Hopes – on both sides – that there could have been some kind of decisive last-minute movement of voter preferences one way or the other appear to be unfounded.

Polls are closed across many of the East Coast battleground states, and votes are being tabulated at a rapid clip. An early picture of this historic presidential race is beginning to come into view.

While the final outcome is still in doubt, it appears increasingly likely that America is in for another nail-biter of an election.

• Follow live election night updates
• Full results: Check the count state by state
• When will we know who has won?

In Georgia and North Carolina – states that Donald Trump all but has to win – the former president is doing even better in the traditional rural areas than he did in 2020. Kamala Harris is matching Joe Biden’s totals in the urban and suburban counties, but so far she has not made a marked improvement.

While these vote margins could shift, narrow Trump victories in Georgia and North Carolina would mean all eyes once again turn to the Democratic “Blue Wall” states along the Great Lakes. The scenario where Harris delivers a knock-out punch on election night would fail to materialise.

At that point, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania become her best – perhaps only – path to the White House. And in Pennsylvania, the final results might not be known for days.

We’ve also got another batch of exit poll data, shedding light on the divide between men and women in this election.

Not surprisingly, a majority of women are backing Kamala Harris, while men are giving their support to Donald Trump.

What is a bit surprising, at least according to these findings, is that the 54% of women voting for Harris doesn’t match the 57% that backed Joe Biden in 2020.

All that talk of a historic political divide between the two genders may have been premature.

Exit poll results often shift as the hours tick by and should be seen as general guide and not a detailed map, but if Democrats have lost ground with women voters compared to four years ago, it would be extremely concerning for the Harris camp.

One thing is clear at this point, however. Turnout in this election is once again approaching the highest level in modern American history. It may even eclipse the 65.9% mark set in 2020.

Both Trump and Harris have repeatedly said that the stakes in this election are high. The American public seems to have heeded that call.

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

IN FULL: All our election coverage in one place

Democracy and the economy were the most important issues for voters in the US elections this year, early results from exit polls suggest.

More than a third of people identified democracy as their top concern, out of the five options given.

The economy was the next choice, followed by abortion, immigration and foreign policy. This early data could change as it is updated with new information over the course of the night.

The economy has previously ranked top of the list of issues motivating voters in every presidential election since 2008. It remains within the margin of error for being a top issue.

The portrait emerging from the exit poll showed sharp divisions between the two parties when it came to priorities, similar to findings in polls conducted before the election.

Among Harris supporters, about six in 10 said the state of democracy was their deciding issue, compared to just one in ten of those backing Trump.

By comparison, half of Trump supporters identified the economy as the most important issue, compared to just one in ten of those backing Harris.

But both sides conveyed concern about America’s democracy, with nearly three quarters of those asked said they felt democracy was “very” or “somewhat” threatened, including similar percentages among both parties.

And about seven in 10 voters in this current data were worried about violence related to the results of the election, including majorities of both Trump and Harris supporters.

The BBC’s US broadcast partner CBS says this is the first time in its history – going back to the 1970s – that the exit poll has asked voters about the prospect of violence as it relates specifically to a US presidential election.

Seven in 10 voters were confident that the election was being conducted fairly and accurately.

That sentiment, however, was split on voting lines with Harris supporters much more confident, while Trump supporters were equally divided.

Voters for the two presidential candidates also were divided about how they felt about their financial situation, according to the early exit poll data.

About three quarters of those asked who voted for Donald Trump said they and their families were worse off today than in 2020 and fewer than one in 10 said they were better off.

Among those who said they voted for Kamala Harris, four in 10 said they were doing better.

There was a split in how each candidate’s supporters felt they’d been affected by inflation too.

A third of Donald Trump’s voters in the exit poll data said it had caused them and their families “severe” hardship, compared with about one in 10 of those who voted for Kamala Harris.

Across all voters, two-thirds said the state of the national economy was “not so good” or “poor”, but this was much more likely among Trump voters.

Votes are being counted across America, with some states already projected as wins for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris while others are still seeing queues of voters waiting to cast their ballots.

All eyes are currently on the key swing state of Georgia, where votes are being counted quickly and more than four million residents cast early ballots.

US election results are declared state-by-state and the BBC is keeping you updated with a running tally as we go.

The first polls closed at 18:00 EST (23:00 GMT) on Tuesday evening. The last will close at 01:00 EST (06:00 GMT) early on Wednesday.

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 complicate how quickly media outlets project a winner.

But we are starting to get some projected results from states with the most predictable voting patterns.

Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris 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 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.

• Follow live election updates
• How to follow the US election on the BBC
• US election polls: Who is winning – Harris or Trump?
• A really simple guide to the presidential vote

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

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

The race is expected to come down to results from seven swing states, which experts believe Harris and Trump both have a realistic chance of winning.

Turnout has been high in early voting, both in-person and by mail, with records broken in Georgia.

Georgia – Polls closed in the Peach State at 19:00 EST (00:00 GMT). Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger estimates a majority of votes will be counted within an hour of poll closures.

North Carolina – Polls closed 30 minutes after Georgia. North Carolina’s results are expected to be announced before the end of the night.

Pennsylvania – Voting ended at 20:00 EST (01:00 GMT) but experts agree 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). A result is not expected until the end of Wednesday.

Wisconsin – Results should come in shortly after polls close at 21:00 EST for smaller counties but experts predict 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) but the state’s largest county says not to expect results until early Wednesday morning. Postal ballots dropped off on election day could take up to 13 days to count.

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

In such a tight race, early vote results may not be the best indication of who will eventually win.

In 2020, Trump was leading in some key states on election night but Biden overtook him as mail ballots, heavily favoured by Democrats at the time, were counted.

Though election experts warned beforehand of such a phenomenon, Trump seized upon it to amplify his unfounded claims that the election was stolen.

There could be another so-called “red mirage” this year – or perhaps a “blue mirage” that initially favours Harris but then shifts toward Trump.

More than 83 million Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida Election Lab’s nationwide early vote tracker. Women make up 54% of that tally, which could be a good sign for Harris.

But while early voting has typically favoured Democrats, registered Republicans have cast nearly as many early votes this time around.

In the 2020 election, US TV networks did not declare Joe Biden the winner until four days after election day, when the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.

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

In 2016, Trump was declared the winner shortly before 03:00 EST (08:00 GMT) a few hours after polls closed.

In 2012, when Barack Obama secured a second term, his victory was projected before midnight the same evening of election day.

However, the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore was a notable exception. The race was not decided for five weeks, when the US Supreme Court voted to end Florida’s recount. That kept Bush in place as winner and handed him 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.

• When does vote counting begin and how long will it take?
• Visual guide – Harris and Trump’s paths to victory
• The moment I decided on my vote

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.

• 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
• IN FULL: All our election coverage in one place

It is possible that the two candidates could end up in a tie because they have the same number of electoral college votes – 269 each.

In that situation, members of the House of Representatives – the lower chamber of the US Congress – would vote to choose the president in a process known as a contingent election.

Meanwhile the Senate – the upper chamber – would vote for the vice-president.

But that hasn’t happened for about 200 years.

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.

Are you in the US? Get in touch

Investors around the world are closely watching the US election for clues on who will become the next president of the world’s biggest economy.

Benchmark stock indexes across Asia were mostly higher on Wednesday morning, while the US dollar was up.

The result of the election is expected to have a major impact on the global economy, especially Asia.

It is uncertain whether the result of the election will be known during Asian trading hours, as counts in swing states could take days to be completed.

In Japan, the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock index was up by 2.25%, while Australia’s ASX 200 was about 1% higher.

However, indexes in mainland China and Hong Kong were lower, with the Shanghai Composite Index was down by 0.3% and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong was down by around 3%.

Futures trading on the major US stock indexes was pointing sharply higher. That came after the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all closed more than 1% higher.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, jumped to a record high of more than $75,000 (£58,145).

“We could yet see some fluctuations across markets today though, particularly by assets which could be affected most by the outcome, with the US dollar and Chinese stocks being prime examples,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at investment firm KCM Trade.

The US dollar was up by more than 1% against a basket of other major currencies, including the euro, pound and the Japanese yen.

Donald Trump has said he would dramatically increase trade tariffs, especially on China, if he became the next US president.

“Trump’s global trade policies are causing particular angst in Asia, given the strong protectionist platform on which more aggressive tariffs on imports into the US have been pledged,” said Katrina Ell, director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics.

The former president’s more isolationist stance on foreign policy has also raised questions about his willingness to defend Taiwan against potential aggression from China.

The self-ruling island is a major producer of computer chips, which are crucial to the technology that drives the global economy.

Meanwhile, Trump’s tax-cutting agenda has also been broadly welcomed by big American companies.

If Kamala Harris wins investors expect her trade and foreign policies to be a continuation of Joe Biden’s more predicable approach.

“Harris’ platform largely assumes the status quo regarding global trade flows and tariffs,” said Ms Ell.

A potential Harris administration is also seen as more likely to tighten regulations on industries like banking and healthcare.

The Democratic party’s renewable energy policies could also boost electric vehicle companies and solar firms.

Investors also have other key issues to focus on this week.

On Thursday, the US Federal Reserve is due to announce its latest decision on interest rates.

Comments from the head of the central bank, Jerome Powell, will be watched closely around the world.

On Friday, top Chinese officials are expected to unveil more details about Beijing’s plans to tackle the slowdown of the world’s second largest economy.

Republicans have struck an early victory in the race to control Congress, with a formerly Democratic-aligned seat in West Virginia won by the state’s current governor, Jim Justice.

In addition to the presidency, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 seats in the Senate are up for grabs on election day.

Republicans currently hold a majority in the House. The projected win by Justice takes the Senate to a 50-50 split. Results in other seats are pending, however.

The party that wins a majority on either side of Capitol Hill will have greater leverage to enact its own agenda, regardless of who is in the White House.

• Election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?
• The key races for control of Congress as the US votes
• A waitress, a mechanic and a Nascar driver running for US Congress

One party in control of the House, Senate and the White House would have broad power to pass laws and enact the president’s partisan agenda.

The Senate seat in West Virginia flipped Republican, after the retirement of the former Democrat Joe Manchin, who frequently clashed with members of his own party before turning independent.

The winner, Justice, had himself been a Democrat before switching parties to Republican at a Trump rally in 2017.

Republicans were also projected to retain control of a Senate seat in Florida.

Incumbent Rick Scott, also a former governor, was first elected six years ago. He was running against former Miami-area Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who migrated from Ecuador as a child.

Speaking at a victory rally, Scott predicted that Republicans would seize the majority in the Senate, and that he would be selected as Senate Majority Leader.

“Florida is the centre of the Republican party of this country,” he told the crowd. “Washington can learn a hell of a lot from what we’ve done right here in this great state.”

Democrats held a seat in Delaware, a state that President Joe Biden represented as a senator for 36 years, with a victory for fourth-term Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester.

In Maryland, the Democrats retained a seat vacated by Ben Cardin, with Angela Alsobrooks beating the popular Republican Governor Larry Hogan.

They will become the first black female senators to represent their respective states.

Other contests that would swing control of the upper chamber of Congress are taking place in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Montana, Michigan, Nevada, Nebraska, Texas and Wisconsin.

Both parties are also vying for control of the House, although the balance of power there will not be known for several days.

The vast majority of House elections are happening in “safe districts” – regions where one party is nearly certain to win. But a handful of other races in swing districts could determine who controls Washington DC.

House races that could swing the balance are taking place a wide variety of states, with closely watched elections happening in California, New York, Washington, Maine and Alaska.

• 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.

A closely watched proposal to restore abortion rights in Florida is on track for defeat, in a significant blow to efforts to expand local protections for the procedure.

The ballot initiative would have allowed abortion until the point of foetal viability or about 24 weeks, but had to meet a threshold of 60% support in order to pass.

Florida was one of 10 states this election where voters were asked to weigh in on abortion rights measures.

The state-level fights come two years after a US Supreme Court ruling that struck down the national right to abortion, prompting many states to introduce bans or severe restrictions on the practice.

With 87% of the vote reported, the Florida amendment was projected to win support from 57% of voters, according to Reuters.

Campaigners in Florida had promoted the amendment as a way to override the strict law that came into force earlier this year, which banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, with limited exceptions.

In previous elections, initiatives to expand abortion rights have met with success, including in reliably conservative states such as Kansas, and have been credited with helping to mobilise Democratic voters and put pressure on even some Republican politicians to moderate their stance on the issue.

But none of the other contests had to meet such a high bar of support.

The proposed amendment was also vociferously opposed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who marshalled state resources to persuade voters to vote “no”.

Florida voter Betsy Linkhorst, who was casting her first vote in this election, said the result left her “heartbroken, scared and frankly, worried for the future”.

“This was such an important opportunity to protect women’s rights and our ability to make decisions over our own bodies,” the 18-year-old said.

“The setback feels devastating, and I’m saddened to think of the impact this will have on so many women across the state.”

Abortion is also on the ballot in states such as Missouri, South Dakota and Arizona, which have laws that bar or curtail access to the procedure.

Most of the initiatives would allow abortion until foetal viability, which is generally considered about 24 weeks, or later only in instances when the health of the pregnant woman is at risk.

Since the 2022 decision to strike down Roe v Wade, 22 states have tightened abortion laws, including 13 where the procedure is banned completely. Others, like Florida, have sharply curtailed access, barring access to abortion after six weeks.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win the electoral college
• RESULTS: When will we know who has won?
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: How this election could change the world
• BBC COVERAGE: How to follow the US election on the BBC

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 – including one from Donald Trump – 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.

Trump has posted on his social media platform, Truth Social saying “law enforcement coming” to Philadelphia because of “massive cheating” there.

He did not provide details of the alleged cheating or any evidence.

The Philadelphia Police Department told BBC Verify that they were not aware of what Trump was referring to.

Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is a Democrat, posted on X saying: “There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation.”

Seth Bluestein, the Republican City Commissioner in Philadelphia, also posted on X saying: “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation. It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure.“

Multiple posts on X have suggested that power outages reported in Pennsylvania earlier today were linked to election interference.

Some of these posts have focused on outages in Northampton County in particular.

One post, which has a quarter of a million views, claimed “they are shutting down the power in Pennsylvania” alongside a power outage map of the county.

According to a power outage tracking website, Northampton County is served by two electricity providers: FirstEnergy and PPL Electric Utilities.

Todd Meyers, spokesperson for FirstEnergy, told BBC Verify that eight polling locations in the county had been affected by outages today, which were caused by an electrical fault.

“All polling locations had their power restored within 10 minutes and all had battery backup for voting machines and voters were not impacted”, Mr Meyers said.

BBC Verify also contacted PPL Electric Utilities for comment.

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

The image was originally posted online a few days ago but it has been circulating again on election day.

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.

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!”

• Pennsylvania officials reject viral claim about illegal voters

• Whirlwind of misinformation sows distrust ahead of US election day

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?

After all the drama of a campaign like no other, US election day is here. It’s been an ultra-close race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and more twists and turns are guaranteed after polls close on 5 November.

So settle in, and buckle up. Our election night guide includes the key things to watch out for as we wait to get a result – however long that wait proves to be. Timings below are given in GMT first and then in US Eastern time (EST).

After months of second-guessing what the American public will decide, at 17:00 EST (22:00 GMT) we got an early glimpse into their thoughts and motivations, with early exit poll data suggesting democracy and the economy are the most important issues for voters.

American exit polls work differently to those in the UK. Rather than predicting the result, they give an insight into people’s priorities and opinions  – and later, into how different demographic groups voted. Pollsters combine election day interviews with telephone polling both nationally and in the seven swing states.

Throughout the night, expect experts to talk a lot about these states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In most states the outcome of the presidential vote is all but certain but voting in swing states is hard to predict and can lean Republican (red) or Democrat (blue). Both campaigns have been heavily targeting voters in these battleground areas that could hold the keys to the White House.

• How to follow election night on the BBC
• Latest updates from polling day
• Americans anxious as two nations collide
• What will decide election and why it’s so close

By 00:00 GMT (19:00 EST), polls will be closing in Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia, but these are not swing states, so the results will be predictable.

But voting will also close in the first swing state of the night, Georgia. Victory for either candidate could give a strong hint at which way the election could go.

Georgia was only narrowly won by Joe Biden last time. It also became the subject of false claims by Trump, who is accused of criminally conspiring to overturn his 2020 defeat.

The candidate with more votes than any other in Georgia will get 16 crucial votes out of 538 under the electoral college system.

• What is the electoral college, and how does it work?
• Seven swing states set to decide the election

Harris and Trump both want to gain a majority of 270 electoral college votes to win the White House. That matters more than the “popular vote” or the nationwide support they receive.

Soon afterwards, at 00:30 GMT (19:30 EST), polls close in three more states including in North Carolina.

Away from the presidential contest, there’s been huge interest in the state governor contest that pits state Attorney General Josh Stein against Trump-backed candidate Mark Robinson, whose campaign has been hit by scandals.

Polls close at the same time in Ohio, where Trump’s running mate JD Vance is a senator. Meanwhile, the two campaigns will be gathering at their headquarters for the evening – which we know will be in West Palm Beach, Florida, in Trump’s case. Harris is expected to spend some of the night at Howard University in Washington DC, where she was once a student.

At this point, some states might start to be “called” by US media outlets. They use models to project, or call, which way a state has voted, even before the full vote count has been completed.

This happens when they believe a candidate has gained a lead that cannot be beaten by their opponent. In some closely-fought swing states, this could take a long time.

The models the media outlets use draw on a variety of data, such as exit polls and actual votes counted by officials. The BBC gets this data from a firm named Edison Research.

At 01:00 GMT (20:00 EST), more polls close – including in critical Pennsylvania, the biggest prize of the 2024 swing states with 19 electoral votes. This is where Trump survived an attempt on his life when a gunman opened fire at his rally, killing one person.

It’s also a state that’s part of the Rust Belt – areas once dominated by manufacturing that have experienced industrial decline in recent decades. Here, a handful of counties, like Erie and Northampton, could end up making a difference.

Around now, at 01:30 GMT (20:30 EST), we expect to get more exit poll data – including a national breakdown of voting by age, race, and level of college education. This is provisional data that’s refined over a period of weeks.

• What makes Pennsylvania the biggest prize on the electoral map

Polls close at 02:00 GMT (21:00 EST) in more closely-watched battleground states including Michigan and Wisconsin. Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the US, for many of whom the Israel-Gaza war is an important electoral issue. The state was won by Biden last time, as was Wisconsin, which this year hosted the Republican National Convention.

Polls also shut in Arizona – a focal point for the nation’s immigration debate – followed by Nevada, where both parties have tried to appeal to working-class voters by vowing to end taxes on tips, an hour later.

At 04:00 GMT (23:00 EST), polls close across the remaining states that adjoin each other on the US mainland. The last two states close slightly later – Hawaii at 05:00 GMT (00:00 EST) and Alaska at 06:00 GMT on Wednesday (01:00 EST).

Traditionally, it was soon after the close of voting at 23:00 EST in California that the race as a whole was called for one candidate or the other. A concession speech from the losing candidate followed not long later.

But few observers are expecting a speedy resolution this year, with some suggesting it could take days, rather than hours, to know the victor.

In recent elections, an increased number of postal votes has tended to delay the process. Tens of millions of people have also voted early, ahead of polling day. And different states have different rules on when they start tallying them.

Early tallies may also be deceptive. A candidate who takes an early lead through in-person votes may end up being overtaken when postal votes and other types of ballots are added later. This happened in Michigan in 2020. Trump took an early lead through in-person votes but was later overtaken by Biden.

• When will we know who’s won?

Despite so much focus on the presidency, voters will also be choosing new members of Congress, who pass laws and initiate spending plans. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election. In the Senate, where members vote on key appointments in government, 34 seats are being contested.

Republicans currently control the House, while Democrats have the Senate.

These two chambers can act as a check on White House plans if the controlling party in either chamber disagrees with the president.

Voters in Montana, Arizona, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New York and South Dakota will also be asked how their state should regulate abortion, which has become one of the election’s most emotive issues.

• A waitress, a mechanic and a Nascar driver running for Congress
• The 10 US states with abortion questions on the ballot

If you’re still up, well done for making it this far, but there’s a chance we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out who has won. The tighter the race, the more vote-counting that will need to happen before a winner can be projected in any given place – and there is always the possibility of recounts. The full nationwide count usually takes days or weeks.

To give you a flavour – in 2020, the result in Pennsylvania and Nevada was projected four days after election day, and in Arizona, after more than a week by most outlets.

A very close contest could feel like a repeat of 2020. Or 2024 could be comparable to the 2000 presidential race between George W Bush and Al Gore, which was disputed and ultimately settled in the US Supreme Court, with Bush certified as the winner.

The neck-and-neck vote predicted by the polls and pundits in 2024 could potentially leave the door open to legal challenges by either side.

That would make the night only the beginning of the drama – rather than the final word on the 2024 election.

• 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
• IN FULL: All our election coverage in one place

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.

BBC News is on hand with a wealth of coverage throughout the US election night and beyond.

The latest news, analysis and results will be available from 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) on Tuesday, 5 November, across all platforms and whether you are in the UK or overseas.

Around the world, you’ll be able to follow all the developments in the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on the BBC News website and app.

A round-the-clock live page with a live stream is at the heart of our offer. It will feature the expertise of our North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher, and input from BBC News reporters stationed in battleground states around the US.

Readers in the UK can sign up here for Anthony’s US Election Unspun newsletter, and readers outside the UK can sign up here.

Make sure also to keep checking our 2024 US election page, which is being continually updated with detailed analysis and explainers of the latest events.

• Follow live election updates
• When will we know the election winner?
• Staying up? Here’s what to expect overnight

Special programming from Washington gets under way on the BBC News Channel at 22:40 GMT (17:40 EST), before the first polls close on the US east coast. Viewers in the UK will also be able to watch on BBC One, or on BBC iPlayer.

The programme will be anchored by Caitríona Perry and Sumi Somaskanda – who’ll be joined by US special correspondent Katty Kay and others. You’ll also hear from North America editor Sarah Smith and senior North America correspondent Gary O’Donoghue.

BBC correspondents around the world will also have their say on events – and the BBC Verify team are on hand to fact-check claims that emerge during the night.

UK viewers will see BBC Breakfast presenter Jon Kay join the Washington results broadcast at 06:00 GMT (01:00 EST). Special programming continues until 10:00 GMT (05:00 EST) on Wednesday.

Special coverage from Washington starts at 22:00 GMT (17:00 EST) with Ros Atkins and Nuala McGovern.

Listeners in the UK will be able to tune in on BBC Radio 4 or BBC Radio 5 Live. Listeners outside the UK can hear the same broadcast on the BBC World Service.

At 06:00 GMT (01:00 EDT), UK listeners can choose between the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, presented by Justin Webb from Washington, or Breakfast on BBC Radio 5 Live. World Service listeners will hear Newsday at that time.

On BBC Sounds, global audiences can listen to continuous live coverage as the results come through, and in the days beyond, with the Live News Stream. Go to the live dial at the top of the BBC Sounds homepage and tap on Live News.

Our flagship US news podcast Americast will record special episodes, not just analysing events as they unfold throughout the night, but also in the days after.

The Global News Podcast will release a special bonus episode as the results are called in. And the Global Story will tell the story of the night, follow the results and what they mean for the world. Find all the US news and politics podcasts in the BBC Sounds US Election collection.

BBC reporters will be following the race as it plays out in key swing state locations. As well as Washington DC, where Harris will be overnight, our teams will be reporting from in and around:

• Phoenix, Arizona
• West Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump will be overnight
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan
• Las Vegas, Nevada
• Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina
• Cincinnati, Ohio
• Philadelphia and Allentown, Pennsylvania
• Waukesha, Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin
• Los Angeles, California

The BBC has two trusted partners that provide results – Reuters news agency and our US news partner CBS.

When we bring you a result, we call it a “projection”. That’s because our partners analyse incoming results data, and when they are confident that one candidate has an unbeatable lead in a particular race, they project the winner.

That projection is not the official result – but it nearly always proves to be correct when all the votes are eventually counted.

The final result comes when states certify the results – often days or weeks after election day.

You can read more about that process here.

• 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?

Protests have erupted in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired the country’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Netanyahu said a “crisis of trust” between the two leaders led to his decision, adding that his trust in Gallant had “eroded” in recent months and Foreign Minister Israel Katz would step in to replace him.

Gallant said his removal was due to disagreement on three issues, including his belief that it is possible to get the remaining hostages back from Gaza if Israel makes “painful concessions” which it “can bear”.

Many protesters on the streets were calling for Netanyahu to resign, and demanding the new defence minister prioritise a hostage deal.

Netanyahu and Gallant have long had a divisive working relationship. During the past year, there have been reports of shouting matches between the two men over Israel’s war strategy.

The former defence minister has also been unhappy at plans to continue to allow Israel’s Ultra Orthodox citizens to be exempt from serving in the military.

Months before the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Netanyahu had fired Gallant over political differences, before reinstating him following major public outcry.

But on Tuesday Netanyahu said: “In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the minister of defence”.

He said although there had been trust and “fruitful work” in the first months of the war, “during the last months this trust cracked”.

Netanyahu added that “significant gaps were discovered between me and Gallant in the management of the campaign”.

These were “accompanied by statements and actions that contradict the decisions of the government,” he added.

Following the news, Gallant posted on social media that the “security of the state of Israel was and will always remain the mission of my life”.

He later released a full statement on Tuesday night saying his removal from office had been “the result of disagreement on three issues”.

He believed there should be no exceptions for military service, that a national inquiry was needed to learn lessons, and the hostages should be brought back as soon as possible.

In reference to the hostages, he said: “I determine that it is possible to achieve this goal. It requires painful concessions, which the state of Israel can carry and the IDF can bear.”

One of those protesting following the announcement, Yair Amit, said Netanyahu is endangering the whole country and called on the prime minister to “step down from his office and to let serious people lead Israel”.

Some protesters lit fires on the Ayalon Highway and blocked traffic in both directions, according to Israeli media.

A group representing the families of people taken hostage by Hamas in its 7 October attack also condemned Netanyahu’s dismissal of Gallant, calling it a continuation of efforts to “torpedo” a release deal.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called on the incoming defence minister to “express an explicit commitment to the end of the war and to carry out a comprehensive deal for the immediate return of all the abductees”.

Around 100 hostages out of 251 taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023 remain unaccounted for more than a year into the war.

His replacement Katz is seen as even more hawkish in terms of military strategy.

Another Netanyahu ally, Gideon Sa’ar – who previously held no cabinet portfolio- will become the new foreign minister.

Gallant’s removal will come into effect in 48 hours. The appointment of the new ministers requires the approval of the government and then the Knesset.

Netanyahu first fired Gallant in March 2023 following their disagreement over controversial plans to overhaul the justice system.

But he was forced to retract the sacking following massive public protests in several cities in Israel – an event that became known as “Gallant Night.”

In May this year, Gallant voiced open frustration at the government’s failure to address the question of a post-war plan for Gaza. Gallant wanted Netanyahu to declare publicly that Israel has no plans to take over civilian and military rule in Gaza.

It was a rare public sign of divisions within Israel’s war cabinet over the direction of the military campaign.

“Since October, I have been raising this issue consistently in the cabinet,” Gallant said, “and have received no response”.

Netanyahu responded by saying that he was “not ready to exchange Hamastan for Fatahstan,” in reference to rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah.

Responding to Gallant’s removal on Tuesday night, members of Israel’s political opposition parties called for protests from the public.

Gallant’s dismissal also takes place on the day of the presidential election in the US- Israel’s key backer in its war in Gaza – a timing noted by several Israeli media outlets.

Gallant was viewed as having a much better relationship with the White House than Netanyahu.

A representative for the White House’s National Security Council said on Tuesday: “Minister Gallant has been an important partner on all matters related to the defence of Israel. As close partners, we will continue to work collaboratively with Israel’s next minister of defence.”

Observers note that Gallant’s removal also comes at a time where Netanyahu is under pressure by far-right politicians to pass a bill which would have continued to allow Israel’s ultra-Orthodox citizens to be exempt from serving in the military. Gallant had been a high-profile opponent of the bill.

At the wheel of an ambulance, Samir El Chekieh drives with sirens wailing to the latest Israeli air strike in El Karak in the Bekaa Valley, eastern Lebanon.

The 32-year-old firefighter and paramedic with the Lebanese Civil Defense Force (CDF) only got a few hours’ sleep last night. It is now the middle of the afternoon and he still hasn’t had breakfast.

Since the escalation of the war between Israel and the Shia Muslim Hezbollah, the men and women of the CDF see little rest, and brace themselves for a mass casualty incident every day.

This article contains graphic descriptions

It is starkly different from the last war with Israel in 2006, Samir says. “We didn’t have those kind of air strikes. Recently, a fire station was hit, and a church in the south, and our humanitarian colleagues have been killed.”

CDF workers say civilians, including women and children, are increasingly among the dead and injured when they attend a call out.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah is spreading deeper and wider across Lebanon.

An intense bombing campaign has broadened far beyond the country’s southern border villages and the capital Beirut, to towns in the fertile Bekaa and the historic city of Baalbek, principally Shia areas, where Hezbollah was founded. The port cities of Sidon and Tyre have also seen an increase in attacks.

Israel says it is only targeting Hezbollah fighters, weapons and infrastructure. Since its campaign against the militant group escalated, Israel estimates it has destroyed two-thirds of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile stockpile.

But Hezbollah is still firing rockets daily towards Israel.

The BBC spent two weeks with Civil Defense Force crews in the Bekaa Valley, which stretches eastwards to the border with Syria. Permission from Hezbollah was required to visit the scene of Israeli attacks.

In that time, the number and frequency of strikes in the area dramatically increased.

On 28 October, there were more than 100 Israeli strikes, and in the past week alone 160 people were killed in the Bekaa, according to official figures. The Lebanese government does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its figures.

Samir and his men arrive in the Shia village of El Karak to find chaos and destruction – the air is thick with smoke and dust.

Earlier at their station in the nearby city of Zahle, they had heard a powerful explosion – and from their balcony seen a plume of smoke in the distance. They jumped into their fire trucks and ambulances and headed straight there.

A woman in chador sits on the pavement begging to be let into the smoking ruins of an apartment block, but men reason with her to stay put. It is too dangerous, a second Israeli air strike could be coming.

The first body they find is of a man, blown across the ground by the explosion.

There are survivors underneath the pancaked floors of the apartments and Samir goes deep in the rubble. He is not wearing plastic protective gloves as fire is still blazing inside, so when he finds a child, he can feel shattered bones beneath his fingertips. As he carefully retrieves the child, he realises it is only half a body.

“The first victim I found was a child. I don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy,” he tells me afterwards. “Sorry to explain that. But it’s from the stomach and up – from stomach and down there is nothing.”

In the past, the CDF crew have received phone calls telling them to evacuate a site they are attending. They assume they are from the Israelis. No such call comes on this day, so for an hour Samir and others dig deeper into the ruin.

Eventually they find a 10-year-old girl alive. She tells the rescuers that her eight-month-old brother, Mohammed, was next to her.

“After that, we started hearing the screaming of a small child,” Samir says.

Through a small crevice in the rubble they spot the trapped boy, trying to move his legs, his babygrow and a single blue sock visible to the rescue crew. They painstakingly remove the debris around him and he is gently cradled in Samir’s hands and brought to safety. Mohammed is now being treated in Iraq for the head injury he suffered, his family says.

The CDF works across Lebanon’s sectarian divide. It does not discriminate, says Samir, who is Christian and is the head of operations at the station in Zahle – a predominantly Christian town, dominated by a statue of the Virgin Mary, which rises 54m above a hilltop.

“We don’t ask the sex of the victim. We don’t ask if he’s black, white. We don’t ask if he’s Christian or Muslim. We are humanitarians,” Samir says.

The UN estimates that every day in October at least one child was killed and 10 were injured in Israeli attacks. Those losses, combined with those of their colleagues killed in strikes, are taking their toll on Samir and his men.

Almost 24 hours after they left the El Karak site, a second Israeli attack brought down the rest of the apartment building.

In the early evenings, Hezbollah still fires rockets from nearby hillsides, targeting Israel. One salvo of at least six projectiles causes a brush fire near Zahle.

In the town of Khodor, the Hezbollah flag is planted on the ruins of one of the many buildings that have been flattened by Israeli bombs. Children’s toys have been arranged at its base. A large red Shia flag flaps in the wind nearby – it is almost the only sound in the largely abandoned town.

With a bandaged head, Jawad Hamzeh takes me through the rubble of his home.

His three daughters died in the attack, including 24-year-old Nada who was pregnant. He holds up another daughter’s law books, she was studying to be a lawyer.

There were no militants here, he says. “Where are the missiles, do you see them?” he asks.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah began attacking Israel on 8 October 2023 in solidarity with its ally Hamas, which had carried out a devastating attack on Israel the day before. Months of cross-border exchanges followed, and then, in late September this year, Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nassrallah, and followed that with a ground invasion.

Hezbollah is committed to Israel’s destruction, but it is more than a militant group. It is the most powerful political force in Lebanon and a social movement which serves as a bulwark for Lebanon’s long-discriminated Shia communities against other sects in the country.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced by the year-long war. By attacking Hezbollah on multiple fronts, Israel hopes to degrade the group and let its people return home.

Despite US-led ceasefire talks, neither side appears willing to back down.

On 30 October, the Israeli military issued an evacuation order in the Bekaa city of Baalbek, which the UN described as the “largest forced movement Lebanon has experienced in a single day” since the start of the conflict. As many as 150,000 people were given only hours to flee another Israeli assault.

There, not far from the magnificent Roman ruins with its towering temple of Bacchus, I met Hussein Nassereldine, 42, whose home had been destroyed in an Israeli strike the night before.

“No terrorist or bad person lived here,” he says. “All who lived here were decent people.” He says it was home to families who had fled Beirut in 1982 during the country’s civil war, including his own. “We were born here and lived here, and we will stay and won’t leave here,” he says.

As I leave, men with pickaxes and shovels are making slow progress in the rubble and Hussein prepares to erect a tent on what was left of his home.

Outside the city, at the Dar Al Amal hospital, the injured are recovering from Baalbek’s deadliest day. Of the 63 people killed, two thirds of those were women and children according to the local governor. Israel says it struck 110 Hezbollah-linked targets.

In a bare room, filled only with screams, three-year-old Selin’s tiny hand reaches out for comfort. But there is no-one there. She has burns to her face, a fractured leg and wounds to her groin and side. Her mother, father, two sisters and brother were all killed in the Israeli air strike that left her broken and alone.

Across the corridor of the intensive care unit, two-year-old Kayan Smeha has a fractured skull. His mother, Najat, 24, kisses him gently on his cheek and cradles him to quieten him.

“He is still panicking,” she tells me. “And he is probably re-running the scene as I am doing. I can handle it, but he is small, he can’t.”

Tears roll down her cheek, but she is defiant.

“I’m crying because I am afraid for my baby. But if they think they can break us they are mistaken. If I had to, I will sacrifice my son and my husband, my father, my mother, my sister,” Najat says.

“Death of loved ones is hard but not harder than getting humiliated. And we will hold on to our faith and to our traditions till death.”

At the small CDF station in the village of Ferzoul, between orchards and vineyards, the Sun comes up after a cold night. The seasonal temperature is dropping here and most of Lebanon’s shelters for the displaced are full.

Samir arrives and I ask him how he copes with what he has seen.

“Some of the pictures are stuck in our head,” he says, adding that they will never go away.

He leans heavily on his faith.

“When you manage to keep one [person] alive, that will give you the strength to keep going,” he says.

“And this is a power that’s given from God and we’re going to still do our job. Even if we were directly targeted, we say here in Lebanon, God will keep us safe and we have faith in God and he will keep us safe.”

A week after flash floods hit eastern Spain, recriminations are flying over who was to blame for the country’s worst natural disaster in living memory amid angry scenes on the part of those affected.

An initial image of cross-party unity has been replaced by disputes over which institutions had jurisdiction in the disaster areas where at least 218 people lost their lives.

In the immediate aftermath of the floods, Valencia regional leader Carlos Mazón of the conservative People’s Party (PP) welcomed Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and thanked him for his government’s support.

It was an unusual sight in the context of Spain’s deeply polarised politics, with Mazón even calling Sánchez “dear prime minister”.

Valencia’s regional leader has faced criticism for taking around 12 hours to respond to a red weather warning by Spain’s national meteorological office (Aemet) on 29 October and issue an alert directly to people’s phones, by which time the flood was already causing enormous damage.

However, the national leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, questioned the information provided by the Aemet, which is supervised by the central government. He also complained that the prime minister’s administration had not co-ordinated with the regional government.

In the days since, pressure has mounted on Mazón, with many commentators and political adversaries calling on him to resign for his actions on that day, as well as for eliminating the Valencia Emergency Unit (UVE) on taking office last year.

In response, he has taken a more confrontational approach, in line with that of his party boss.

That has included blaming the CHJ hydrographic agency, which is controlled by Madrid, for allegedly activating and then de-activating an alert on the day in question.

“If the CHJ had re-activated the hydrological alert, the alarm message would have been sent immediately” by the regional government, Mazón said.

The CHJ has responded by explaining that it provides data on rainfall and related matters but that it does not issue alerts of this kind.

Fifteen thousands troops, civil guards and police have now arrived in the Valencia region, double the number from last weekend.

Mazón has countered claims that his government did not request enough support from the military in the wake of the weather event, insisting that the armed forces themselves were responsible for such decisions.

The head of the military emergency unit (UME), Javier Marcos, responded by saying that protocol dictated that the regional government had to request any such support.

“I can have 1,000 men at the door of the emergency but I can’t go in, legally, without authorisation from the head of the emergency,” he said, referring to the Valencia leader.

Mazón’s comments about the military reportedly enraged the defence minister, Margarita Robles, who expressed her anger during a crisis meeting of ministers with King Felipe on Monday.

Meanwhile, the political situation has been further complicated after calls by Núñez Feijóo for the prime minister to declare a national state of emergency, which would centralise management of the crisis in Madrid, wresting powers from Valencia’s regional government.

The leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal, has also backed such a measure, which has been ruled out by the government.

“Sánchez is the one responsible for not activating all the state resources when lives could have been saved,” he said, denouncing the “evil and incompetence” of the administration.

The king, Sánchez and Mazón were all hit by the blowback of public anger over the handling of the tragedy on Sunday, when people in the Valencian town of Paiporta, the worst hit by the floods, threw mud and jeered at them, calling them “murderers”.

As the scenes became increasingly violent, the prime minister’s security detail led him away to his car. Mazón stayed near the king and Queen Letizia, who both engaged with some of the local people in an effort to reassure them that everything possible was being done to help.

While the wisdom of that visit has been widely questioned, Mazón has since presented a €31.4bn proposal for the reconstruction of the flood-devastated areas, to be financed by the central government.

Sánchez, meanwhile, has announced a separate initial aid package worth €10.6bn.

“What Spaniards want is to see their institutions, not fighting with each other, but working shoulder to shoulder,” he said as he announced it.

A leading Slovak mountain climber has died while descending a 7,234m (23,730ft) peak in Nepal, after completing the rare feat of scaling the mountain’s perilous eastern face.

Ondrej Huserka fell into a crevasse on Thursday, after he and his climbing partner ascended the Langtang Lirung mountain in the Himalayas – the 99th-highest peak in the world.

The 34-year-old mountaineer had previously climbed in the Alps, Patagonia and the Pamir Mountains.

His Czech climbing partner Marek Holecek said the pair were returning to base after becoming the first mountaineers to ascend Langtang Lirung via a “terrifying” eastern route.

While rappelling a mountain wall, Mr Huserka’s rope snapped and he fell into an ice crevasse, his partner said in an emotional Facebook update posted after he returned alone.

He then “hit an angled surface after an 8m drop, then continued down a labyrinth into the depths of the glacier”.

In the Facebook post, Mr Holecek recalled hearing his partner’s cries for help and desperately trying to save him.

“I rappelled down to him and stayed with him for four hours until his light faded,” Mr Holecek said.

After freeing him from the ice, Mr Holecek realised his partner was paralysed.

“His star was fading as he lay in my arms,” he said.

The Slovak climbers’ association, SHS James, said adverse weather in Nepal had prevented rescue action.

“Following a phone call with Marek Holecek and his status published yesterday, and given the weather conditions under Langtang Lirung, the family and friends will have to cope with the fact that Ondrej is not with us any more,” it said in a social media post.

The Langtang Lirung mountain sits alongside other peaks in the Nepalese Himalayas and is a popular trekking destination.

Judith Swift, a climber who visited Langtang in the spring of this this year, said it was described to her by a local Nepalese Sherpa as “the killer mountain”.

“Not many people have summited it and many, including now sadly Ondrej Huserka, have died climbing it,” she told the BBC.

Mr Huserka joined the Slovak national alpinism team in 2011 and won the SHS James best ascent of the year award six times, according to his personal website.

His decade-long mountaineering career took him around the world.

He completed the first ascent of the “Summer Bouquet” on Alexander Block Peak in Kyrgyzstan, and repeated a “legendary route” on the Cerro Torre’s south-east ridge in South America, his website says.

Paying tribute to the late climber, SHS James said Mr Huserka was a “top alpinist” and “world-class”.

The Slovak Spectator said he was “one of the best Slovak mountaineers”.

A series of parcel fires targeting courier companies in Poland, Germany and the UK were dry runs aimed at sabotaging flights to the US and Canada, Polish prosecutors say.

Katarzyna Calow-Jaszewska revealed late last month that four people had been arrested and authorities across Europe were investigating the incidents.

Western security officials have now told US media they believe the fires – which happened in July – were part of an orchestrated campaign by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Russia denies being behind acts of sabotage. But it is suspected to have been behind other attacks on warehouses and railway networks in EU member states this year, including in Sweden and in the Czech Republic.

Ms Calow-Jaszewska said in a statement that a group of foreign intelligence saboteurs had been involved in sending parcels containing hidden explosives and dangerous materials via courier companies. The parcels then spontaneously burst into flames or blew up.

Western officials believe the fires originated in electric massage machines containing a “magnesium-based” substance.

Magnesium-based fires are hard to put out, especially on board a plane.

“The group’s goal was also to test the transfer channel for such parcels, which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada,” Ms Calow-Jaszewska said.

Some of the devices originated in Lithuania, and prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene said there had been arrests there too. A pre-trial investigation was under way and law enforcement agencies from other countries were taking part, she told reporters.

On three days in July, fires broke out in a container due to be loaded on to a DHL cargo plane in the German city of Leipzig, at a transport company near Warsaw, and at Minworth near Birmingham, UK, involving a package described as an incendiary device.

The incident at Jablonow near Warsaw took two hours to extinguish, according to Polish reports.

UK officials have given few details about the fire at Midpoint Way in Minworth on 22 July. A Met Police spokesperson confirmed that a counter-terrorism investigation was under way after a package at a commercial premises caught alight, adding that “it was dealt with by staff and the local fire brigade”.

Ken McCallum, head of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, said last month that Russian secret agents had carried out “arson, sabotage and more. Dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness” after the UK had helped Ukraine in Russia’s war. His allegations were flatly rejected by the Kremlin.

A spokesperson for the US Transportation Security Administration said in recent months they have put in place additional security measures for certain US-bound cargo flown in by US and foreign airlines.

A US government official also added that there is no current active threat targeting US-bound flights.

It is important to separate the known facts from the allegations being made and suspicions voiced by Western officials.

What is beyond doubt is that this year has seen a succession of suspicious fires at cargo depots in the UK, Germany and Poland – suspicious enough to trigger investigations by counter-terrorism police.

There have been other incidents across Europe and last month a man was convicted at the Old Bailey under the new National Security Act for an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned business in Leyton, east London in March.

In Germany, the head of the domestic intelligence agency (BfV) has said it was only by a stroke of fortune that the Leipzig device had not ignited in mid-air.

BfV head Thomas Haldenwang has described the device that caught fire at DHL’s logistics hub at Leipzig-Halle airport as suspected Russian sabotage.

Taken together, these events are leading Western governments to conclude there is a strong possibility that Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency has embarked on a systematic campaign of anonymous, covert attacks on those countries helping Ukraine.

The package that burst into flames in Leipzig is thought to have arrived from Lithuania and its onward flight was delayed.

The device that caught fire in Minworth is also understood to have come from Lithuania, where the head of the parliament’s national security and defence committee, Arvydas Pocius, said it was part of an ongoing campaign of hybrid attacks aimed at “causing chaos, panic and mistrust”.

DHL has increased security since the recent freight fires. “DHL Express has taken measures in all European countries to protect its network, its employees and facilities, as well as its customers’ shipments,” a spokeswoman said a few weeks ago.

Poland’s government has already responded to alleged Russian sabotage, with Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski announcing the closure of a Russian consulate in Poznan and threatening to expel the Russian ambassador if it fails to bring an end to its attacks.

Russia’s foreign ministry condemned the move as “a hostile step that will be met with a painful response”.

Iran’s judiciary has said Iranian-German dissident Jamshid Sharmahd died before his execution was reported by state media late last month.

The judiciary’s news agency said on 28 October that Sharmahd – who was sentenced to death on the charge of “corruption on Earth” in 2023 following a trial that human rights groups said was grossly unfair – had been “punished for his actions”.

On Tuesday, judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir told reporters that “his sentence was ready to be implemented, but he died before the sentence was carried out”. He gave no further details.

There was no immediate comment from Sharmahd’s daughter Gazelle, who had demanded proof of his execution, or from Germany.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock ordered the closure of all three Iranian consulates in her country and recalled the German ambassador from Tehran last week in response to what she condemned as the “cold-blooded murder” of Sharmahd.

Mr Jahangir dismissed Germany’s protest at Tuesday’s news conference, insisting that Iran’s judicial system was “an independent institution” and that it did “not allow any interference of any foreign country in judicial affairs”.

He also said that Sharmahd, who lived in the US, had been tried “as an Iranian for the terrorist actions that he committed”.

On Sunday, Sharmahd’s family said they were waiting for German and the US to confirm what had happened to him.

“Please know that we do not accept condolences until we have received evidence by the German and American authorities of the reported murder of my father Jimmy Sharmahd and the exact circumstances,” his daughter Gazelle Sharmahd wrote on X.

“We do not trust the empty words of terrorist or complicit governments and neither should you.”

Iranian authorities accused the 69-year-old journalist and activist of being the leader of a terrorist group known as Tondar and of planning a number of attacks in Iran, including the 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz in that killed 14 people.

Tondar – which means “thunder” in Persian – is another name of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran (KAI), a little-known US-based opposition group that seeks to restore the monarchy overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Sharmahd said he was only a spokesman for Tondar and denied any involvement in the attacks.

His family believe he was kidnapped in July 2020 by Iranian agents in Dubai, where he was waiting for a connecting flight to India, and then forcibly taken to Iran via Oman.

The following month, Iran’s intelligence ministry announced that it had arrested Sharmahd following a “complex operation”, without providing any details. It also published a video in which he appeared blindfolded and seemingly confessed to various crimes.

Iran’s judiciary also announced on Tuesday that a court in the north-western city of Orumiyeh had handed death sentences to three people convicted of involvement in the 2020 assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Fakhrizadeh was shot dead by a remote-controlled weapon near Tehran in an attack that Iran blamed on Israel.

Mr Jahangir said the three people were accused of “committing espionage for the occupying regime of Israel” and “transporting equipment into Iran for the assassination of martyr Fakhrizadeh under the guise of smuggling alcoholic beverages”.

Eighteen members of a people-smuggling gang accused of arranging thousands of small boat English Channel crossings have been jailed in France.

The group – which prosecutors described as “merchants of death” – comprised mostly of Iraqi Kurds and were prosecuted after a Europe-wide operation in 2022 which led to arrests in Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Mirkhan Rasoul, the gang’s ringleader, was jailed for 15 years – the longest sentence among those convicted at a court in Lille on Tuesday.

The other defendants included one woman, and an Iranian man who was arrested in the UK and subsequently extradited to France.

For several years, the gang controlled most of the small boat crossings from northern France.

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said the gang – thought to be behind as many as 10,000 Channel crossings – was “among the most prolific” they had come across.

More than 100 boats, 1,000 life jackets, engines and cash were seized as part of the international operation.

Rasoul, 26, had already been convicted on prior smuggling charges and was serving a separate eight-year sentence for attempted murder

He was accused of running the “tentacle-like” criminal smuggling operation from his French prison cell.

The court followed the prosecutor’s recommendation, imposing the longest sentence on Rasoul, French media reported.

He was also handed a fine of €200,000 (£167,745), according to local reports.

Lille’s public prosecutor, Carole Etienne, wrote on X that a total of €1.445m (£1.2m) in fines had been imposed by the court.

The court heard how the gang overloaded the small boats, sometimes cramming up to 15 times more people on board than they were designed to carry.

In a statement, NCA deputy director Craig Turner said the gang’s “sole motive was profit, and they didn’t care about the fate of migrants they were putting to sea in wholly inappropriate and dangerous boats”.

The complex trial involved multiple European nations and police forces, and generated 67 tonnes of paperwork.

In many countries it’s a teenage rite of passage: a first kiss.

But a new survey of Japanese high school students has revealed that four out of five 15-18-year-old boys have yet to reach the milestone.

And things aren’t looking much different for the girls, with just over one in four female high schoolers having had their first kiss.

These are the lowest figures recorded since Japan first began asking teenagers about their sexual habits back in 1974 – and are likely to be a worry in a country with one of the world’s lowest birth rates.

The study by the Japan Association for Sex Education (Jase) quizzed 12,562 students across junior high schools, high schools and university – asking them about everything from kisses to sexual intercourse.

The survey takes place every six years, and has been recording a fall in first kisses since 2005 – when the figure was closer to one in two.

But this year’s report found kissing was not the only area which had seen a fall in numbers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also revealed a drop in the numbers of Japanese youth having sexual intercourse.

According to the study, the ratio of high school boys who say they have had sexual intercourse fell 3.5 points from 2017 to 12%. For high school girls, it declined 5.3 points to 14.8%.

Experts have pointed to the impact of the Covid pandemic as one possible reason for the drop.

School closures and restrictions on physical contact during the Covid pandemic had likely impacted many of these students, as it happened “at a sensitive time when [they were] beginning to become interested in sexuality”, according to Yusuke Hayashi, a sociology professor at Musashi University quoted in the Mainichi newspaper.

However, the survey did find one area of increase: the number of teenagers admitting to masturbation across all demographics was at record high levels.

The results come after a separate survey earlier this year found that nearly half of marriages in Japan are sexless.

The results of the surveys come as Japan struggles to arrest its falling birth rate, and provide further cause for concern. In 2023, the then-prime minister warned that the country’s low birth rate was pushing it to the brink of being able to function.

Some researchers have suggested the population – currently at 125 million people – could fall to less than 53 million by the end of the century. A range of other contributing factors have been marked out as possible contributing factors – including rising living costs, more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children

Japan already has the world’s oldest population, measured by the UN as the proportion of people aged 65 or older.

In late 2023, Japan said that for the first time one in 10 people in the country are aged 80 or older.

In March, diaper-maker Oji Holdings announced it would stop making baby nappies to focus on making adult diapers.

“We can turn this around in one term.”

So said the new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, to staff at Conservative Campaign Headquarters – in other words, she can win the next general election.

Psychologically, she has to say that and she has to believe it, for why else would someone take on the job of Leader of the Opposition?

Granted, candidates for leader run when they think it is their time – the opportunity may never come around again – but they also have to believe the often thankless slog of opposition is worth it, because turfing out the government is possible.

The arithmetic of doing so – recovering from the Conservatives’ worst ever election defeat and overturning a Himalayan Labour majority – looks a tall order, but so volatile is the electorate you never know.

And so, next for Badenoch, the business of making senior appointments.

Reshuffles are always something of a nightmare for leaders as they are guaranteed deliverers of disappointment and deflated egos as well as sources of smiles and preferment.

But three factors make this one particularly tricky for the new Tory leader.

Firstly, numbers.

There are only 121 Conservative MPs and almost as many shadow ministerial roles to fill, if she wants to man-mark every single minister in government with their own shadow.

One potential solution to this is to ask some junior shadow ministers to shadow more than one brief, but that involves asking them to take on even more work.

And the number is not really 121 because there are those MPs who have said they want to be backbenchers, such as former leader Rishi Sunak, former deputy leader Sir Oliver Dowden, former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and former Home Secretary and leadership contender James Cleverly for a start.

Then there are those who are chairing select committees and so cannot serve on their party’s frontbench.

And then there are those the leadership would not want to appoint in a million years.

Suddenly, the numbers are getting tight and that is before you offer someone a job and they turn it down and so, implicitly at least, threaten not to serve at all – and that has happened too.

Secondly, the power of patronage.

When you are prime minister, you can pick up the phone and offer real power.

Doing stuff, taking decisions, being in government.

When you are leader of the opposition, you pick up the phone and offer the worthy, democratically vital but ultimately much less appealing role of being a shadow minister.

And thirdly, there is Kemi Badenoch’s authority over her parliamentary party.

She was the first choice for leader of just 35% of Conservative MPs and 57% of party members who voted in the leadership race.

A win is a win, but neither endorsement was emphatic.

All three of these factors swirl as she picks her top team.

What to do with the guy who came second is a perennial challenge for new leaders.

In this instance, what to offer Robert Jenrick and what might he accept?

Word reaches me that there was quite the back-and-forth between Badenoch and Jenrick.

He was offered shadow health secretary, shadow housing secretary, shadow work and pensions secretary, and shadow justice secretary, I am told.

He was not offered shadow foreign secretary.

For a little while on Monday, he did not say yes to any of the jobs he was offered, stewing over whether they were appealing, senior enough or might box him in too much politically.

One Tory source, not close to the leadership, told me: “Kemi just doesn’t like Rob. She thinks his whole schtick about her and whether she has any policies has done her lasting damage with the Right and with Reform voters. This is only likely to further unravel.”

Half an hour or so later, those around Jenrick made it known he had accepted becoming shadow justice secretary, that “the party needs to come together” and that “unity could not be more important”.

But they are not exactly a nest of birds singing in perfect harmony.

Perhaps the biggest appointment of all is shadow chancellor, particularly in the aftermath of a budget that has done much to define how Labour appears to want to approach its early years in office.

Mel Stride is a former cabinet minister, a former minister in the Treasury and a former chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, so it is a brief he is familiar with.

And then there is the decision to make Dame Priti Patel the shadow foreign secretary.

Dame Priti is a long-standing and pretty well-known senior Conservative who has served in government at the highest level as home secretary.

But she is also someone who found herself prematurely out of government back in 2017 after it emerged, extraordinarily, that she had run a freelance foreign policy operation while on holiday in Israel.

Baroness May, who was then prime minister, was furious and Dame Priti resigned before she was fired.

One senior Conservative got in touch with me to claim that Badenoch, in appointing Patel, had “destroyed within 48 hours any chance she had of having a respectable foreign policy”.

Ouch.

No one said opposition was easy.

And these are just the criticisms from Badenoch’s own side.

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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.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy is coming to the end of his maiden tour of Africa with the aim of resetting relations with the 54-nation continent.

“Our new approach will deliver respectful partnerships that listen rather than tell, deliver long-term growth rather than short-term solutions and build a freer, safer, more prosperous continent,” he said as he set out the agenda for his trip to the continent’s two biggest powers – Nigeria and South Africa.

Lammy’s visit follows his appointment as foreign secretary in the Labour government that took office earlier this year – and was the first by a UK foreign secretary to the continent since 2013.

Since then, relations between African states and other world powers have changed massively.

Today, China is the largest trade partner for many African countries, while Russia has increasingly made inroads, including by offering military support to West African states battling jihadists.

Oil-rich Gulf nations, along with Turkey, have also been increasing their influence on the continent by striking business and military deals.

In contrast, UK-Africa relations have been “a lot more lacklustre”, says Alex Vines, the head of the Africa programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

This is particularly the case between the UK and its biggest trading partner on the continent, South Africa, and the trip is an “attempt to reboot that”, he adds.

“I want to hear what our African partners need and foster relationships so that the UK and our friends and partners in Africa can grow together,” Lammy said.

Britain is no newcomer to the continent. A long – and at times chequered – history underpins many of its relationships with African countries.

Almost all its former colonies on the continent are part of the Commonwealth, although countries that did not have this historical link to the UK have joined the group, including Rwanda, Togo and Gabon. Angola has also applied to join.

“The Commonwealth will likely continue to be a key platform,” says Nicole Breadsworth, an academic at South Africa’s Wits University.

As its former colonies gained independence in the middle of the last century, Britain continued to play a sort of “big brother” role.

But this is now changing.

Dr Vines says Africa did not feature significantly in a major document released last year to outline the UK’s priorities on the global stage.

“There were name checks to countries like Nigeria and South Africa and Kenya in it, but there wasn’t much written,” he says.

Dr Vines adds that he expects South Africa-UK relations to improve under Labour because of its historic ties with the anti-apartheid movement that fought white-minority rule.

“That comes from the anti-apartheid struggle and the solidarity that Labour and people that were the Labour movement provided for combating apartheid,” he says.

Dr Breadsworth, however, notes that former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May tried to bolster ties with Africa, but her efforts were “scuppered” after she resigned in 2019 following turmoil in the then governing party.

The UK then had an unprecedented turnover of prime ministers who had to deal with domestic crises, the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, and the Covid pandemic.

“Africa fell off the radar,” Dr Breadsworth says, adding that the exception was the controversial, and now-scrapped, deal to send some asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda.

Being the world’s youngest continent – with a median age of 19 – Africa presents opportunities for the future, the UK Foreign Office said.

“Africa has huge growth potential, with the continent on track to make up 25% of the world’s population by 2050,” read a statement from the office.

With an ageing population in the UK – as with much of the developed world – Dr Vines says that the sharing of skills will increase.

He adds that migration is an “emotive and complicated issue”, but the UK and other Western nations should avoid “cherry-picking the best and corroding African states from being successful themselves”.

The UK Foreign Office said that “growth is the core mission of this government and will underpin our relationships in Nigeria, South Africa and beyond”.

That will mean “more jobs and more opportunities for Brits and Africans alike,” it added.

The UK’s Africa policy has long focused on development aid, but this has been slashed in recent years as the country faces its own economic crisis.

Dr Vines says aid can be important to deal with humanitarian crises, climate shocks and to finance projects aimed at expanding the private sector in Africa, but he does not see the Labour government increasing funding.

“When you had a previous Labour government under Tony Blair, Britain saw itself as a global superpower for international development – that’s no longer the case,” he says.

Dr Breadsworth says relations are expected to move towards being more economically focused, and “much more mutually beneficial”.

She says this could also see the normalisation of the UK’s relations with Zimbabwe and Harare being welcomed back to the Commonwealth after relations broke down during the rule of the late Robert Mugabe.

Differences over international affairs such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East could also play out less in the public.

South Africa’s position on both conflicts has been at odds with much of the West.

But South African analyst Yanga Molotana does not see this as a major problem.

“Two things can exist at the same time – I can still hold my position, I can still hold my views, and we can still have a mutually beneficial relationship without the moral pressure of you saying that I have to agree with everything that you say,” she adds.

Dr Vines agrees, saying he expects the UK to continue promoting multi-party democracy in Africa, but there will be “less finger-wagging, and more quiet diplomacy”.

“The concern is probably going to be more regularly raised in private,” he says.

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Prince William has joined Australian wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin, the son of the late Steve Irwin, for a mountain ramble during the royal’s tour of South Africa.

The pair walked up Signal Hill, famed for its sweeping views of Cape Town and Table Mountain, and spoke to rangers and volunteer conservationists there about the area’s biodiversity.

The area is part of the Cape Flora Region, a Unesco world heritage site since 2004 due to its rich plant biodiversity.

The Prince of Wales is in Cape Town on a four-day climate-focused tour, culminating in his presentation of the Earthshot Prize on Wednesday night.

The prize, started by Prince William, supports sustainable, eco-friendly projects from around the world, with five winners each receiving £1m.

In blustery but sunny weather on Tuesday, the Prince, dressed in sustainable clothing, walked through the park and viewed the panoramic views down over Cape Town from one of the world’s most recognisable tourist attractions.

The Prince was guided through the National Park by park rangers, firefighters, mountain rescue volunteers, biodiversity experts and youth volunteers led by Robert Irwin, the son of Australian conservationist and TV presenter, Steve Irwin, who was killed by a stingray in the Great Barrier Reef in 2006.

In a video posted to his social media accounts, Irwin asked the Prince about his favourite African animal.

Prince William, who said he had been quizzed on the issue by his children a number of times previously, put his vote to the cheetah.

Irwin backed the “unsung hero” – the chameleon.

Irwin has long been a keen wildlife photographer and became an Earthshot ambassador in September.

“For the first time we have an environmental movement on a scale we’ve never seen before,” Irwin said of the prize.

“It’s really putting money where it’s needed most, putting support and awareness where it’s needed most but it’s also leading with a sense of positivity – it’s this beacon, this light we can all strive towards,” he added.

The prince later met with South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa and the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Lammy is visiting Nigeria and South Africa in a tour focused on economic growth.

The Prince thanked the President for his support of the Earthshot Prize and told the President how he had enjoyed visiting Ocean View Township on Monday, where he joined in with some rugby training.

He told President Ramaphosa it highlighted the power of sport to unite communities.

Prince William had dusted off his self-professed “rusty” rugby skills with some legends of the sport, including former Springboks Joel Stransky and Percy Montgomery.

The prince is later expected to deliver a speech on nature, the environment and his support for wildlife rangers at the start of a two-day summit for United for Wildlife, his umbrella organisation combating the illegal trafficking of animals.

The world’s first wood-panelled satellite has been launched into space to test the suitability of timber as a renewable building material in future exploration of destinations like the Moon and Mars.

Made by researchers in Japan, the tiny satellite weighing just 900g is heading for the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission. It will then be released into orbit above the Earth.

Named LignoSat, after the Latin word for wood, its panels have been built from a type of magnolia tree, using a traditional technique without screws or glue.

Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood.

“Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there’s no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it,” Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata told Reuters news agency.

“Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood,” Prof Murata said. “A wooden satellite should be feasible, too.”

If trees could one day be planted on the Moon or Mars, wood might also provide material for colonies in space in the future, the researchers hope.

Along with its wood panels, LignoSat also incorporates traditional aluminium structures and electronic components. It has sensors on board to monitor how its wood reacts to the extreme environment of space during the six months it will orbit the Earth.

Dr Simeon Barber, a space research scientist at the Open University in the UK, said: “We have to be clear that this is not a satellite completely made of wood… but the basic premise behind the idea is really interesting.

“From a sustainability point of view, wood is a material that can be grown and is therefore renewable,” he told the BBC.

“The idea that you might be able to grow wood on another planet to help you explore space or make shelters – explorers have always used wood to make shelters when they’ve gone to a new land.”

Dr Barber said it wasn’t the first time that wood had been used on spacecraft.

“We use wood – cork – on the re-entry, outer shell of vessels of spacecraft to help them survive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.”

Russian and Soviet lunar landers used cork to help the rover have grip as it was descending to the surface, he added.

“There’s nothing wrong with using wood in space – it’s using the right material for the right task.”

He pointed out that wood has properties that are hard to control.

“So from an engineering point of view it’s quite a difficult material to work with… I think wood’s always going to have a problem to make critical structures like parts of spacecraft where you need to predict how strong it’s going to be.”

The researchers at Kyoto University hope using wood in making spacecraft could also be much less polluting than metal ones when they burn-up on re-entry at the end of their life.

Experts have warned of the increasing threat of space junk falling to Earth, as more spacecraft and satellites are launched.

Dr Barber acknowledged the space industry was under growing pressure over the amount of pollution it puts into the atmosphere but he was sceptical using wooden spacecraft could provide the answer.

“In principle having materials such as wood which can burn up more easily would reduce certainly those metallic contaminants… But you may end up taking more material with you in the first place just to burn it up on the way down.”

Offices of streaming giant Netflix in Paris and Amsterdam have been raided by the French and Dutch authorities as part of an investigation into tax fraud, French judicial sources say.

Officials from the two countries have been co-operating on the case since the investigation was opened in November 2022.

Netflix has not as yet made any specific comment on the raids, but insists it complies with tax laws wherever it operates.

The Amsterdam office is the headquarters of the company’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The French investigation is being carried out by the National Financial Prosecutor’s office (PNF), a special unit used for investigations into high-profile white-collar crime.

It relates to suspicions of “covering up serious tax fraud and off-the-books work”, according to the PNF.

The company is also under investigation for tax filings for 2019, 2020 and 2021.

The French sources said authorities in the Netherlands were conducting simultaneous searches, and that co-operation between the two countries had been going on for “many months”.

Last year, French media outlet La Lettre reported that until 2021, Netflix in France minimised its tax payments by declaring its turnover generated in France to the Netherlands.

After it abandoned this arrangement, La Lettre said, its annual declared turnover in France jumped from €47.1m ($51.3m; £39.6m) in 2020 to €1.2bn in 2021.

However, the outlet says investigators are trying to determine whether Netflix continued to attempt to minimise its profits after 2021.

Netflix arrived in France more than 10 years ago, opening its Paris office in 2020. It has some 10 million subscribers in the country, according to AFP news agency.

For the first time, an Algerian author has won France’s top literary award, the Goncourt, with a searing account of his country’s 1990s civil war.

Kamel Daoud’s novel Houris tells of Algeria’s blood-soaked “dark decade”, in which up to 200,000 people are estimated to have been killed in massacres blamed on Islamists or the army.

The heroine Fajr (Dawn in Arabic) has survived having her throat cut by Islamist fighters – she has a smile-like scar on her neck and needs a speaking tube to communicate – and tells her story to the baby girl she carries inside her.

Written in French, the book “gives voice to the suffering of a dark period in Algeria, particularly the suffering of women,” the Goncourt committee said.

“It shows how literature… can trace another path for memory, next to the historical account.”

The irony is that few in Algeria are likely to read it. The book has no Algerian publisher; the French publisher Gallimard has been excluded from the Algiers Book Fair, and news of Daoud’s Goncourt success has – a day on – still not been reported in the Algerian media.

Worse, Daoud – who now lives in Paris – could even face criminal charges for speaking of the civil war.

A 2005 “reconciliation” law makes it a crime punishable by jail to “instrumentalise the wounds of the national tragedy”.

According to Daoud, the effect is to make the civil war – which traumatised the entire country – a non-subject.

“My 14 year-old daughter did not believe me when I told her about what had happened, because the war is not taught in schools,” Daoud told Le Monde newspaper.

“I cut out some of the worst scenes I wrote. Not because they were untrue, but because people would not believe me.”

Daoud, 54, had first-hand experience of the massacres because he was a journalist at the time working for the Quotidien d’Oran newspaper. In interviews he has described the ghastly routine of counting corpses, then seeing his count altered – up or down – by the authorities, depending on the message they wanted to be given.

“You develop a routine,” he said. “Come back, write your piece, then get drunk.”

He worked as a columnist for many years, but gradually fell foul of the Algerian government because of his refusal to toe the line.

He is strongly critical of what he sees as the official “instrumentalisation” of the 1954-1962 war of independence against France; and of what he sees as the continuing subjugation of women in Algerian society.

“In a way the Islamists lost the civil war militarily, but they won politically,” he said.

“What I hope is that my book will make people think about the price of freedom, especially for women. And in Algeria, that it will encourage people to confront all of our history, not fetishise one part over the rest.”

Daoud has written two previous novels, one of which – the much-praised Meursault Investigation – was a rewriting of Albert Camus’s The Stranger and was shortlisted for the Goncourt in 2015.

In 2020 the author moved to Paris, “exiled by the force of things”, and took French nationality. “All Algerians are Franco-Algerians,” he has said. “Either out of hate or out of love.”

In Algeria he is a divisive figure. His enemies regard him as a traitor who sold his soul to France, while others recognise him as a literary genius of whom the country should be proud.

In his post-award press conference, Daoud himself said that it was only by coming to France that he was able to write Houris.

“France gave me the freedom to write. It is a land of refuge for writers,” he said. “To write you need three things. A table, a chair and a country. I have all three.”

Crowds of people lined the streets of Lewes as the town’s bonfire societies marched with burning torches for Guy Fawkes Night.

Tens of thousands of people were expected to turn out for the annual celebrations, a tradition still very much alive since the first recorded event in 1795.

Each society spends months producing an effigy – or tableau – which are paraded through the streets and then burned at the bonfire sites.

Just before 23:00 GMT, firework explosions could be heard for miles as the festivities reached a conclusion.

BBC Radio Sussex reporter George Carden said there was a “celebratory feeling” in the town as the processions began earlier on Tuesday evening.

He added: “Smoke has filled the air and flames are lighting up the faces of those who’ve come to watch, while faint echoes of drumming come from over the hill.”

Kevin and Cathy Mooney, from Arizona, said they were in Lewes for the first time.

Mr Mooney said: “I’m pretty overwhelmed by it. It really has been amazing.

“I come from the United States and really can’t think of anything that comes close to this.”

Ms Mooney said she hoped Donald Trump would make an appearance as a tableau in Tuesday night’s celebrations.

Previous effigies have included Rishi Sunak riding a train, Suella Braverman as an octopus and Jeremy Clarkson driving a skip.

On Tuesday night, one tableau highlighted sewage and water quality concerns, while another featured former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells.

Earlier, a grinning effigy of Nigel Farage holding a cigarette and a pint of beer was spotted in the town.

Sussex Police had urged non-locals to stay away from the event due to the risk of “crowd crushing and crowd movement” in the narrow streets.

“The celebrations are always busy, challenging and complex,” Ch Supt Howard Hodges told BBC Radio Sussex.

“This is an event steeped in history, culture and tradition but it’s one we can’t be complacent about.

“There are inherent risks and that’s why the police, ambulance and fire service work really closely to make sure people can attend safely.”

While Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot of 1605 dominate the UK’s autumnal bonfire tradition, the town also remembers the 17 Protestants who were burnt to death by the Catholic queen, Mary I, in Lewes in the 1500s.

There are a total of six processions through Lewes between 17:30 and 23:30 GMT.

Following the processions, the bonfire societies burned their tableaus and let off fireworks in their respective fields.

A court in Kenyan has sentenced two men to 35 years each for the murder of Ugandan athlete Benjamin Kiplagat at the end of last year.

The Olympic steeplechaser was stabbed to death on New Year’s Eve in the town of Eldoret, known as a top training centre for athletes.

“Your actions were cruel to a defenceless person whose life you cut short,” Justice Reuben Nyakundi told Peter Ushuru Khalumi and David Ekai Lokere during the sentencing hearing in the High Court in Eldoret.

Kiplagat’s murder shocked people in Kenya, which has seen the killing of a number of other elite athletes in recent years.

The judge said that Khalumi and Lokere had followed Kiplagat, who was in his car, and then CCTV footage showed that they had intentionally killed him in a premeditated act. The exact motive for the murder was not clear but at the time of the arrests the police had said it was robbery.

On Monday, in an emotional request to the court, the athlete’s mother had asked Justice Nyakundi to hand down life sentences.

She talked about how her son, who started his career running barefoot, had worked hard to become an international runner and the family’s breadwinner, the Nation newspaper reports.

“My son had 8,000 [Kenyan] shillings ($62; £48) and an expensive mobile phone, but the killers did not take any of the property from him. Their mission was to painfully finish him,” the newspaper quotes her as saying.

Despite not acceding to the family’s request for life sentences, they said they were happy with the outcome and that justice had been served.

Kiplagat, who was 34 when he died, reached the final of the 3,000m steeplechase at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He also competed in the following two Games and is the holder of the Ugandan record at the event.

• Thousands mourn Ugandan Olympian killed by ex-partner
• Agnes Tirop: Family await justice a year on from Kenyan runner’s murder
• Damaris Muthee Mutua: Murdered runner’s career ‘was picking up’
• Kelvin Kiptum: The Kenyan marathon runner destined for greatness

Organisers of a huge festival that attracts around 40,000 people have announced it is moving sites and will not take place in 2025.

World of Music, Arts and Dance Festival (WOMAD) – co-founded by Peter Gabriel – has been running for more than four decades and has taken place at Charlton Park near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, since 2007.

Organisers said it will return “fully charged” in 2026 and more information about a new site will be revealed in the next few weeks.

Festival director Chris Smith said they hope to stay nearby, possibly still in Wiltshire.

“It’s home for many of us. The people we’re talking to are not far from where we are” he told the BBC.

However, a new venue has not been confirmed yet.

“If you look at our industry as a whole – things need to change, we can’t all carry on doing the same thing over and over again. Some of the changes we want to make would be difficult to make in the home we’ve had” Mr Smith added.

He explained that the new site needs to be “beautiful, part of the story – it’s got to contribute something to the festival.”

Over the next 12 months, WOMAD festivals will be held around the world, including in Australia, New Zealand and Spain.

Beyond music, the festival is also known for its workshops and children’s activities.

The team is looking into holding a smaller event somewhere in the UK next year before the 2026 return.

The organisers have thanked staff at Charlton Park and residents in the surrounding area for making the team feel welcome over the past 17 years.

Mr Smith wanted to “reassure people that this isn’t the end, just a new beginning.”

German police have arrested eight suspected members of a far-right group, which was allegedly plotting to mount a Nazi-inspired coup.

Prosecutors said the group – known as the Saechsische Separatisten or “Saxony Separatists” – was undertaking military training for the collapse of the German government and society, which it believed would come on an unspecified “Day X”.

After that date, the group allegedly planned to seize control over areas of eastern Germany by force and establish a far-right regime.

More than 450 officers carried out searches and arrests across Germany, Austria and Poland in an effort to dismantle the group.

Prosecutors said the group planned to create a government “inspired by National Socialism” – the far-right totalitarian ideology associated with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.

The eight suspects have been partially named as Kurt H, Karl K, Kevin M, Hans-Georg P, Kevin R, Jörg S, Jörn S and Norman T.

Seven of them were arrested Germany, while Jörg S – the group’s suspected ringleader – was arrested in Poland.

Further searches were carried out in Vienna and the Krems-Land District of Austria.

All eight have been arrested on suspicion of being members of a domestic terrorist organisation.

The Saxon Separatists was formed in 2020 and has between 15 to 20 members, according to German prosecutors.

The group’s ideology is characterised by “racist, anti-Semitic and partially apocalyptic ideas”, prosecutors said.

“The organisation believes beyond doubt that Germany is nearing ‘collapse’ and that the government and society will implode on ‘Day X’,” they added.

After overtaking parts of the country via urban warfare, the group allegedly plans to remove “unwanted groups of people” from these areas by means of “ethnic cleansing”.

Members of the group, including the eight arrested suspects, “repeatedly completed paramilitary training in combat gear”, prosecutors said.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser thanked the security services who she said had broken up “another suspected terrorist group of militant right-wing extremists”.

It comes after a separate alleged coup plot, led by the so-called Reichsbuerger movement, was exposed in 2022.

That group, once dismissed as crackpots, allegedly planned to arrest MPs in Berlin on a day it also dubbed “Day X”.

The plot would have seen 72-year-old aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss installed as “head of state”, prosecutors alleged at the time. Prince Reuss has denied involvement.

When nine members of the group, including Prince Reuss, went on trial in May this year, their defence lawyer said: “They’re not terrorists. They’re slightly crazy.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the suspected members of the Saxony Separatists will appear before a judge, who will read out arrest warrants and make decisions about their pre-trial detention.

Votes are being counted across America, with some states already projected as wins for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris while others are still seeing queues of voters waiting to cast their ballots.

All eyes are currently on the key swing state of Georgia, where votes are being counted quickly and more than four million residents cast early ballots.

US election results are declared state-by-state and the BBC is keeping you updated with a running tally as we go.

The first polls closed at 18:00 EST (23:00 GMT) on Tuesday evening. The last will close at 01:00 EST (06:00 GMT) early on Wednesday.

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 complicate how quickly media outlets project a winner.

But we are starting to get some projected results from states with the most predictable voting patterns.

Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris 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 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.

• Follow live election updates
• How to follow the US election on the BBC
• US election polls: Who is winning – Harris or Trump?
• A really simple guide to the presidential vote

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

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

The race is expected to come down to results from seven swing states, which experts believe Harris and Trump both have a realistic chance of winning.

Turnout has been high in early voting, both in-person and by mail, with records broken in Georgia.

Georgia – Polls closed in the Peach State at 19:00 EST (00:00 GMT). Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger estimates a majority of votes will be counted within an hour of poll closures.

North Carolina – Polls closed 30 minutes after Georgia. North Carolina’s results are expected to be announced before the end of the night.

Pennsylvania – Voting ended at 20:00 EST (01:00 GMT) but experts agree 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). A result is not expected until the end of Wednesday.

Wisconsin – Results should come in shortly after polls close at 21:00 EST for smaller counties but experts predict 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) but the state’s largest county says not to expect results until early Wednesday morning. Postal ballots dropped off on election day could take up to 13 days to count.

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

In such a tight race, early vote results may not be the best indication of who will eventually win.

In 2020, Trump was leading in some key states on election night but Biden overtook him as mail ballots, heavily favoured by Democrats at the time, were counted.

Though election experts warned beforehand of such a phenomenon, Trump seized upon it to amplify his unfounded claims that the election was stolen.

There could be another so-called “red mirage” this year – or perhaps a “blue mirage” that initially favours Harris but then shifts toward Trump.

More than 83 million Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida Election Lab’s nationwide early vote tracker. Women make up 54% of that tally, which could be a good sign for Harris.

But while early voting has typically favoured Democrats, registered Republicans have cast nearly as many early votes this time around.

In the 2020 election, US TV networks did not declare Joe Biden the winner until four days after election day, when the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.

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

In 2016, Trump was declared the winner shortly before 03:00 EST (08:00 GMT) a few hours after polls closed.

In 2012, when Barack Obama secured a second term, his victory was projected before midnight the same evening of election day.

However, the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore was a notable exception. The race was not decided for five weeks, when the US Supreme Court voted to end Florida’s recount. That kept Bush in place as winner and handed him 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.

• When does vote counting begin and how long will it take?
• Visual guide – Harris and Trump’s paths to victory
• The moment I decided on my vote

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.

• 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
• IN FULL: All our election coverage in one place

It is possible that the two candidates could end up in a tie because they have the same number of electoral college votes – 269 each.

In that situation, members of the House of Representatives – the lower chamber of the US Congress – would vote to choose the president in a process known as a contingent election.

Meanwhile the Senate – the upper chamber – would vote for the vice-president.

But that hasn’t happened for about 200 years.

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.

Are you in the US? Get in touch

Hopes – on both sides – that there could have been some kind of decisive last-minute movement of voter preferences one way or the other appear to be unfounded.

Polls are closed across many of the East Coast battleground states, and votes are being tabulated at a rapid clip. An early picture of this historic presidential race is beginning to come into view.

While the final outcome is still in doubt, it appears increasingly likely that America is in for another nail-biter of an election.

• Follow live election night updates
• Full results: Check the count state by state
• When will we know who has won?

In Georgia and North Carolina – states that Donald Trump all but has to win – the former president is doing even better in the traditional rural areas than he did in 2020. Kamala Harris is matching Joe Biden’s totals in the urban and suburban counties, but so far she has not made a marked improvement.

While these vote margins could shift, narrow Trump victories in Georgia and North Carolina would mean all eyes once again turn to the Democratic “Blue Wall” states along the Great Lakes. The scenario where Harris delivers a knock-out punch on election night would fail to materialise.

At that point, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania become her best – perhaps only – path to the White House. And in Pennsylvania, the final results might not be known for days.

We’ve also got another batch of exit poll data, shedding light on the divide between men and women in this election.

Not surprisingly, a majority of women are backing Kamala Harris, while men are giving their support to Donald Trump.

What is a bit surprising, at least according to these findings, is that the 54% of women voting for Harris doesn’t match the 57% that backed Joe Biden in 2020.

All that talk of a historic political divide between the two genders may have been premature.

Exit poll results often shift as the hours tick by and should be seen as general guide and not a detailed map, but if Democrats have lost ground with women voters compared to four years ago, it would be extremely concerning for the Harris camp.

One thing is clear at this point, however. Turnout in this election is once again approaching the highest level in modern American history. It may even eclipse the 65.9% mark set in 2020.

Both Trump and Harris have repeatedly said that the stakes in this election are high. The American public seems to have heeded that call.

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

IN FULL: All our election coverage in one place

Voters in the US go to the polls on Tuesday 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?

• Follow live election updates
• 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 tightened significantly in recent weeks and Trump has led in Pennsylvania at points.

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

Protests have erupted in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired the country’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Netanyahu said a “crisis of trust” between the two leaders led to his decision, adding that his trust in Gallant had “eroded” in recent months and Foreign Minister Israel Katz would step in to replace him.

Gallant said his removal was due to disagreement on three issues, including his belief that it is possible to get the remaining hostages back from Gaza if Israel makes “painful concessions” which it “can bear”.

Many protesters on the streets were calling for Netanyahu to resign, and demanding the new defence minister prioritise a hostage deal.

Netanyahu and Gallant have long had a divisive working relationship. During the past year, there have been reports of shouting matches between the two men over Israel’s war strategy.

The former defence minister has also been unhappy at plans to continue to allow Israel’s Ultra Orthodox citizens to be exempt from serving in the military.

Months before the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Netanyahu had fired Gallant over political differences, before reinstating him following major public outcry.

But on Tuesday Netanyahu said: “In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the minister of defence”.

He said although there had been trust and “fruitful work” in the first months of the war, “during the last months this trust cracked”.

Netanyahu added that “significant gaps were discovered between me and Gallant in the management of the campaign”.

These were “accompanied by statements and actions that contradict the decisions of the government,” he added.

Following the news, Gallant posted on social media that the “security of the state of Israel was and will always remain the mission of my life”.

He later released a full statement on Tuesday night saying his removal from office had been “the result of disagreement on three issues”.

He believed there should be no exceptions for military service, that a national inquiry was needed to learn lessons, and the hostages should be brought back as soon as possible.

In reference to the hostages, he said: “I determine that it is possible to achieve this goal. It requires painful concessions, which the state of Israel can carry and the IDF can bear.”

One of those protesting following the announcement, Yair Amit, said Netanyahu is endangering the whole country and called on the prime minister to “step down from his office and to let serious people lead Israel”.

Some protesters lit fires on the Ayalon Highway and blocked traffic in both directions, according to Israeli media.

A group representing the families of people taken hostage by Hamas in its 7 October attack also condemned Netanyahu’s dismissal of Gallant, calling it a continuation of efforts to “torpedo” a release deal.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called on the incoming defence minister to “express an explicit commitment to the end of the war and to carry out a comprehensive deal for the immediate return of all the abductees”.

Around 100 hostages out of 251 taken by Hamas on 7 October 2023 remain unaccounted for more than a year into the war.

His replacement Katz is seen as even more hawkish in terms of military strategy.

Another Netanyahu ally, Gideon Sa’ar – who previously held no cabinet portfolio- will become the new foreign minister.

Gallant’s removal will come into effect in 48 hours. The appointment of the new ministers requires the approval of the government and then the Knesset.

Netanyahu first fired Gallant in March 2023 following their disagreement over controversial plans to overhaul the justice system.

But he was forced to retract the sacking following massive public protests in several cities in Israel – an event that became known as “Gallant Night.”

In May this year, Gallant voiced open frustration at the government’s failure to address the question of a post-war plan for Gaza. Gallant wanted Netanyahu to declare publicly that Israel has no plans to take over civilian and military rule in Gaza.

It was a rare public sign of divisions within Israel’s war cabinet over the direction of the military campaign.

“Since October, I have been raising this issue consistently in the cabinet,” Gallant said, “and have received no response”.

Netanyahu responded by saying that he was “not ready to exchange Hamastan for Fatahstan,” in reference to rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah.

Responding to Gallant’s removal on Tuesday night, members of Israel’s political opposition parties called for protests from the public.

Gallant’s dismissal also takes place on the day of the presidential election in the US- Israel’s key backer in its war in Gaza – a timing noted by several Israeli media outlets.

Gallant was viewed as having a much better relationship with the White House than Netanyahu.

A representative for the White House’s National Security Council said on Tuesday: “Minister Gallant has been an important partner on all matters related to the defence of Israel. As close partners, we will continue to work collaboratively with Israel’s next minister of defence.”

Observers note that Gallant’s removal also comes at a time where Netanyahu is under pressure by far-right politicians to pass a bill which would have continued to allow Israel’s ultra-Orthodox citizens to be exempt from serving in the military. Gallant had been a high-profile opponent of the bill.

A closely watched proposal to restore abortion rights in Florida is on track for defeat, in a significant blow to efforts to expand local protections for the procedure.

The ballot initiative would have allowed abortion until the point of foetal viability or about 24 weeks, but had to meet a threshold of 60% support in order to pass.

Florida was one of 10 states this election where voters were asked to weigh in on abortion rights measures.

The state-level fights come two years after a US Supreme Court ruling that struck down the national right to abortion, prompting many states to introduce bans or severe restrictions on the practice.

With 87% of the vote reported, the Florida amendment was projected to win support from 57% of voters, according to Reuters.

Campaigners in Florida had promoted the amendment as a way to override the strict law that came into force earlier this year, which banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, with limited exceptions.

In previous elections, initiatives to expand abortion rights have met with success, including in reliably conservative states such as Kansas, and have been credited with helping to mobilise Democratic voters and put pressure on even some Republican politicians to moderate their stance on the issue.

But none of the other contests had to meet such a high bar of support.

The proposed amendment was also vociferously opposed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who marshalled state resources to persuade voters to vote “no”.

Florida voter Betsy Linkhorst, who was casting her first vote in this election, said the result left her “heartbroken, scared and frankly, worried for the future”.

“This was such an important opportunity to protect women’s rights and our ability to make decisions over our own bodies,” the 18-year-old said.

“The setback feels devastating, and I’m saddened to think of the impact this will have on so many women across the state.”

Abortion is also on the ballot in states such as Missouri, South Dakota and Arizona, which have laws that bar or curtail access to the procedure.

Most of the initiatives would allow abortion until foetal viability, which is generally considered about 24 weeks, or later only in instances when the health of the pregnant woman is at risk.

Since the 2022 decision to strike down Roe v Wade, 22 states have tightened abortion laws, including 13 where the procedure is banned completely. Others, like Florida, have sharply curtailed access, barring access to abortion after six weeks.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win the electoral college
• RESULTS: When will we know who has won?
• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?
• EXPLAINER: What Harris or Trump would do in power
• GLOBAL: How this election could change the world
• BBC COVERAGE: How to follow the US election on the BBC

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 – including one from Donald Trump – 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.

Trump has posted on his social media platform, Truth Social saying “law enforcement coming” to Philadelphia because of “massive cheating” there.

He did not provide details of the alleged cheating or any evidence.

The Philadelphia Police Department told BBC Verify that they were not aware of what Trump was referring to.

Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is a Democrat, posted on X saying: “There is no factual basis whatsoever within law enforcement to support this wild allegation.”

Seth Bluestein, the Republican City Commissioner in Philadelphia, also posted on X saying: “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation. It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure.“

Multiple posts on X have suggested that power outages reported in Pennsylvania earlier today were linked to election interference.

Some of these posts have focused on outages in Northampton County in particular.

One post, which has a quarter of a million views, claimed “they are shutting down the power in Pennsylvania” alongside a power outage map of the county.

According to a power outage tracking website, Northampton County is served by two electricity providers: FirstEnergy and PPL Electric Utilities.

Todd Meyers, spokesperson for FirstEnergy, told BBC Verify that eight polling locations in the county had been affected by outages today, which were caused by an electrical fault.

“All polling locations had their power restored within 10 minutes and all had battery backup for voting machines and voters were not impacted”, Mr Meyers said.

BBC Verify also contacted PPL Electric Utilities for comment.

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

The image was originally posted online a few days ago but it has been circulating again on election day.

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.

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!”

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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?

American voters will face a clear choice for president on election day, between Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Here’s a look at what they stand for and how their policies compare on different issues.

Harris has said her day-one priority would be trying to reduce food and housing costs for working families.

She promises to ban price-gouging on groceries, help first-time home buyers, increase housing supply and raise the minimum wage.

Inflation soared under the Biden presidency, as it did in many western countries, partly due to post-Covid supply issues and the Ukraine war. It has fallen since.

Trump has promised to “end inflation and make America affordable again” and when asked he says more drilling for oil will lower energy costs.

He has promised to deliver lower interest rates, something the president does not control, and he says deporting undocumented immigrants will ease pressure on housing. Economists warn that his vow to impose higher tax on imports could push up prices.

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• US election polls – is Harris or Trump ahead?
• Comparing Biden’s economy to Trump’s

Harris wants to raise taxes on big businesses and Americans making $400,000 (£305,000) a year.

But she has also unveiled a number of measures that would ease the tax burden on families, including an expansion of child tax credits.

She has broken with Biden over capital gains tax, supporting a more moderate rise from 23.6% to 28% compared with his 44.6%.

Trump proposes a number of tax cuts worth trillions, including an extension of his 2017 cuts which mostly helped the wealthy.

He says he will pay for them through higher growth and tariffs on imports. Analysts say both tax plans will add to the ballooning deficit, but Trump’s by more.

• Where Kamala Harris stands on 10 issues
• Where Donald Trump stands on 10 issues

Harris has made abortion rights central to her campaign, and she continues to advocate for legislation that would enshrine reproductive rights nationwide.

Trump has struggled to find a consistent message on abortion.

The three judges he appointed to the Supreme Court while president were pivotal in overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, a 1973 ruling known as Roe v Wade.

Harris was tasked with tackling the root causes of the southern border crisis and helped raise billions of dollars of private money to make regional investments aimed at stemming the flow north.

Record numbers of people crossed from Mexico at the end of 2023 but the numbers have fallen since to a four-year low. In this campaign, she has toughened her stance and emphasised her experience as a prosecutor in California taking on human traffickers.

Trump has vowed to seal the border by completing the construction of a wall and increasing enforcement. But he urged Republicans to ditch a hardline, cross-party immigration bill, backed by Harris. She says she would revive that deal if elected.

He has also promised the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history. Experts told the BBC this would face legal challenges.

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Harris has vowed to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes”. She has pledged, if elected, to ensure the US and not China wins “the competition for the 21st Century”.

She has been a longtime advocate for a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, and has called for an end to the war in Gaza.

Trump has an isolationist foreign policy and wants the US to disentangle itself from conflicts elsewhere in the world.

He has said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours through a negotiated settlement with Russia, a move that Democrats say would embolden Vladimir Putin.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel but said little on how he would end the war in Gaza.

Harris has criticised Trump’s sweeping plan to impose tariffs on imports, calling it a national tax on working families which will cost each household $4,000 a year.

She is expected to have a more targeted approach to taxing imports, maintaining the tariffs the Biden-Harris administration introduced on some Chinese imports like electric vehicles.

Trump has made tariffs a central campaign pledge in order to protect US industry. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most imported foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.

He has also promised to entice companies to stay in the US to manufacture goods, by giving them a lower rate of corporate tax.

Harris, as vice-president, helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which has funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars to renewable energy, and electric vehicle tax credit and rebate programmes.

But she has dropped her opposition to fracking, a technique for recovering gas and oil opposed by environmentalists.

Trump, while in the White House, rolled back hundreds of environmental protections, including limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and vehicles.

In this campaign he has vowed to expand Arctic drilling and attacked electric cars.

Harris has been part of a White House administration which has reduced prescription drug costs and capped insulin prices at $35.

Trump, who has often vowed to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, has said that if elected he would only improve it, without offering specifics. The Act has been instrumental in getting health insurance to millions more people.

He has called for taxpayer-funded fertility treatment, but that could be opposed by Republicans in Congress.

Harris has tried to contrast her experience as a prosecutor with the fact Trump has been convicted of a crime.

Trump has vowed to demolish drugs cartels, crush gang violence and rebuild Democratic-run cities that he says are overrun with crime.

He has said he would use the military or the National Guard, a reserve force, to tackle opponents he calls “the enemy within” and “radical left lunatics” if they disrupt the election.

• Trump’s legal cases, explained

Harris has made preventing gun violence a key pledge, and she and Tim Walz – both gun owners – often advocate for tighter laws. But expanding background checks or banning assault weapons will need the help of Congress.

Trump has positioned himself as a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, the constitutional right to bear arms. Addressing the National Rifle Association in May, he said he was their best friend.

Harris has called for the decriminalisation of marijuana for recreational use. She says too many people have been sent to prison for possession and points to disproportionate arrest numbers for black and Latino men.

Trump has softened his approach and said it’s time to end “needless arrests and incarcerations” of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use.

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• POLLS: Who is winning the race for the White House?

Americans vote in the presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump has taken a tentative lead over Kamala Harris in several of the swing states that will decide who becomes the next president of the United States, early results suggest.

The BBC’s US partner, CBS, is projecting he is narrowly ahead in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, while she has the advantage in Michigan, but the leads are fluctuating by the minute.

As expected, Trump has won conservative strongholds from his home state of Florida to Montana, while Kamala Harris is sweeping liberal bastions from New York to Colorado, CBS projects.

Whichever way it goes the result will be historic – either giving America its first woman president or marking a seismic political comeback for Trump.

A high turnout has been predicted, but the final outcome may not be known for several days if the results are as close as polls have indicated.

A potential red flag for Harris has emerged in the latest CBS exit poll data, which suggests that 54% of women have voted for her. Joe Biden won the support of 57% of women in 2020.

Whoever wins the White House may have their hands tied by Congress, which is also up for grabs in Tuesday’s vote.

Democrats have a slim majority in the Senate, while Trump’s fellow Republicans narrowly control the House of Representatives.

Republicans took a step towards winning control of the Senate on Tuesday night by wresting a seat in West Virginia from the Democrats and beating off a stiff challenge in Texas.

But neither party seemed to have an advantage in the House.

Polls have closed in most of the country, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – the seven swing states expected to determine the outcome.

Early results suggest the race remains very tight in Arizona and Wisconsin, while no returns have emerged yet from Nevada.

Around 86 million voters cast their ballots early amid one of the most turbulent campaigns in recent American history.

Vice-President Harris, 60, only became the Democratic Party candidate in July, after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race under pressure from within the party.

Trump, 78, was the target of two assassination plots – narrowly avoiding a sniper’s bullet in Pennsylvania.

The former president said he felt “very confident” as he voted earlier in the day near his home in Palm Beach, Florida, with his wife, Melania.

“If I lose an election, if it’s a fair election, I’m going to be the first one to acknowledge it,” he said.

He posted earlier on his social media platform, Truth Social, saying “law enforcement coming” to Philadelphia because of “massive cheating”.

Philadelphia’s police department told BBC Verify they were unaware of any electoral fraud. The city’s top prosecutor said the allegation had “no factual basis whatsoever”.

Both sides have armies of lawyers on standby for legal challenges on and after election day.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump mega-donor, is spending election night with the Republican nominee at his Mar-a Lago resort in Florida.

Harris, who voted early by mail in her home state of California, is due later to address students at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington DC, where she was an undergraduate.

“To go back tonight to Howard University, my beloved alma mater, and be able to hopefully recognise this day for what it is is really full circle for me,” Harris said on a radio interview earlier.

If she wins, she would become the first woman, black woman and South-Asian American to win the presidency.

Trump would become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than 130 years. He is also the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted.

Exit polling by CBS also suggests that around a third of voters said the state of democracy was their top concern, out of the five options given.

The economy ranked second, with three in 10 voters choosing it, according to the preliminary data.

Abortion and immigration followed on the list, while foreign policy was deemed the least important.

Law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.

About 30 bomb threats hoaxes targeted election-related locations nationwide on Tuesday, more than half of them in the state of Georgia alone, reports CBS.

SIMPLE GUIDE: How to win the electoral college

RESULTS: When will we know who has won?

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

BBC COVERAGE: How to follow the US election on the BBC