triplet notes.

Frustrated, Jones called up session musician Lee Ritenour for help.

“Quincy was walking down the hallway tearing his hair out,” Ritenour later recalled. “He said, ‘I’m going to lunch, Ritenour. Get it done.’

Released in the middle of the punk and disco boom, the song’s romantic psychedelia still found an audience – reaching number 13 in the charts. It was later re-popularised by Quentin Tarantino in the film Jackie Brown.

• Listen to Strawberry Letter #23

Early in his career, Jones was one of the most in-demand arrangers in jazz, working with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee.

In 1958, he recorded an entire album with Sarah Vaughan in Paris, backed by a 55-piece orchestra. Among the highlights is the lovestruck ballad Misty – originally recorded by pianist Erroll Garner, and made famous by Johnny Mathis.

Unlike their syrupy and sentimental versions, Vaughan and Jones (along with producer Jack Tracy) give the lyrics some pathos. She might be “as helpless as a kitten up a tree”, but you’re never entirely convinced she’s happy about the situation.

Jones adds beguiling touches – from the cascading strings when Vaughan sings “a thousand violins begin to play”, to the beautifully muted saxophone line, played by Zoot Sims.

Vaughan died in 1990. In 2019, Jones posted about her influence on his Facebook page, using his pet name for her – Sassy.

“Dear sweet Sassy was all about sophistication and chord changes and, man, I’m telling you she thought like a horn and SANG like a horn!” he wrote.

“We had quite the journey together, & I will never forget each moment we had, because every moment was a special one.”

• Listen to Misty

“Check your egos at the door,” said the hand-written sign that Quincy Jones pinned to the door of his recording studio in 1985.

The occasion was the recording of We Are The World – a star-studded charity single that aimed to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

Written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, the record featured vocals from Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, Dionne Warwick and Bob Dylan, all recorded in a single night.

Herding the singers was a massive headache, as the recent Netflix documentary The Greatest Night In Pop revealed.

At one point, Stevie Wonder insisted that some of the lyrics should be rewritten in Swahili – despite the fact that the people of Ethiopia, who would be the main beneficiaries of the famine-relief fundraiser, largely speak other languages.

Jones oversaw the whole session with the patience and wisdom of a producer who’d seen it all.

The results aren’t particularly great – the song is sickly and overlong – but the fact that it’s coherent at all is a testament to his skill as a producer, arranger, mentor and referee.

In the end, the song raised more than $63m ($227m or £178m adjusted for inflation); and Jones looked back on it as one of his proudest achievements.

“I have never before or since experienced the joy I felt that night working with this rich, complex human tapestry of love, talent, and grace,” he wrote in his 2002 autobiography.

• Listen to We Are The World

Migrants stranded for years on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia will be offered the right to come to the UK, under a government proposal.

Around 60 Sri Lankan Tamils have spent more than three years in a makeshift camp on the island, which hosts a secretive UK-US military base, after becoming the first people ever to file asylum claims there.

The government has previously opposed bringing the group to the UK and complex legal battles have been fought for years over their fate.

In a letter on Monday, government lawyers said that “following further consideration”, the government had proposed a “change of policy”.

Under this, “all families, children and those of the unaccompanied males who do not have criminal convictions, outstanding charges or investigations would be offered the opportunity to be transferred directly to the UK”.

It added that work on the offer was “ongoing” and a formal decision would be made within 48 hours. “Details will be provided as soon as possible,” it said.

In a phone call with one of the Tamils, an official said the decision to bring them to the UK was due to the “exceptional circumstances” of the island, adding that entry would be for “a short period of time”.

The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson told reporters at a daily news briefing in Downing Street that “the government inherited a deeply-troubling situation that remained unresolved under the previous administration when it came to migrants who had arrived at Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia had clearly never been a suitable long-term location for migrants”.

He added “the government has been working to find a solution that protects their welfare and the integrity of British territorial borders”.

Lawyers representing the Tamils described the move as a “very welcome step” in a “long battle for justice”.

“After three years living in inhumane conditions, having to fight various injustices in court on numerous occasions, His Majesty’s Government [HMG] has now decided that our clients should now come directly to the UK. We hope that HMG will now take urgent steps to give effect to this decision,” Simon Robinson of UK law firm Duncan Lewis told the BBC.

“Today’s decision is an enormous relief to our clients and we urge the home secretary to close the camp and bring our clients here without any further delay,” said Leigh Day lawyer Tom Short.

“It looks like a dream. I don’t know what to think,” one Tamil said after receiving a call from an official with the news.

The UK had previously offered some of the group a temporary move to Romania with the possibility of then coming to the UK. Others were offered financial incentives to return to Sri Lanka.

The latest development comes after the UK announced last month that it was handing sovereignty of British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot), which includes Diego Garcia, to Mauritius. The military base, however, will remain on the island.

Under a separate deal last month, future migrants arriving on Biot before the arrangement with Mauritius comes into force will be transferred to the island of St Helena – another UK territory some 5,000 miles away.

In court on Monday, lawyers said three people with criminal convictions may be sent to the island of Montserrat – a British territory in the Caribbean – to serve their sentences.

The BBC was recently granted unprecedented access to Diego Garcia to attend a court hearing, which is set to determine whether the Tamils had been unlawfully detained.

During the visit, the migrants walked the court through military tents they have been living in, pointing out damp, tears in the canvas, droppings, and a rats’ nest above one of the beds.

Over the past three years, there have been multiple hunger strikes on the island, and numerous incidents of self-harm and suicide attempts after which some people have been transferred to Rwanda for medical care.

“For three years I have been caged. Now they are releasing me but I don’t know what to do. I feel a bit blank,” one man in Rwanda said.

“I am very happy because I am coming to the UK. I thought they would send me to some other country.”

The group includes 16 children. Most are awaiting final decisions on claims for international protection – which the United Nations says is akin to refugee status – or appealing against rejections. In total, eight have been granted international protection.

Joe Biden has always regarded two places as home – Ireland and Delaware.

When he leaves the White House in a matter of months he will head to the latter, and in that state there is some anger at the way he lost his chance to serve a second term as President.

Yet even his supporters accept that the 81-year-old was showing his age when his Democratic Party colleagues told him it was time to leave the race.

“I think it would have run him into the ground for sure, to have a campaign to try to come up above the (polling) numbers that have been so horrible for the whole time he has been in office,” says Kathy Magner.

Kathy Magner’s father worked with Biden’s dad 50 years ago and she has known him for decades.

“I think what time he has left after the presidency, he can enjoy it knowing he did the best he could,” she says.

Kathy helps run Limestone Presbyterian Church in Wilmington and one of her jobs is to put up a message with meaning on a sign at the front of the building.

Just days ahead of the election, when America decides between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the sign states: ‘Hate never solves problems. It creates them.’

There seems little doubt that those words are a nod towards how politically divisive the last few months have been.

It has even had an impact within the congregation here.

“We have had family members who have disowned each other because they are on the other side,” says Kathy.

“I have a sister-in-law who I will not talk to, because if I call her we end up shouting and I just hang up on her.”

Last year Limestone Presbyterian helped to host Christian teenagers from Northern Ireland as part of a cross-community initiative.

The pastor of the church says those visits gave him some optimism that America’s divisions could be overcome.

“What I found interesting was the history of the Ulster Project,” says Reverend Tim Bostick.

“Of how it grew out of the Catholic and Protestant challenges that Northern Ireland had gone through.

“And learning to appreciate and respect each other through our differences.

“We need more of that!”

But in the centre of Wilmington, outside the railroad station named after Joseph R Biden Jr. it was clear that not everyone agreed.

One Trump supporter told me that America was a worse place now because of Biden.

And when I asked him what his presidency would be remembered for, he said two words: “His senility.”

Generally though I found a fondness for the outgoing President who is a familiar figure in the city.

One of his favourite places to eat is the Charcoal Pit diner.

Inside the 1950s-themed restaurant there are pictures of visits by both Biden and the man he served as vice-president Barack Obama.

While understandably he has been a less regular visitor during the last four years, the diner’s staff say he still gets food to take out when he’s in Delaware.

“He eats cheesesteaks and cheeseburgers… And thick black and white shakes with extra ice cream,” says the chef Lupe Avilez.

“And he talks to you like he’s known you forever.”

Like their most famous regular, Lupe’s wife Mary has familial links to Ireland. And she says Biden’s love of the island is obvious even in the west wing.

“I know someone that works in a bank locally and she was in the Oval Office a week ago,” reveals Mary.

“She says that he has a rugby ball signed by all the players… And a big photo album full of pictures of everywhere he went in Ireland.

“She said it was so nice to see.”

Joe Biden’s presidential visit to Ireland last year was memorable, personal and political.

The trip was a celebration of his roots but also a chance to throw his leadership weight behind political progress in Northern Ireland.

He has backed that up by encouraging trans-Atlantic investment from America through his economic envoy, Joe Kennedy III.

Securing big sums is always difficult but Biden’s pick for the role showed he was serious in trying to make it work.

Kennedy is charismatic, well-connected and part of a Democratic party dynasty with their own Irish links.

But he indicated recently on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme that he is likely to move on when this Presidency ends in January.

Whether Kennedy will be replaced and how important Ireland (north and south) will be in the next White House is not exactly clear, no matter who wins.

Once US politicians fretted over the Irish-American vote. This election has shown how much its importance has faded into the distance, with both campaigns much more concerned about getting the likes of Black and Latino voters to the ballot box.

However, Mary Avilez believes it still matters.

“I think it is important because we need to have relationships with other countries,” she insists.

Not everyone agrees. Many commentators suggest the tone and priorities of recent debates indicate that America is looking ever inward, as it finally decides who should be its next leader.

BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme will be live from the United States from Monday 4 November until Friday 8 November with Chris bringing you all the latest news and reaction in the presidential election.

Meet Gabriela. She’s in her forties, Latina, and lives in Miami. She’s not that into politics, but she does care about the economy – and abortion rights. And she doesn’t know if she’ll vote – or who for. The only catch? She’s not real.

Gabriela’s one of five fictional characters I created in 2022 to monitor how different people, with different political views, are targeted by content on social media. She’s been part of an ongoing experiment for the BBC’s Americast podcast, investigating how social media algorithms may be influencing people’s vote.

With election day fast approaching, it’s the undecided and disillusioned voters who the two main presidential candidates are making last ditch attempts to win over. How is the battle unfolding over their different social media feeds?

While some of these “undercover voters”, as we call them, were created to represent a certain political point of view based on data from the Pew Research Centre, Gabriela began by essentially expressing no interest in politics at all on her social media feeds. But over the past two years her feeds have morphed as I’ve watched and followed the content she’s recommended.

How do you create an undercover voter? First, I made her profiles across the major social media sites – X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. I kept her account private, and, since she wasn’t political, had her follow and engage with content that had nothing to do with politics – coupon pages, dance videos, community groups and other Spanish-language content.

All five characters have private accounts, and no friends.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?

These social media profiles can’t offer an exhaustive view into what every voter is being pushed online, but they can offer an insight into the impact of social media sites this election.

Whenever she was recommended content on any of the platforms, I engaged with it – whether it was watching the latest TikTok dance or following a Facebook page about saving at the supermarket – to see what the algorithms would recommend to Gabriela next.

Soon, she was being recommended political content, too.

Now there’s a war raging inside her feeds between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris – and who appears to have the upper hand is different depending on which social media site she looks at.

Gabriela’s feed on X is dominated by stand-out moments from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, mainly from profiles that have purchased blue ticks on the site.

One popular meme, for example, featured four images from Trump’s campaign, from his mugshot to his recent photo-op riding in a garbage truck. Alongside the photos are maps of the US showing states switching to red for the Republicans.

“Seems accurate” reads the cation. The message was clear: Trump is making a comeback.

Content created and shared by Trump’s very active supporters on X rack up tens of millions of views. While there are also groups of accounts supporting Harris, they didn’t make it to Gabriela’s feed as often. Posts about Trump also tended to focus on him as a person – when policy was mentioned, it was usually about immigration or the economy.

A major change occurred at X after I set up Gabriela’s profile in August 2022: Elon Musk bought the social media company. Since his takeover of Twitter in October 2022, Mr Musk has made a number of changes – from renaming it X to offering a paid-for premium service.

There have also been changes to the algorithm, affecting what kinds of content gets the most traction.

Now, almost every time I open Gabriela’s feed on X, I see a post from Mr Musk himself close to the top. He repeatedly posts in support of Trump, and in recent days he’s re-shared some unfounded claims of election fraud. This is very different from what her feed looked like when she first created her account.

One recent post Mr Musk re-shared, which her profile was recommended, spread unfounded rumours about election officials in Colorado being possibly complicit in voter fraud.

The post Mr Musk re-shared referred to an employee error exposing passwords for some election equipment.

According to officials in the state, though, the “vote counting equipment requires two passwords to access, and those passwords are kept separately” which they say means “election system remains completely secure” following the error.

I spent time this summer with election officials in a centre where the votes are counted in Jefferson county, Colorado.

One IT worker called Cuong told me how since 2020, he and his colleagues have been repeatedly “targeted with harassment, accusations of us doing nefarious things”, triggered by unfounded allegations of – for example – hacked or broken voting machines.

Gabriela’s feed on TikTok, on the other hand, is frequently recommended montages of Kamala Harris, often speaking at rallies. These are created by supporters and similar to the kinds of posts users create to support their favourite celebrity or musician.

One reads “America is ready for Kamala Harris” from an account called Latinos for Harris.

The clips tend to focus on Harris as a person, rather than her policies – although several do reference the topic of abortion rights and the issue of personal freedom.

When a comedian at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage”, it sparked backlash from many in the Latino community.

Gabriela’s TikTok feed has featured some video clips of that moment, or commentary on that moment, frequently with Spanish captions taking offence to those comments.

The algorithm pushed content highly relevant to Gabriela’s identity as a Latina voter.

There’s some content from the official accounts belonging to both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’s campaigns on her feed too.

One campaign video shows Harris alongside Michelle Obama in front of an American flag declaring this election is “going to be close”, with 7.7 millions views.

Another shows Donald Trump dancing alongside popular streamer Adin Ross. That has 67.1 million views – showing how his content is having a huge reach, even if not so much on Gabriela’s feed.

While TikTok prohibits political ads, it’s not the same on YouTube, where Gabriela has been targeted by several about both of the main candidates. The paid-for ads she receives tend to focus on the economy. A video from Harris’s campaign team saying she will “cut taxes for 100 million working Americans”. Another advert from Trump’s team declares “there’s no time to waste! Make a plan, get to the polls & vote Trump”.

A lot of this content, whether ads or posts from the campaigns and supporters, seems focused on motivating people to actually go out and vote, rather than change their minds about a topic.

Like her TikTok feed, Gabriela’s YouTube leans towards partisan political content, opinions and campaign messages. But I’ve not seen the same kinds of posts pushing unsupported claims of voter fraud that I’ve spotted on Gabriela’s X feed. Her X feed has been overtaken by almost entirely political posts.

Her Instagram and Facebook accounts have remained fairly apolitical. Meta, which owns both of the social media companies, decided to stop recommending political content from accounts that users don’t already follow earlier this year.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: All you need to know about the vote
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: Vote weighs on minds of Ukraine’s frontline soldiers
• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

The biggest changes I’ve spotted on Gabriela’s social media feeds over the two years I’ve been running her profile have happened on X.

In recent weeks, Mr Musk has been very vocal about his support for Trump, which he’s entitled to do as a private citizen. He has also accused Twitter of old – as well as other social media sites – of suppressing right-wing view points. And he has previously said he believes X is a space for all political opinions.

But Gabriela’s feed shows how, at least to one originally neutral viewer, the site skewered in Trump’s favour – which appears to be in part because of changes to how the site works under Mr Musk’s tenure.

Last month, X also changed its rules so accounts can make money according to engagement from premium accounts – likes, shares and comments – rather than the ads that pop up under their posts.

I investigated how these changes helped some users make thousands of dollars, they say, from sharing content that included election misinformation, AI-generated images and unfounded conspiracy theories.

X’s user base is smaller than lots of other sites. But it is the home of politicians, activists and journalists and screengrabs from its site can migrate onto larger platforms.

Another significant but less extreme shift has occurred on Gabriela’s TikTok feed.

Before she didn’t see much about the Democrats, but after Joe Biden announced he was no longer running to be President her feed has been increasingly flooded with pro-Kamala Harris videos.

Because Gabriela isn’t real, it’s impossible to know how much she would react to any of these social media posts. Plenty of factors beyond the online world could shape her decision.

One thing’s for sure, though, my previously apolitical voter has not been able to avoid the deluge of politics – and algorithms on the sites, which appear to favour engagement over all else, are shaping the way that she receives politics through her feeds. Who and how she votes could depend on which social media site she trusts and relies on.

X did not respond to questions from the BBC. X says online that its priority is to protect and defend the user’s voice. All of the other major social media companies say they have policies and measures in place to protect users from disinformation and hate.

American actor James Van Der Beek says he was diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

The 47-year-old, known for starring in the TV series Dawson’s Creek and the film Varsity Blues, told People magazine about his diagnosis and treatment.

“I have colorectal cancer. I’ve been privately dealing with this diagnosis and have been taking steps to resolve it,” he told the outlet.

Van Der Beek says there is reason for “optimism” and that he is “feeling good”.

BBC News has reached out to a representative for the actor.

Colorectal cancer develops from growths in the colon’s inner lining and can spread if not treated, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

More men develop this form of cancer than women. Increased screenings have helped detect it early – lowering the number of people who die from colorectal cancer, the clinic notes.

Van Der Beek starred in multiple popular shows and films in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He played Dawson Leery in the hit TV show Dawson’s Creek, which ran from 1998 to 2003.

He also played a fictionalised version of himself in the cult television show Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, and he performed on the 28th US season of Dancing with the Stars.

Van Der Beek has continued working through his diagnosis.

He has two projects in production, including a Tubi original film called Sidelined: The QB and Me, which is due to come out later this month.

American voters go to the polls on 5 November to choose their next president.

US election results have sometimes been declared within hours of the polls closing, but this year’s tight contest could mean a longer wait.

In some presidential races the victor has been named late on election night, or early the next morning. This time, the knife-edge race in many states could mean media outlets wait longer before projecting who has won.

Democrat Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, and Republican Donald Trump, the former president, have been running neck-and-neck for weeks.

Narrow victories could also mean recounts. In the key swing state of Pennsylvania, for example, a state-wide recount would be required if there’s a half-percentage-point difference between the votes cast for the winner and loser. In 2020, the margin was just over 1.1 percentage points.

Legal challenges are also possible. More than 100 pre-election lawsuits have already been filed, including challenges to voter eligibility and voter roll management, by Republicans.

Other scenarios that could cause delays include any election-related disorder, particularly at polling locations.

On the other hand, vote-counting has sped up in some areas, including the crucial state of Michigan, and far fewer votes will be cast by mail than in the last election, which was during the Covid pandemic.

• Follow live: Final sprint across key states
• US election polls: Who is winning – Harris or Trump?

The 2020 election took place on Tuesday 3 November. However, US TV networks did not declare Joe Biden the winner until late morning on Saturday 7 November, after the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.

In other recent elections, voters have had a much shorter wait.

In 2016, when Trump won the presidency, he was declared the winner shortly before 03:00 EST (08:00 GMT) the day after the election.

In 2012, when Barack Obama secured a second term, his victory was projected before midnight on polling day itself.

However, the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore was a notable exception.

The vote was held on 7 November, but the two campaigns went to war over a tight contest in Florida and the race was not decided until 12 December. The US Supreme Court voted to end the state’s recount process, which kept Bush in place as winner and handed him the White House.

• Visual guide – Harris and Trump’s paths to victory
• The moment I decided on my vote

Across the country, the first polls will close at 18:00 EST (23:00 GMT) on Tuesday evening and the last polls will close at 01:00 EST (06:00 GMT) early on Wednesday.

But this race is expected to come down to results from seven swing states. These are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Polls close at different times in different regions. State-specific rules could prolong counting in some states, while other states may report partial figures moments after the last in-person vote is cast. Also, some absentee and mail-in ballots, including votes by members of the military and Americans living overseas, are normally among the last to be counted.

Georgia – Polls close in the Peach State at 19:00 EST (00:00 GMT). Early and mail-in ballots will be counted first, ahead of in-person votes. Georgia’s top election official estimates that about 75% of votes will be counted within the first two hours, with a full tally possible expected by later in the night.

North Carolina – Polls close thirty minutes after Georgia. North Carolina’s results are expected to be announced before the end of the night, however, complications may arise in areas that were hit by a hurricane in September.

Pennsylvania – Voting ends at 20:00 EST (01:00 GMT) in the Keystone State – the crown jewel of all the swing states in this election cycle. Like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania does not allow counting to begin until the morning of the election, leading to an expected delay in results. Experts agree that it may take at least 24 hours before enough votes are counted for a winner to emerge.

Michigan – Voting concludes at 21:00 EST (02:00 GMT) in the Wolverine State. Michigan allows officials to begin counting votes one week before election day, but they are not allowed to reveal the results until these polls shut. Michigan’s top election official has said that a result should not be expected until the “end of the day” on Wednesday.

Wisconsin – Results should come in shortly after polls close at 21:00 EST for smaller counties. However, it often takes longer for major populations centres to tabulate votes, leading experts to predict that the state won’t have a result until at least Wednesday.

Arizona – Initial results could come as early as 22:00 EST (03:00 GMT), however, they won’t paint a complete picture. The state’s largest county says not to expect results until early Wednesday morning. On top of that, postal ballots dropped off on election day could take up to 13 days to count, according to officials in Maricopa County, the largest district in the state.

Nevada – Votes here could also take days to count, because the state allows mail-in ballots to qualify as long as they were sent on election day and arrive no later than 9 November.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win the electoral college
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: How this election could change the world
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Typically, the votes cast on election day are tallied first, followed by early and mail ballots, those that have been challenged, and then overseas and military ballots.

Local election officials – sometimes appointed, sometimes elected – verify, process and count individual votes, in a process known as canvassing.

Verifying ballots includes comparing the number cast with the number of active voters; removing, unfolding and examining every single ballot for tears, stains or other damage; and documenting and investigating any inconsistencies.

Counting ballots involves feeding each one into electronic scanners that tabulate their results. Some circumstances require manual counts or double-checked tallies.

Every state and locality has rigorous rules about who can participate in the canvass, the order in which votes are processed and which parts are open to the public, including how partisan observers can monitor and intervene in vote-counting.

Once every valid vote has been included in the final results, a process known as the electoral college comes into play.

In each state a varying number of electoral college votes can be won, and it is securing these – and not just the backing of voters themselves – that ultimately wins the presidency.

• What is the US electoral college, and how does it work?
• How are votes counted in the US election?

Generally, states award all of their electoral college votes to whoever wins the popular vote and this is confirmed after meetings on 17 December.

The new US Congress then meets on 6 January to count the electoral college votes and confirm the new president.

After the 2020 election, Trump refused to concede and rallied supporters to march on the US Capitol as Congress was meeting to certify Biden’s victory.

He urged his Vice-President, Mike Pence, to reject the results – but Pence refused.

Even after the riot was cleared and members of Congress regrouped, 147 Republicans voted unsuccessfully to overturn Trump’s loss.

Electoral reforms since then have made it harder for lawmakers to object to certified results sent to them from individual states. They have also clarified that the vice-president has no power to unilaterally reject electoral votes.

Nevertheless, election watchers expect that efforts to delay certification of the 2024 vote could take place at the local and state level.

Trump, his running mate JD Vance and top Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have refused on several occasions to state unequivocally that they will accept the results if he loses.

The president-elect will begin their term in office after being inaugurated on Monday, 20 January 2025, in the grounds of the US Capitol complex.

It will be the 60th presidential inauguration in US history.

The event will see the new president sworn in on a pledge to uphold the Constitution and then deliver their inaugural address.

Voters in the US go to the polls on 5 November to elect their next president.

The election was initially a rematch of 2020 but it was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is – will America get its first woman president or a second Donald Trump term?

As election day approaches, we’ll be keeping track of the polls and seeing what effect the campaign has on the race for the White House.

• LIVE: Follow updates as election day nears
• All you need to know about election night
• When will we know who has won?

Harris has had a small lead over Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead – as shown in the chart below with the latest figures rounded to the nearest whole number.

Harris saw a bounce in her polling numbers in the first few weeks of her campaign, building a lead of nearly four percentage points towards the end of August.

The polls were relatively stable in September and early October but they have tightened in the last couple of weeks, as shown in the chart below, with trend lines showing the averages and dots for individual poll results for each candidate.

While national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the whole country, they’re not the best way to predict the election result.

That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.

• What is the electoral college?
• Path to 270: The states Harris and Trump need to win

Right now the leads in the swing states are so small that it’s impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages.

Polls are designed to broadly explain how the public feels about a candidate or an issue, not predict the result of an election by less than a percentage point so it’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the numbers below.

It’s also important to remember that the individual polls used to create these averages have a margin of error of around three to four percentage points, so either candidate could be doing better or worse than the numbers currently suggest.

If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does highlight some differences between the states.

In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has a small lead in all of them at the moment.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but the polls have tightened significantly and it is currently tied in Pennsylvania.

All three of those states had been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same then she will be on course to win the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, on the day that Biden quit the race he was trailing Trump by nearly five percentage points on average in the seven swing states.

In Pennsylvania, Biden was behind by nearly 4.5 percentage points when he dropped out, as the chart below shows. It is a key state for both campaigns as it has the highest number of electoral votes of the seven and therefore winning it makes it easier to reach the 270 votes needed.

The figures we have used in the graphics above are averages created by polling analysis website 538, which is part of American news network ABC News. To create them, 538 collects the data from individual polls carried out both nationally and in battleground states by lots of polling companies.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes polls from companies that meet certain criteria, like being transparent about how many people they polled, when the poll was carried out and how the poll was conducted (telephone calls, text message, online, etc).

You can read more about the 538 methodology here.

The polls have underestimated support for Trump in the last two elections and the national polling error in 2020 was the highest in 40 years according to a post-mortem by polling experts – so there’s good reason to be cautious about them going into this year’s election.

The polling miss in 2016 was put down to voters changing their minds in the final days of the campaign and because college-educated voters – who were more likely to support Hillary Clinton – had been over-represented in polling samples.

In 2020, the experts pointed to problems with getting Trump supporters to take part in polls, but said it was “impossible” to know exactly what had caused the polling error, especially as the election was held during a pandemic and had a record turnout.

Pollsters have made lots of changes since then and the polling industry “had one of its most successful election cycles in US history” in the 2022 midterm elections, according to analysts at 538.

But Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot in the midterms and we won’t know until after election day whether these changes can deal with the influx of irregular voters he tends to attract.

• Listen: How do election polls work?

• PATH TO 270: The states they need to win – and why
• IN PICS: Different lives of Harris and Trump
• SIMPLE GUIDE: How you can get most votes but lose
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• FACT-CHECK: What the numbers really say about crime
• Read more about: Kamala Harris | Donald Trump | US election

Eight people have gone on trial in Paris accused of encouraging the killer of Samuel Paty, the teacher who was beheaded on the street outside his school four years ago.

Abdoullakh Anzorov, the young man of Chechen origin who wielded the knife, is dead – shot by police in the minutes after his attack.

So the trial is less about the murder itself, and more about the circumstances that led to it.

Over seven weeks, the court will hear how a 13-year-old’s schoolgirl lie span out of control thanks to social media, triggering an international hate campaign, and inspiring a lone mission of vengeance from a self-styled defender of Islam.

On trial are two men accused of identifying Mr Paty as a “blasphemer” over the Internet, two friends of Anzorov who allegedly gave him logistical help, and four others who offered support on chatlines.

Mr Paty’s murder horrified – and petrified – France.

He was a conscientious and much-liked history teacher in a secondary school in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the prosperous western suburbs of Paris.

On 6 October 2020 he gave a lesson on freedom of speech – the same lesson he had given several times before – to a class of young teenagers.

Drawing on the tragically famous episode of Charlie Hebdo magazine – how publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad had led to the 2015 murder of most of its staff – he briefly showed an example of the cartoons.

Before doing so he recommended that those who feared being offended avert their eyes.

The next day one of his pupils – the 13-year-old girl – was asked by her father why she was not going to school.

She told him she had been disciplined because she dared to stand up to Mr Paty when he told Muslims to leave the class so he could show a naked picture of the prophet.

It was a triple lie.

Mr Paty had not told Muslims to leave the class. The girl had been disciplined, but not for the reason she said. She had not even been in the room on the day Mr Paty gave the lesson on freedom of speech.

But with the Internet to send it on its way, the lie spread… and spread.

First the girl’s father – Brahim Chnina – made her repeat the claim on videos, which he posted on Facebook, naming the teacher.

Then, a local Islamist – Abdelhakim Sefrioui – created a 10-minute online video entitled “Islam and the prophet insulted in a public college.”

Within a couple of days the school was inundated with threats and messages of hate from around the world. Paty told colleagues that he was living through a difficult time because of the campaign against him.

Meanwhile, the denunciation had reached the attention of an 18-year-old Chechen refugee living in Rouen, 80km (50 miles) to the west.

Anzorov made an initial note on his telephone that read: “A teacher has shown his class a picture of the messenger of Allah naked.”

Anzorov then sought the help of two friends, who are now on trial.

One of them was allegedly present when he bought a knife in a Rouen shop. The other helped him buy two replica pistols on 16 October, the day of the attack, and then drove him to the school.

The four last defendants – including one woman – are people with whom Anzorov conversed on Snapchat and Twitter and who allegedly offered him encouragement.

The defendants admit their connection to the case, but they contest the charges of “terrorist association” or “complicity to commit terrorist murder”.

Lawyers for the girl’s father and the Islamist preacher will argue that though they publicly condemned Mr Paty, they never called for his murder.

In a similar vein, lawyers for Anzorov’s friends – actual and online – will say they had no notion he planned a killing.

For the prosecution, context is key. Samuel Paty’s murder took place at a time of heightened awareness of the jihadist threat. In October 2020, Charlie Hebdo had just re-published some of the cartoons, to mark the start of a trial resulting from the original attack.

The internet was full of new Islamist threats against France, and in late September a Pakistani man had wounded two people with a machete at Charlie Hebdo’s former offices.

In that climate, publicly denouncing a man for blasphemy was tantamount to designating a terrorist target, prosecutors will argue.

A year ago the girl at the heart of the case was convicted in a minors’ court of making false accusations and given a suspended prison term.

Five other pupils were also convicted of identifying Mr Paty for Anzarov in return for money.

The trial is set to run until late December.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has criticised the “cowardly attempts to intimidate our diplomats” in a deepening diplomatic row with Canada.

Both countries expelled each other’s top envoys last month after Canadian officials accused India of being involved in violent acts targeting Indian dissidents on Canadian soil, something the country denies.

Modi’s comments came after violence broke out at a Hindu temple in the Canadian city of Brampton on Sunday, which he has called a “deliberate attack”.

“Such acts of violence will never weaken India’s resolve. We expect the Canadian government to ensure justice and uphold the rule of law,” he wrote on X.

Local police said three people have so far been arrested and charged over the incident in Brampton, near Toronto, but did not provide further details.

The force said “several acts of unlawfulness continue to be actively investigated” by its officers.

Unverified video posted online appeared to show people carrying yellow flags of the Khalistan movement – which demands a separate Sikh homeland in India – clashing with others holding Indian flags.

India’s foreign ministry said “extremists and separatists” were behind the violence, calling on the Canadian government to “ensure that all places of worship are protected from such attacks”.

The North America-based activist group Sikhs for Justice, meanwhile, described the incident as an “unprovoked violent attack on peaceful pro-Khalistan demonstrators”.

Justin Trudeau wrote on X that Sunday’s violence was “unacceptable”, adding that “every Canadian has the right to practice their faith freely and safely”.

Relations between India and Canada have soured since Ottawa accused the Indian government of being behind the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a naturalised Canadian citizen who is labelled a terrorist in India.

India has vehemently denied this and other allegations and maintained that Canada has provided no evidence to support its claims.

Mr Nijjar had been a vocal supporter of the Khalistan movement and publicly campaigned for it.

The rift between Canada and India has raised questions over the impact it could have on the deep trade and immigration ties between both countries.

Bilateral trade is worth billions of dollars, and Canada is home to nearly 1.7 million people of Indian origin.

Neither country has yet imposed tariffs or other economic forms of retaliation, but experts caution that this could change, and that a cooling relationship between India and Canada could hinder further economic growth.

Elon Musk’s political group can keep awarding $1m (£722,000) to voters in swing states, a judge has ruled.

The giveaway by Mr Musk’s America PAC is set to end on Tuesday, and the final recipient has already been determined, a lawyer for the billionaire said in a court hearing on Monday.

In a surprising turn, the lawyer revealed that people receiving the money have not been chosen randomly in a lottery-style contest, as many believed, but were selected by the group.

Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner had sued to stop what he called an “an illegal lottery” after Musk announced he would give the money to one voter in a swing state each day until Election Day.

Pennsylvania Judge Angelo Foglietta did not immediately give a reason for the ruling, made a few hours after the hearing, according to the Associated Press.

“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” the lawyer, Chris Gober, said during the hearing, according to the Associated Press. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”

Mr Gober told the court that America PAC has already determined the final recipient will be a voter from Michigan, US media reported.

On Monday, America PAC announced a man named Joshua in Arizona had been awarded the day’s sum.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, which Mr Musk owns, the group added: “Every day until Election Day, a person who signs will be selected to earn $1m as a spokesperson for America PAC.”

But when the world’s richest man unveiled the giveaway last month, many believed it was a random drawing for registered voters who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution.

“We are going to be awarding $1m randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election,” Musk told a campaign event.

A few days later, the US justice department warned that the group could be breaking election laws, which forbid paying people to register to vote. Krasner’s office sued to stop it.

Mr Musk has been aggressively campaigning for Republican White House candidate Donald Trump in swing states across the country, and his committee has been pushing hard in Pennsylvania, where polls suggest Trump is in a tie with his Democratic rival, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

A lawyer in Krasner’s office told Reuters that Mr Gober’s comments in court were “a complete admission of liability”.

During the hearing, prosecutors played a video where Mr Musk, who is also the chief executive of SpaceX, said that “all we ask” is that the winners serve as spokespeople for the group, Reuters reported.

But Chris Young, the director of America PAC, said in court that the recipients are screened and must have values aligned with the group, US media reported.

Those who receive the money sign non-disclosure agreements that block them from publicly discussing the terms of their contracts, according to Reuters.

Mr Musk did not attend Monday’s hearing.

Also on Monday, Joe Rogan released an episode of his podcast featuring a nearly three-hour interview with Mr Musk.

In a post promoting the podcast on X, he said he would be endorsing former President Donald Trump.

“He [Musk] makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way,” Rogan wrote.

Human rights activists have called on authorities in Iran to release a woman who was detained after removing her clothes at a university, in what they said was a protest against the compulsory hijab laws.

A video surfaced on social media on Saturday showing the woman in her underwear sitting on some steps and then walking calmly along a pavement at the Science and Research Branch of Islamic Azad University in Tehran.

In a second video, the woman appears to remove her underwear. Shortly afterwards, plainclothes agents are seen forcibly detaining her and pushing her into a car.

Azad University said the woman suffered from a “mental disorder” and had been taken to a “psychiatric hospital”.

Many Iranians on social media questioned the claim and portrayed her actions as part of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that has seen many women publicly defy the laws requiring them to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothing.

More than 500 people were reportedly killed during nationwide protests that erupted two years ago after a Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody after being detained for not wearing hijab “properly”.

The Amirkabir Newsletter Telegram channel – which describes itself as “Iranian student movement media” and was the first to publish the story – reported that the woman had an altercation with security agents over not wearing a headscarf, leading to her undressing during the scuffle.

It said the woman’s head hit the door or frame of the plainclothes agents’ car while she was being detained, causing it to bleed, and that she was taken to an undisclosed location.

Witness told BBC Persian that the woman entered their class at Azad University and began filming students. When the lecturer objected, she left, yelling, they said.

According to witnesses, the woman told the students: “I’ve come to save you.”

Iranian media meanwhile released a video of a man with his face blurred who claimed to be the woman’s ex-husband and asked the public not to share the video for the sake of her two children. BBC Persian has not been able to verify the man’s claims.

“When I protested against mandatory hijab, after security forces arrested me, my family was pressured to declare me mentally ill,” said Canada-based women’s rights activist Azam Jangravi, who fled Iran after being sentenced to three years in prison for removing her headscarf during a protest in 2018.

“My family didn’t do it, but many families under pressure do, thinking it’s the best way to protect their loved ones. This is how the Islamic Republic tries to discredit women, by questioning their mental health,” she added.

Amnesty International said Iran “must immediately and unconditionally release the university student who was violently arrested”.

“Pending her release, authorities must protect her from torture and other ill-treatment, and ensure access to family and lawyer. Allegations of beatings and sexual violence against her during arrest need independent and impartial investigations. Those responsible must held to account,” it added.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, Mai Sato, posted the footage on X and wrote that she would be “monitoring this incident closely, including the authorities’ response”.

Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is currently imprisoned in Iran, issued a statement saying she was gravely concerned about the case.

“Women pay the price for defiance, but we do not bow down to force,” she said.

“The student who protested at the university turned her body – long weaponized as a tool of repression – into a symbol of dissent. I call for her freedom and an end to the harassment of women.”

India recently announced a host of ambitious space projects and approved 227bn rupees ($2.7bn; £2.1bn) for them.

The plans include the next phase of India’s historic mission to the Moon, sending an orbiter to Venus, building of the first phase of the country’s maiden space station and development of a new reusable heavy-lifting rocket to launch satellites.

It’s the single largest allocation of funds ever for space projects in India, but considering the scale and complexity of the projects, they are far from lavish and have once again brought into focus the cost-effectiveness of India’s space programme.

Experts around the world have marvelled at how little Indian Space Research Organisation’s (Isro) Moon, Mars and solar missions have cost. India spent $74m on the Mars orbiter Mangalyaan and $75m on last year’s historic Chandrayaan-3 – less than the $100m spent on the sci-fi thriller Gravity.

Nasa’s Maven orbiter had cost $582m and Russia’s Luna-25, which crashed on to the Moon’s surface two days before Chandrayaan-3’s landing, had cost 12.6bn roubles ($133m).

Despite the low cost, scientists say India is punching much above its weight by aiming to do valuable work.

Chandrayaan-1 was the first to confirm the presence of water in lunar soil and Mangalyaan carried a payload to study methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Images and data sent by Chandrayaan-3 are being looked at with great interest by space enthusiasts around the world.

So how does India keep the costs so low?

Retired civil servant Sisir Kumar Das, who looked after Isro’s finances for more than two decades, says the frugality can be traced back to the 1960s, when scientists first pitched a space programme to the government.

India had gained independence from British colonial rule only in 1947 and the country was struggling to feed its population and build enough schools and hospitals.

“Isro’s founder and scientist Vikram Sarabhai had to convince the government that a space programme was not just a sophisticated luxury that had no place in a poor country like India. He explained that satellites could help India serve its citizens better,” Mr Das told the BBC.

• India makes historic landing near Moon’s south pole
• The year India reached the Moon – and aimed for the Sun

But India’s space programme has always had to work with a tight budget in a country with conflicting needs and demands. Photographs from the 1960s and 70s show scientists carrying rockets and satellites on cycles or even a bullock cart.

Decades later and after several successful interplanetary missions, Isro’s budget remains modest. This year, India’s budgetary allocation for its space programme is 130bn rupees ($1.55bn) – Nasa’s budget for the year is $25bn.

Mr Das says one of the main reasons why Isro’s missions are so cheap is the fact that all its technology is home-grown and machines are manufactured in India.

In 1974, after Delhi conducted its first nuclear test and the West imposed an embargo, banning transfer of technology to India, the restrictions were “turned into a blessing in disguise” for the space programme, he adds.

“Our scientists used it as an incentive to develop their own technology. All the equipment they needed was manufactured indigenously – and the salaries and cost of labour were decidedly less here than in the US or Europe.”

Science writer Pallava Bagla says that unlike Isro, Nasa outsources satellite manufacturing to private companies and also takes out insurance for its missions, which add to their costs.

“Also, unlike Nasa, India doesn’t do engineering models which are used for testing a project before the actual launch. We do only a single model and it’s meant to fly. It’s risky, there are chances of crash, but that’s the risk we take. And we are able to take it because it’s a government programme.”

Mylswamy Annadurai, chief of India’s first and second Moon missions and Mars mission, told the BBC that Isro employs far fewer people and pays lower salaries, which makes Indian projects competitive.

• India names astronauts for maiden space flight
• How important are India’s Moon mission findings?

He says he “led small dedicated teams of less than 10 and people often worked extended hours without any overtime payments” because they were so passionate about what they did.

The tight budget for the projects, he said, sometimes sent them back to the drawing board, allowed them to think out of the box and led to new innovations.

“For Chandrayaan-1, the allocated budget was $89m and that was okay for the original configuration. But subsequently, it was decided that the spacecraft would carry a Moon impact probe which meant an additional 35kg.”

Scientists had two choices – use a heavier rocket to carry the mission, but that would cost more, or remove some of the hardware to lighten the load.

“We chose the second option. We reduced the number of thrusters from 16 to eight and pressure tanks and batteries were reduced from two to one.”

Reducing the number of batteries, Mr Annadurai says, meant the launch had to take place before the end of 2008.

“That would give the spacecraft two years while it went around the Moon without encountering a long solar eclipse, which would impact its ability to recharge. So we had to maintain a strict work schedule to meet the launch deadline.”

Mangalyaan cost so little, Mr Annadurai says, “because we used most of the hardware we had already designed for Chandrayaan-2 after the second Moon mission got delayed”.

Mr Bagla says India’s space programme coming at such low cost is “an amazing feat”. But as India scales up, the cost could rise.

At the moment, he says, India uses small rocket launchers because they don’t have anything stronger. But that means India’s spacecraft take much longer to reach their destination.

• What has India’s Moon rover Pragyaan been up to since landing?
• India’s Sun mission reaches final destination

So, when Chandrayaan-3 was launched, it orbited the Earth several times before it was sling-shot into the lunar orbit, where it went around the Moon a few times before landing. On the other hand, Russia’s Luna-25 escaped the Earth’s gravity quickly riding a powerful Soyuz rocket.

“We used Mother Earth’s gravity to nudge us to the Moon. It took us weeks and a lot of resourceful planning. Isro has mastered this and done it successfully so many times.”

But, Mr Bagla says, India has announced plans to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2040 and it would need a more powerful rocket to fly the astronauts there quicker.

The government recently said work on this new rocket had already been approved and it would be ready by 2032. This Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV) will be able to carry more weight but also cost more.

Also, Mr Bagla says, India is in the process of opening up the space sector to private players and it’s unlikely that costs will remain so low once that happens.

Bangladesh is ramping up payments to Adani Power after the Indian conglomerate cut electricity supplies by half, reportedly over an unpaid $800m bill.

Two senior government officials told the BBC they are already processing partial payments to Adani, which supplies 10% of the electricity used by Bangladesh.

“We have addressed payment glitches and already issued a $170 million [£143m] letter of credit to Adani group,” a senior Bangladesh Power Development Board official told the BBC.

Adani supplies Bangladesh from its 1600 megawatt coal-fired plant in eastern India. The company hasn’t responded to BBC queries about cuts to its supply to Bangladesh, which suffers regular power shortages.

Officials say the company has threatened to suspend all supplies if the money owed to it is not cleared by 7 November. But the Bangladesh Power Development Board official said they did “not believe it would not come to a stage where full supplies are cut off”.

Bangladesh officials told the BBC they will make payments gradually and regularly and are confident of resolving the payment crisis.

“We are shocked and surprised that despite us ramping up payments, supplies have been cut. We are ready to repay and will make alternate arrangements, but will not let any power producer hold us hostage and blackmail us,” said Fouzul Kabir Khan, energy adviser to the interim government.

Bangladesh stepped up repayments from $35m in July, to $68m in September and $97m in October, he said.

The country is already suffering from increased power shortages in rural areas.

Bangladesh has been struggling to generate dollar revenues to pay for costly essential imports like electricity, coal and oil. Foreign currency reserves fell during months of student-led protests and political turmoil that ousted the Sheikh Hasina government in August.

The interim government which replaced her has sought an additional $3bn loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in addition to its existing $4.7bn bailout package.

Adani’s power deal with Bangladesh, signed in 2015, was one of the many under Sheikh Hasina, which the current interim government has called opaque. A national committee is now reassessing 11 previous deals, including the one with Adani, which has often been criticised as expensive.

Besides Adani Power, other Indian state-owned firms also sell power to Bangladesh, including NTPC Ltd and PTC India Ltd. Power Development Board officials confirmed that partial payments of money owed to other Indian power suppliers are also being made.

Bangladesh is restarting some of the gas-fired and oil-fired power plants to bridge the supply shortfall, although experts say it will increase the cost of power. With winter approaching, power demands on the grid is expected to ease as air conditioners are switched off.

“Other coal-fired plants are running at 50% capacity and the country is unable to buy enough coal owing to the dollar crisis, so it is important to continue readymade power supply from Adani. It is marginally more expensive than local producers but it is a crucial supply,” said Dr Ajaj Hossain, energy expert and a retired professor.

Bangladesh is planning to commission its first nuclear power plant in December to diversify its energy mix. Built with Russian assistance, it is costing $12.65bn, mostly financed by long-term Russian loans.

Razor wire. Thick black iron fencing. Metal detectors. Armed security guards. Bomb sweeps.

The security at this centre where workers count ballots mirrors what you might see at an airport – or even a prison. And, if needed, plans are in place to further bolster security to include drones, officers on horseback and police snipers on rooftops.

Maricopa County became the centre of election conspiracy theories during the 2020 presidential contest, after Donald Trump spread unfounded claims of voter fraud when he lost the state to Joe Biden by fewer than 11,000 votes.

Falsehoods went viral, armed protesters flooded the building where ballots were being tallied and a flurry of lawsuits and audits aimed to challenge the results.

The election’s aftermath transformed how officials here handle the typically mundane procedure of counting ballots and ushered in a new era of high security.

“We do treat this like a major event, like the Super Bowl,” Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner told the BBC.

The county, the fourth most populous in the US and home to about 60% of Arizona’s voters, has been planning for the election for more than a year, according to Skinner.

The sheriff’s department handles security at polling stations and the centre where ballots are counted. The deputies have now been trained in election laws, something most law enforcement wouldn’t be well-versed in.

“Our hope is that it doesn’t arise to a level of need for that,” he said when asked about beefed-up security measures like drones and snipers. “But we will be prepared to ensure that we meet the level of need, to ensure the safety and security of that building” and its employees.

The election process here in many ways echoes that in counties across the country. Ballots are cast in voting centres and then taken to a centre with new tabulation machines in Phoenix. If they’re mailed in, the ballots are inspected and signatures are verified. They’re counted in a meticulous process that includes two workers – from differing political parties – sorting them and examining for any errors.

The process is livestreamed 24 hours a day.

While much of this process remains the same, a lot else has shifted. Since the 2020 election, a new law passed making it easier to call a recount in the state. Previously, if a race was decided by the slim margin of 0.1% of votes cast, a recount would take place. That’s now been raised to 0.5%.

The tabulation centre is now bristling with security cameras, armed security and a double layer of fencing.

Thick canvas blankets one fence to keep prying eyes out. Officials say the canvas was an added measure to protect employees from being harassed and threatened outside the building.

“I think it is sad that we’re having to do these things,” said Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates.

Gates, a Republican who says he was diagnosed with PTSD after the election threats he received following the 2020 election, doesn’t plan to run for office again once this election is over because of the tensions.

“I do want people to understand that when they go to vote centres, these are not militarised zones,” he told the BBC. “You can feel safe to go there with your family, with your kids and participate in democracy.”

The county has invested millions since 2020. It’s not just security, either. They now have a 30-member communications team.

A big focus has been transparency – livestreaming hours of tests for tabulation machines, offering dozens of public tours of their buildings and enlisting staff to dispute online rumours and election conspiracies.

“We kind of flipped a switch,” assistant county manager Zach Schira told the BBC, explaining that after last time they decided, “OK, we’re going to communicate about every single part of this process, we’re going to debunk every single theory that is out there.”

It’s all led up to Tuesday’s election.

“We may be over prepared,” Sheriff Skinner said, “but I’d rather prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

Some Maricopa Republicans told the BBC they’ve tracked recent changes and said they felt there would be fewer problems this election cycle.

“They’ve made steps that I think will help,” said Garrett Ludwick, a 25-year-old attending a recent Scottsdale rally for Trump’s vice-presidential running mate JD Vance.

“More people are also aware of things now and I think there are going to be a lot of people watching everything like a hawk,” he said, wearing a Trump cap that read, “Make liberals cry”.

One Republican voter, Edward, told the BBC the 2020 cycle caused him to get more involved. He’s now signed up for two shifts at polling locations in Maricopa County on Tuesday.

“Going to a rally or being upset isn’t going to fix things,” he said. “I wanted to be part of the solution.”

Not all are convinced.

“I still think it was rigged,” said Maleesa Meyers, 55, who like some Republican voters said her distrust in the process is too deep-rooted to believe the election could be fair. “It’s very hard to trust anyone today.”

Results in Arizona often hinge on Maricopa County, giving the county an outsized role in the outcome. Officials here estimate it could take as long as 13 days to count all ballots – meaning the expected tight race in this swing state might not be called on election night.

“There’s a chance that in 2024, the whole world will be watching for what the result is in Maricopa County,” said Schira, the assistant county manager.

“Truly the world’s confidence in democracy could come down to this.”

Scientists believe they have found a quirky way to fight mosquito-spread diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and Zika – by turning male insects deaf so they struggle to mate and breed.

Mosquitoes have sex while flying in mid-air and the males rely on hearing to chase down a female, based on her attractive wingbeats.

The researchers did an experiment, altering a genetic pathway that male mosquitoes use for this hearing. The result – they made no physical contact with females, even after three days in the same cage.

Female mosquitoes are the ones that spread diseases to people, and so trying to prevent them having babies would help reduce overall numbers.

The team from the University of California, Irvine studied Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spread viruses to around 400 million people a year.

They closely observed the insects’ aerial mating habits – that can last between a few seconds to just under a minute – and then figured out how to disrupt it using genetics.

They targeted a protein called trpVa that appears to be essential for hearing.

In the mutated mosquitoes, neurons normally involved in detecting sound showed no response to the flight tones or wingbeats of potential mates.

The alluring noise fell on deaf ears.

In contrast, wild (non-mutant) males were quick to copulate, multiple times, and fertilised nearly all the females in their cage.

The researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who have published their work in the journal PNAS, said the effect of the gene knock-out was “absolute”, as mating by deaf males was entirely eliminated.

Dr Joerg Albert, from the University of Oldenburg in Germany, is an expert on mosquito mating and I asked him what he made of the research.

He said attacking sense of sound was a promising route for mosquito control, but it needed to be studied and managed.

“The study provides a first direct molecular test, which suggests that hearing is indeed not only important for mosquito reproduction but essential.

“Without the ability of males to hear – and acoustically chase – female mosquitoes might become extinct.”

Another method being explored is releasing sterile males in areas where there are pockets of mosquito-spread diseases, he added.

Although mosquitoes can carry diseases, they are an important part of the food chain – as nourishment for fish, birds, bats and frogs, for example – and some are important pollinators.