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A French armed robber narrowly avoided capture more than three weeks after escaping from prison, police say.

Convicted gangster Rédoine Faïd was spotted by patrol officers near Paris on Tuesday afternoon, police sources told AFP news agency. He fled the scene and abandoned a car with explosives and fake number plates in a shopping centre car park.

On 1 July Faïd, 46, broke out of a prison with the help of armed accomplices who hijacked a helicopter.

The Jailbird King, as he is dubbed by French media, was serving a 25-year sentence for a failed 2010 robbery during which a police officer was killed.

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Pakistan has been hit by violence on the day of its general elections – with at least 31 dead in the worst attack.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a polling station in the city of Quetta. The Islamic State group said it had carried out the attack.

Elsewhere, minor blasts and clashes left several injured and two dead.

Millions have voted in the polls, with the parties of ex-cricket star Imran Khan and disgraced former PM Nawaz Sharif competing for the most seats.

Voting officially closed at 18:00 (13:00 GMT), with the results probably known early on Thursday.

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Russian investigators have arrested an award-winning 74-year-old space scientist, who is suspected of passing missile secrets to a Nato country.

Viktor Kudryavtsev is in custody in Moscow, the state space agency Roskosmos confirmed.

On Friday security agents raided a Roskosmos research facility called TsNIIMash in Korolyov, near Moscow. The alleged spying concerns hypersonic missiles, which fly at more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5).

On Friday Russia’s Kommersant daily reported that about 10 staff at TsNIIMash were under suspicion. A director’s office was among the areas searched there. Suspects could be charged with high treason, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) also searched offices at the United Rocket and Space Corporation (ORKK) in Moscow.

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North Korea appears to have begun dismantling part of a key rocket launch site in the country’s north-west.

Satellite images of the Sohae station seen by US-based monitoring group 38 North suggest Pyongyang is complying with a promise made to the US in June.

US President Donald Trump said North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un had vowed to destroy an engine test site, but did not specify which one.

Pyongyang has maintained that Sohae is a satellite launch site. But US officials suspect that it has been used to test ballistic missiles.

During a landmark meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore last month, the two leaders signed a deal to work towards the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”.

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Boris Johnson has said his successor as London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, must take responsibility for knife crime in the capital.

Mr Johnson, who was mayor until 2016, said it was a “scandal” that the murder rate in London was higher than in New York in February. In a newspaper article, he accused Mr Khan of blaming “everyone but himself”.

A spokeswoman for the mayor said Mr Johnson’s words were “desperate nonsense”. Mr Khan has previously blamed government cuts to police budgets for the rise in violent crime.

Writing in the Telegraph, former foreign secretary Mr Johnson said: “It is tragic that so many young lives are again being lost on the pavements of our capital.

“But for my money there is a further outrage – and that is the abject failure of the mayor of London either to grip the problem, or even to take responsibility.” He added: “He [Mr Khan] blames everyone but himself, when it is his paramount duty to keep Londoners safe.”

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