We reported earlier that Donald Trump left the White House this morning to play golf at his Virginia club. He was still there when the news broke that Joe Biden was projected to win the presidency.

There is now video footage of Mr Trump on the course. As you probably know by now, the president is a devoted golfer.

Trump and Biden supporters later turned up at the club, with cheering and jeering from both sides, the AP news agency reports.

We're told the president has now left the course.

Image source, Reuters

Kamala Harris has made history by becoming the first female US vice president-elect. She will also be the first black person and the first Asian American to serve in the VP role.

So, what's her story?

The Democrat was born in Oakland, California, to two immigrant parents - an Indian-born mother and Jamaican-born father.

Her early years included a brief period in Canada.

Harris says she's always been comfortable with her identity and simply describes herself as "an American".

She became the district attorney - the top prosecutor - for San Francisco in 2003, before being elected to serve as California's attorney general, the top lawyer and law enforcement official in America's most populous state. She was the first woman and the first black person to serve in that position.

In her nearly two terms in office as attorney general, she gained a reputation as one of the Democratic Party's rising stars, using this momentum to propel her election as California's junior US senator in 2017.

Harris launched her candidacy for president at the beginning of last year. She tried to walk a fine line between the progressive and moderate wings of her party, but ended up appealing to neither, ending her candidacy in December before the first Democratic contest in Iowa in early 2020. Months later, she was picked as Biden's running mate.

Read more about Harris here, or watch this video:

In the US, TV networks play a crucial role in calling the winner of the election.

After days of seemingly-indefatigable correspondents pointing to interactive maps and doing maths live on air, the time finally came on Saturday to say who would be the 46th president.

It came after days of suspense and hours of waiting for a batch of results to land from Pennsylvania.

Watch the moment as it happened.

Image source, Reuters

More reaction is coming in from world leaders, who are not waiting for Donald Trump to concede this election before congratulating his opponent:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she looked forward to “future cooperation" with Joe Biden.

“Our transatlantic friendship is irreplaceable if we want to overcome the great challenges of our time,” she said.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron tweeted his congratulations. “We have a lot to do to overcome today's challenges. Let's work together,” he wrote.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he was “looking forward to co-operating” with Biden and Kamala Harris and wished them "good luck".

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Biden had been “a true friend" to his country.

"I'm certain that under his presidency the relationship between our countries will grow even stronger," he said.

Less warm words came from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who mocked US democracy and said: "Regardless of the outcome, one thing is absolutely clear, the definite political, civil, & moral decline of the US regime.”

After tweeting to congratulate Biden and Harris, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a longer statement, , externalsaying Canada and the US “enjoy an extraordinary relationship – one that is unique on the world stage".

Both governments would "work to advance peace and inclusion, economic prosperity, and climate action around the world", he said.

The BBC is projecting that Joe Biden has won the state of Nevada. That gives the president-elect a further six electoral college votes, bringing his total to 279. He has a lead of 25,699 votes over Donald Trump in the state.

Nevada has voted largely for Democrats since 1992, but gave its backing to Republican George W Bush in 2000 and 2004.

The response from senior Republicans has been muted so far, but some have started to respond to the news of Biden's projected win.

Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted that "the media doesn't decide who wins elections, voters do." She said that any "investigations of irregularities or fraud" need time to "play out".

Trump has alleged that the election was riddled with fraud but has not provided any evidence. Earlier a top election commission official said there was no evidence of "any kind of voter fraud".

Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri made a similar claim to McDaniel on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Mitt Romney, a critic of Trump, has congratulated Biden and Harris.

He said he and his wife "know both of them as people of good will and admirable character".

Home pages of US media outlets are all splashed with the news that Joe Biden is projected to win the election.

Even the conservative Drudge Report could not resist a cheeky dig at the now lame-duck (i.e. presumed soon to be out of office) president:

Image source, Drudge Report

Barbara Plett Usher
BBC News, Delware

Under a Joe Biden presidency the US could re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement, rejoin the World Health Organization and seek to lead a global coronavirus response.

The Biden campaign describes this as a plan to restore American leadership and a promise to reverse the disruptive, unilateralist instincts of President Donald Trump.

The Democrat takes seriously the bruises inflicted on allies, and repairing the damage done would be at the top of his priority list, even if some core policy demands - such as pressure for Nato members to spend 2% of GDP on defence - stay the same.

But there would also be sharp policy turns: an aggressive focus on addressing climate change and an increase in refugee admissions.

Expect change in the Middle East too: not in fulsome support for Israel, but on Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Biden would re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement if Tehran resumed its commitments. And he’s said he'd end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has joined other world leaders in tweeting his congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He said Harris - the first woman and first African-American to become Vice President-elect - had made a "historic achievement" and said he looked forward to working closely with the Biden administration.

Johnson and his Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab attracted criticism earlier this week for falling short of condemning Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claims that the election had been riddled with fraud.

Our political correspondent Jessica Parker says the US and UK's "special relationship" may face a downgrade with Joe Biden at the helm.

"They won't be seen as natural allies: Joe Biden, the seasoned Democrat, and Boris Johnson, the bombastic Brexiteer," she writes. The UK government's manoeuvres in relation to Brexit have not gone down well with key Democrats and the Irish lobby in US politics, including the president-elect.

Read more about how what Biden's win means for the rest of the world.

Image source, Getty Images

Trump supporters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania turned up at the landscaping company where the Republican's legal team held a press conference earlier.

Some of them pushed against a chainlink fence to hear from Trump's top lawyer and close aide Rudy Giuliani - who said legal challenges to the results would begin on Monday.

(See our earlier post for more details on what he said.)

Image source, Getty Images

He's the projected winner of the US election, but what do we know about Joe Biden?

From his long political career to his personal tragedies, watch the video below to find out more about the president-elect:

US President-elect Joe Biden will give a speech tonight from his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.

He will be accompanied by his wife Jill Biden, his campaign has announced.

Vice-president elect Kamala Harris will also be there with her husband Doug Emhoff, but it is unclear if she will also be making an address.

Pictures are coming in from across the US of Biden supporters celebrating the news that he is projected to have won the election.

Here's a look at how some of them reacted:

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Here's the moment that Kamala Harris spoke to her running mate to celebrate their projected victory over Donald Trump.

Before the winner was projected earlier today, the campaign's communications director told our partners at CBS that the feeling in Delaware at Biden HQ was "joyful" and "elated".

Image source, Getty Images

Members of Trump's legal team have been speaking at a press conference in Philadelphia.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and one of his closest allies, has been outside the Four Seasons landscaping company. (Earlier, Trump created confusion by implying in a tweet that the event would take place at the luxurious Four Seasons hotel, but actually it is happening at a local business.)

Giuliani said the team will start posing legal challenges to the election results on Monday, claiming that dead Philadelphia residents (including actor Will Smith's father) voted this year. There does not appear to be evidence for this.

“You just don’t lose a lead like that without corruption,” he said of Trump's initial lead that disappeared as postal ballots began to be counted.

He said that people standing beside him were 50 to 60 poll watchers who were “uniformly deprived of their right to inspect any single part of the mail-in ballots”.

It's worth reminding you that a federal judge has already ruled that the Trump campaign does in fact have observers present in Philadelphia, who are monitoring vote counting right now.

Trump has sought to challenge the validity of the vote count since election night, without providing evidence for his claim. He has also said he won the election, not Joe Biden.

However, election officials have repeatedly stated that there are no grounds for fraud claims.

Americans need to know that "there is no evidence of any kind of voter fraud", Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission said on Saturday.

News of Joe Biden's projected win reached all corners of the world almost instantaneously after his victory was called by US networks thanks to Twitter and a global audience that has been holding its breath.

From the Chinese state media organ People's Daily to Brazil's Folha de Sao Paolo newspaper, headlines have rolled in calling Biden the next White House occupant.

There is always intense global interest in the US election, but this year, the prospect of Donald Trump becoming America's first one-term president since the early 1990s has captured huge interest around the world.

Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris has just sent out a tweet, accompanied by a video showing Americans from diverse backgrounds with the song "America, the Beautiful," by Ray Charles as the score.

"This election is about so much more than Joe Biden or me," she wrote.

"It’s about the soul of America and our willingness to fight for it. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started."

When news came in that Joe Biden is projected to win the presidency, Donald Trump was at his golf course in Sterling, Virginia, having left the White House earlier today.

It's from there that he's thought to have issued his statement regarding the result, which followed new numbers released from the key state of Pennsylvania.

Image source, Reuters

Political leaders have started congratulating Joe Biden on his projected electoral victory.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “really looking forward to” working with Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, as he highlighted the close relationship of the two countries.

Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin described the Democrat as “a true friend to this nation”.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “Congratulations from Scotland to President-Elect Joe Biden and the history-making Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris.”

UK Labour party and opposition leader Keir Starmer said Biden had run a campaign on “the values that we in the United Kingdom share - decency, integrity, compassion and strength”.

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, who earlier this week became one of the few world leaders to publicly back President Trump - claiming the incumbent had won the election while votes were still being counted - has been so far silent.

We have a statement from Donald Trump, who was apparently playing golf at his Virginia resort when news broke that Joe Biden is projected to have won the presidency.

“We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed," the written statement begins.

"The simple fact is this election is far from over," it says, correctly pointing out that the vote counts have not yet been certified by election officials and remain projections by news media.

However we should point out that this is normal after an election - the media projects a winner based on an analysis of the votes that have been counted.

Trump vows that "beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated", in a reference to legal challenges that have already been filed - and many rejected - in several states.

Trump claims, without evidence, that the Biden campaign "wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters".

“So what is Biden hiding? I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands."

Election observers and officials overseeing vote counts have repeatedly said that no widespread irregularities have been seen in the process.