Jessica Murphy
BBC News, Toronto

In January, well ahead of the US election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched Team Canada 2.0 - a soft power strategy to remind American lawmakers of the critical role the country plays in the US economy.

You may never have heard of the Team Canada approach - unless you’re a state politician or Washington DC lawmaker with a stake in cross-border trade. Then Ottawa hopes you may even be a little sick of Canadian trade envoys knocking at your door telling you that US-Canada goods and services trade is worth more than $908bn annually.

It’s a sign of how seriously Canada is taking the US election when the cross-border relationship is vital to its prosperity and security.

Trudeau’s government was able to navigate the renegotiations under Donald Trump of the North American Free Trade Agreement, now called the USMCA, in part due to the first Team Canada initiative, despite a tense Trudeau-Trump relationship.

Now there is fresh concern over the Republican candidates promise to bring in 10% tariffs - a potential disaster to trade. If Trump wins, Canada is also expected to face significant pressure to ramp up its Nato spending.

Kamala Harris has been less specific about her trade policies, though she is widely expected to maintain the current relationship.

While Trudeau’s Liberals - and many Canadians - are more politically aligned with the US Democrats, they have said they will be ready for whatever happens after 5 November.

Andrew Rogers
BBC Newsbeat, reporting from Edinburgh

Julia, Cylus and Illenia are American students studying at the University of Edinburgh and have been trying to encourage and help Americans abroad register their ballots.

They’ve held voter registration stalls, been in pub quizzes and had watch parties of the debates.

Cylus, from Massachusetts, feels it’s important for Americans abroad to exercise their right to vote.

“We’ve [normally] had bad turnout outside the US. And that’s a real shame, especially when we have such an important election," he says.

Julia feels people “are interested” seeing their information. “Everyone’s really friendly, and we haven’t had anything hostile,” she says.

For Illenia, it’s also been a chance to meet people from home.

Despite being Democrat supporters themselves, they say their stall is just to help people register from all political affiliations.

“We just want everyone to know that they can vote,” Illenia says.

“It's just our way of helping our own country while we're not living there,” Cylus adds.

Sylvia Chang
BBC Chinese, reporting from Pennsylvania

No matter who they vote for, "Chinese Americans should unite together to fight against racial discrimination,” says Dr Xiaoxing Xi, a Chinese American professor of Physics at Temple University in Pennsylvania.

In 2015, this world-renowned expert in superconducting technology was arrested by the FBI. He was accused of aiding Chinese entities in advancing their position in the field. Although all charges were dropped four months later, the incident changed Xi’s life. He is now suing the government and advocating against racial profiling.

Xi is one of multiple Chinese American scientists facing rising US-China tensions. Many believe they have become scapegoats amid geopolitical strife, especially since the launch of China Initiative in 2018, a controversial program aimed at curbing economic espionage and trade secret theft by China.

The US Department of Justice ended the program in 2022, recognising it had fostered racial profiling. However, there are legal efforts in Congress to reinstate it.

Although the bill is unlikely to advance in the current Democratic-controlled House, the upcoming elections might change the situation.

• Read more: Harris or Trump? What Chinese people want from US election

Kaine Pieri
BBC Africa

As the US election approaches, the stakes are high for African asylum seekers whose futures may hang in the balance.

The number of African migrants reaching the US-Mexico border has surged over the last few years, as they flee persecution and poverty, with many facing imprisonment or worse if forced to return home.

"We deserve safety, we see our politicians demonise our community," says Dr Yves Kaduli, a Congolese asylum seeker living in Virginia awaiting a decision on his case.

A Trump win could mean mass deportations and a return to strict border policies, while Harris has vowed a "faster, fairer" asylum process as she vows to resurrect a failed bipartisan border bill that faces criticism from human rights advocates.

Zhenya Shidlovska
Ukraine correspondent, reporting from Pennsylvania

At an autumn fair outside a Ukrainian church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I spoke to Maryana Babirad who was helping out at a food stall with her husband and three children.

They fled the war in their native Ukraine seven months ago for the US.

“It was the hardest decision,” she said, fighting back tears.

Several Americans with Ukrainian heritage at the event told me they are deeply concerned about Donald Trump's plans to seek a swift end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, which they fear could see Kyiv being pressured to give up territory to Moscow.

Democrats across the state are hoping this sentiment will help them appeal to the 120,000 Ukrainian-Americans in Pennsylvania, who have traditionally leant towards conservative candidates, to back Kamala Harris.

With the race in this battleground state on a knife-edge, issues like this could make a crucial difference.

Pennsylvania: At a glance

Will Grant
Mexico correspondent

Image source, Reuters

During the recent Mexican campaign, the eventual winner Claudia Sheinbaum – today Mexico’s first female president – told the BBC she didn’t mind who won the US election.

She said she would be ready to work with whoever wins and would "defend Mexicans always" in the face of any hostility, especially in their vital trade relationship.

With the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement up for renewal in two years, there is some potential for a clash of heads with Washington on shared issues of trade, undocumented immigration or illegal fentanyl trafficking.

Yet most Mexicans don't share President Sheinbaum’s apparent ambivalence. A recent poll suggested a little over two-thirds of Mexicans would prefer Kamala Harris to be the next US president, attracted to the idea of the first women leaders on both sides of the border.

And many Mexicans don't remember the Trump years very fondly either. Trump's language and political rhetoric - in which some Mexican immigrants were called "rapists" and "murderers" from the very start of his campaign - did not endear him to his neighbours to the south.

Traditionally, Iran’s position has been that Democrats and Republicans are both cut from the same cloth and neither would impact policy.

But underneath the surface, the result of the US election could have complex impacts on Iran.

With ongoing conflict in the Middle East, economic sanctions, and questions swirling around its nuclear power, there is plenty at stake for the nation.

Iran has been accused of targeting both candidates with hacking and disinformation, claims it has denied.

Our colleague Sarbas Nazari talks through the view from Iran in this two-minute clip:

Lucy Williamson
Middle East correspondent in Jerusalem

Image source, EPA

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has not hidden his appreciation for Donald Trump – and polls suggest he’s not alone.

Recent surveys suggest around two-thirds of Israelis would prefer to see Donald Trump in the White House.

Trump already has a solid track record of backing Israel. The last time he was president, he upended half a century of US policy – and wide international consensus – by recognising Israel’s territorial claims to the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 war.

He also earned points with Netanyahu, by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, brokering normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, and scrapping the Iran nuclear deal.

But political insiders in both Israel and the US also see Donald Trump as unpredictable, reluctant to involve America in foreign conflicts, and prone to ad-hoc deal-making.

That could mean less pressure over humanitarian issues, says former Israeli ambassador to the US, Danny Ayalon, but it could also mean other kinds of pressure, including over military aid.

“There’s no doubt that he would support Israel and send everything it needs, but unlike Biden, he may charge for it,” he said, referencing Trump’s insistence that Nato countries pay “their fair share” for defence.

Israel has received staunch political and military support from Joe Biden, but Ayalon says the current Democratic president is judged by his public differences with Israel, and by the marked absence of a White House invitation for Netanyahu.

Let's turn now to some global perspectives on the race for the White House.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have very different outlooks on the war in Ukraine – the issue Russia is most focused on in the US election.

BBC Monitoring’s Russia specialist Francis Scarr runs through how the Kremlin and the country’s media are treating this election:

Is violent crime up 37%, as Trump claimed?published at 18:56 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

18:56 GMT 29 October

By Lucy Gilder

During his press conference a little earlier, Donald Trump said “violent crime in the US is up 37%”.

This is correct, if you use one measure of violent crime and look at the increase between 2020 and 2023.

This measure is based on a nationwide survey, external of about a quarter of a million people who were asked whether they had been victims of crime.

The survey said that “while the 2023 rate was higher than those in 2020 and 2021, it was not statistically different from five years ago, in 2019”.

However, Trump is making a comparison with a year when violent crime - as measured by the survey - was significantly lower.

Violence prevention research specialist Prof Daniel Flannery says “picking a year during Covid that may represent the lowest crime rates then comparing to a more 'return to normal year' cherry picks two points in time. Comparing 2023 to a pre-Covid year may be more appropriate.”

There is another measure of crime – figures from the FBI – and these show that the rate of violent crime fell between 2020 and 2023.

Read more here.

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump has finished speaking at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where he began his news conference almost an hour and a half later than planned.

Our correspondents will be unpacking some of his claims, but before they do, here's a brief summary:

Polls: Trump begins by saying he's leading in all swing states. According to our poll tracker, he's very narrowly leading in five swing states, tied in one, and narrowly behind in another. But they're exceptionally close, and well within the margin of error.

Policy: Trump says his presidency will see the US will seize assets of "criminal gangs and drug cartels" and use them to compensate "victims of migrant crime". He also says there will be "no tax on social security for seniors", claiming they've been "decimated by inflation".

Hurricane Helene: Trump calls Fema - the government agency which responds to hurricanes - a "total disaster" during Hurricane Helene.

A little earlier we heard from Donald Trump as he kicked off the final week of his presidential campaign from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

In the speech, Trump defended his Sunday rally in the iconic Madison Square Garden as a "love fest".

The event was heavily criticised after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage".

"Politicians that have been doing this for a long time - 30 and 40 years - said there's never been an event so beautiful," he said. "It was like a love fest, an absolute love fest, and it was my honor to be involved."

Caitlin Wilson
US live editor

Thank you for submitting your questions about the ins and outs of the US election. If you're just catching up, check out our explanation from BBC reporters and correspondents about how the Electoral College works and whether celebrity endorsements might make a difference in who wins the White House.

We're going to pivot back to some news updates for now, including top lines from the news conference Donald Trump just gave in Florida.

And we're going to keep a focus on the international aspect of this campaign, with dispatches from BBC correspondents around the world on what leaders and ordinary people in their regions are thinking about the election. Plus, we've been speaking with US voters about what their foreign policy concerns are as they cast their votes.

Later this evening, we'll be covering Kamala Harris's speech here in Washington DC at the Ellipse along the National Mall, where she'll be delivering her final campaign argument to voters.

Stick with us, there's a lot to cover exactly one week out from election day.

How important are votes from Americans living abroad?published at 17:26 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

17:26 GMT 29 October

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America correspondent

Sylvia in Orkney, Scotland asks: How many US citizens live outside the US? Of those, how many are voters? I left for the UK 50 years ago but keep my citizenship and vote. In a tight election, when will the foreign absentee ballots be counted?

According to independent estimates, there are between 4.5m and 9m eligible US voters living abroad. Only a fraction of that number – less than 10% - cast ballots, however.

The process isn’t easy. Rules regarding deadlines and processing of those ballots vary from state to state. Many have to receive the ballot by mail within a week or so of the election. Some states, like California, allow voting by fax. Others accept emailed ballots. Voters can also drop off their paper ballots at a local US embassy. The votes that have been received early are counted on election day. The rest are tabulated as they arrive, as long as they're received before the states' deadlines.

In a nation of 346m people, a few million votes from abroad doesn’t seem like a lot. But the Democratic Party estimates that about 1.6m Americans abroad are eligible to cast ballots in the seven battleground states that will determine who wins the presidential election.

If this race for the White House is as close as polls suggest, even a few tens of thousands of votes one way or the other in these states could determine the overall winner.

If elected, how might Harris deal with international relationships in Africa?published at 17:08 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

17:08 GMT 29 October

Anne Soy
Senior Africa Correspondent, Nairobi

Justin from Kampala, Uganda asks: The United States is a great champion of democracy, and one of the biggest threats to democracy is dictatorship, corruption and impunity. How is Vice-President Harris going to handle dictatorship, corruption and impunity especially on the African continent if elected president?

The United States, regardless of the administration or political party, maintains significant influence across Africa.

Even though that influence has increasingly been challenged by China and Russia in recent years, on democracy and human rights, the US is still a strong voice.

It exercises that influence directly through diplomacy as well as sanctions.

Recent examples include the warning this week to impose visa bans on individuals who undermine the upcoming elections in Ghana, and sanctions on several Sudanese leaders for their roles in the ongoing war.

A Harris presidency is largely expected to continue many of these policies. Donald Trump’s style is however expected, as before, to be less involved in Africa.

What happens if there is a three-way tie in the election?published at 16:53 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

16:53 GMT 29 October

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Washington

Yordanos from Ethiopia asks: If three candidates run for an election - a Democrat, a Republican and an independent candidate - and somehow split the electoral vote with none of them getting 270 votes, who will be the next president?

For a candidate to win, a candidate must get 270 electoral college votes - and a process for when that happens is explained in the US Constitution.

According to Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 of the document, if no candidate gets to a majority - whether that is two or three candidates or more - then the election immediately heads to the House of Representatives, though this has only happened once before, in 1824. (Thanks to our reader, John, for pointing out our error in saying this scenario had never happened before!)

Each state would get one vote, no matter how large or small the state is. In practice, this would mean that each state's representatives would have to decide amongst themselves.

Whoever gets a majority, or at least 26 votes, would become president.

If it's still tied 25-25 by the time of the inauguration in January, the vice-president elect would serve as president until the House manages to elect a candidate with a majority.

It's worth noting, however, that a tie or a third-party win is extremely unlikely. This race, like the vast majority of those before it, will ultimately be won by one of the two main candidates.

What's the deal with Trump's tariff plan?published at 16:34 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

16:34 GMT 29 October

Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

Graeme in Falkirk, Scotland asks: Why, when Donald Trump says he will tax China heavily by increasing Import Tariffs, is more not made of explaining that China are not the payers of those tariffs. It is the US importer and then the US shopper/purchaser.

Hi Graeme, on a purely technical level, you are absolutely correct: American importers pay the tariff at the border – not foreign companies.

Now in theory, the introduction of a tariff could lead to a negotiation. Foreign sellers could end up lowering prices for US buyers, as a result of this extra cost. But academic studies, external of the tariffs Trump introduced during his first term found little evidence of this effect.

So, why, as you put it, is more not made of this? Politics.

After all, polls suggest, external Trump's ideas are pretty popular. When I've interviewed Americans about it, they are under few illusions about who would pay, but are open to the idea that the cost could be worth it. Mike Conlan, a business owner in Ohio, told me that a 10% tariff "wouldn’t change a whole lot" for the cost of the Christmas decorations he imports. "If it’s better for the whole country, then I’ll have to change,” he said.

Republicans have historically been the party defending free trade and business interests, while Democrats were more supportive of using tariffs to protect specific US industries. Trump's rise has scrambled those lines, leaving no clear voice in Washington to challenge him on this issue.

Why doesn't the popular vote determine the US presidential winner?published at 15:59 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

15:59 GMT 29 October

Brandon Livesay
Reporting from New York

Phil from Southampton, UK asks: The president is not elected by the ‘popular vote’ which I believe is the candidate with the most votes cast, but is elected by the ‘college vote’. So what is the ‘College Vote’?

Phil, you are quite right. Because of the Electoral College system, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 even after polling almost three million fewer votes.

That’s because it’s not a national tally of votes, it’s state-by-state. Each state has a certain number of votes in the Electoral College, which is determined by the state’s population. The map above shows how these numbers can vary in size.

Across the 50 states, there are 538 Electoral College votes. A candidate needs a majority of the votes - 270 or more - to win.

This system has pros and cons. It means smaller states are still important in the race, but it also puts the focus on just a few "swing states". And if your state always votes red or blue, you may feel like your vote doesn't matter as much as someone in a state like Pennsylvania, a key battleground with a hefty 19 Electoral College votes.

Keep in mind that this is a simplified explanation of a complex political mechanism, so if you want more details you can check out this Electoral College explainer.

What are the rules around Elon Musk's election lottery giveaway?published at 15:40 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

15:40 GMT 29 October

Bernd Debusmann Jr
US reporter

Alan in Chiang Mai asks: Regarding Elon Musk’s giveaway lottery prize to registered voters: What are the rules governing lottery prize draws and are any being bypassed? Are new guidelines needed to be considered regarding this practice?

That’s a question that’s still being hotly debated in the US after Musk - who has been supporting Donald Trump - announced earlier this month that he would randomly award a $1m prize to registered voters in battleground states - Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina - every day until 5 November

Some officials - including Democrats and even a group of 11 former Republican officials - have suggested that the move may be illegal.

Some experts the BBC has spoken to in the US, for example, have pointed to the US code on electoral law that states that anyone who "pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or voting" faces fines of up to $10,000 or a five-year prison sentence. The fact that Musk’s offer is only open to registered voters may violate this particular provision.

But others have said that case would be difficult to make in court, and the situation may exist in a sort of legal loophole. The Federal Election Commission has yet to comment, and the Justice Department has refused to do so - though it did warn musk his efforts could be against the law.

But on Monday, prosecutors in Philadelphia sued to stop Musk and his America PAC from offering money, accusing the billionaire of running “an illegal lottery”.

"America PAC and Musk must be stopped, immediately, before the upcoming presidential election on 5 November," Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner said in the lawsuit.

It's still too early to say whether any longer-term changes to the laws will be considered - but given the high-profile nature of Musk's offer, it's possible something that could at least be discussed.

How many political parties are there in the US?published at 15:15 Greenwich Mean Time 29 October

15:15 GMT 29 October

Brandon Livesay
Reporting from New York

W Dawson from Carmarthen, Wales asks: How many political parties are there in the US, and why don't they all get some publicity?

When you think of the US presidential election, it’s all about the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. It’s known as a two-party system.

But there are other political parties. A few you might have heard of are Libertarians, the Green Party, and the Constitution Party. There are others - some are specific to states, many are focused on a specific political outlook.

The reason they don't get much publicity is because of the Electoral College system. Unlike some other democracies which use proportional representation, the US Electoral College favours a winner-take-all approach.

Most states will give all of its electoral votes to the one candidate who wins the majority or plurality of support in the state.

For a third party candidate to get any electoral votes, they would need to win an entire state. That means some voters may feel like they are "throwing away" or "wasting" their vote if they don’t go for a candidate who has a chance to win.

The last third-party candidate to secure an Electoral College vote was George Wallace, in 1968. Wallace, an Alabama Democrat who ran for president with the American Independent Party, was pro-segregation and won several states in the Deep South.