US election results 2020 live: Georgia audit to trigger hand tally of presidential vote

Georgia's top election official on Wednesday said the state will conduct a recount of all paper ballots cast in the November 3 presidential election. "Mathematically, you actually have to do a full hand-by-hand recount of all because the margin is so close," Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at a news conference. "We want to start this before the week is up."

President Donald Trump's Republican Party won another seat in the US Senate Wednesday, with a victory in Alaska that puts it one vote away from a majority in the upper house of Congress. Incumbent Dan Sullivan was easily reelected with more than 57 per cent of the vote, according to CNN and NBC television projections.

Facebook Inc expects that its post-election ban on political ads will last another month, according to an email the social media company sent to advertisers on Wednesday. Facebook, which had announced the ban as part of measures to combat misinformation on its site, had previously said the ban would last at least a week but could be extended. "While multiple sources have projected a presidential winner, we still believe it's important to help prevent confusion or abuse on our platform," Facebook said in the email, seen by Reuters.

The leaders of close US allies on Tuesday telephoned President-elect Joe Biden and pledged to work together but in an extraordinary break, America's top diplomat Mike Pompeo insisted that Donald Trump would remain in power.British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel all offered congratulations in calls to Biden, who a week earlier edged out Trump in the presidential election.

President-elect Joe Biden's transition teams for the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department will be run by several agency alumni who served under President Barack Obama and helped craft regulations like the Clean Power Plan and tougher fuel economy standards for vehicles.

Nearly 80% of Americans, including more than half of Republicans, recognize President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the Nov. 3 election after most media organizations called the race for the Democrat based on his leads in critical battleground states, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. While the race with Republican incumbent Donald Trump still remained undecided in three states by late Tuesday afternoon, Biden - who needed 270 Electoral College votes to win - had 279 of those votes to 214 for Trump, according to Edison Research. In the popular vote, Biden got 76.3 million, or 50.7% of the total, to 71.6 million, or 47.6%, for Trump.

The Biden campaign's lawyer is dismissing President Donald Trump's legal challenges to Joe Biden's victory as ``theatrics'' that are intended ``to instill in the minds of some portion of the populace that the election was illegitimate.``

President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday called President Donald Trump's refusal to concede his election loss an "embarrassment" but dismissed the standoff as unimportant."I just think it's an embarrassment, quite frankly," Biden said when asked what he thinks about Trump's refusal to acknowledge defeat in the November 3 election.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday voiced confidence that once every "legal" vote was counted, it would lead to a "second Trump administration," appearing to reject Democratic challenger Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump.He spoke as world leaders, including Washington's close allies Britain and France, already have congratulated President-elect Biden. Trump, a Republican, has so far refused to concede and made baseless claims that fraud was marring the results.