Image source, Reuters

Many people around the world are adapting to the news of Joe Biden's victory and are watching as Donald Trump refuses to help the handover, but for one company in Japan it's been a smooth transition.

Ogawa Studios north of the capital Tokyo started making rubber Biden masks earlier this year. Since the Democrat was declared the winner it's increased production and slowed down on the Trump masks.

The manager, Koki Takahashi, however told Reuters news agency that it had been more difficult to make a Biden mask.

"We didn't have any background information on Biden so it was hard to grasp his character," he said. Trump's mask shows the Republican leader shouting, while Biden's mask depicts a much gentler smile.

The mask maker told Reuters they "especially paid close attention to the corner of his eyes and his mouth to make it".

Image source, Reuters

We've been asking our readers for their most pressing questions about the US election. Now it's our turn to respond.

Francois, 46, from Quebec, Canada, asks: Is this the end of Trump's active political career or political influence?

The first part of your question is relatively easy. While a defeated Donald Trump would be eligible to seek other elective office or run for the president again in four years, at age 74 it seems probable that his career in public office would come to an end.

The second part is trickier. Over the past four years, Donald Trump has succeeded in taking over the Republican Party and remaking it in his own image. It seems unlikely that the president would just disappear if defeated.

He would still have a highly influential platform on social media. He might even decide to continue holding mass rallies for his supporters or start a conservative media company to rival Fox News.

While there would be some Republicans who might try to take the party in a different direction, Trump's brand of pugilistic conservative populism is already attracting imitators and would-be heirs (some of whom, like Donald Trump Jr, are actual heirs).

As long as Trump commands the devotion of his legions of fans, he will continue to have considerable sway within the party - as a kingmaker and agenda-setter - even if last week's election ends in a resounding defeat for the man himself.

Click here to learn more about this project - or to submit a question of your own.

Image source, Reuters

If you’re joining us from the US, good morning! Our live page is covering the latest twists and turns as President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office in January, while Donald Trump refuses to admit defeat.

Fox News is leading on the news that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – who ran to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate – has confirmed he would be open to the possibility of taking the job of labour secretary, external under Biden, a move that’s been suggested but not confirmed in recent days.

Broadcaster CNN meanwhile reports that the Trump administration is stopping Joe Biden from accessing a swathe of messages, external from global leaders. State Department officials reportedly said they were not being passed on, as normally happens when countries congratulate a president-elect.

The Wall Street Journal leads on the Trump campaign’s legal efforts after the election, external. Advisers and lawyers for the defeated president are reportedly trying to prevent officials in key states from certifying counts, despite Trump reportedly knowing he has no chance of winning the cases or of overturning the election result.

The New York Times meanwhile is leading on the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to tear through the US. On Wednesday the country recorded more than 144,000 cases in the previous 24 hours, its highest daily infection level to date, and the newspaper is looking at some of the most badly hit parts of the country, external.

Image source, Reuters

After an election in which manifestos often struggled to get a look-in, there is now a clearer focus on how policies will be formed under a Biden administration.

Immigration may not top the list - the Biden transition website, external lists Covid-19, the economy, racial equality and climate change as the top four - but it is a core issue for Joe Biden.

He is said to be preparing executive orders - those that don't need approval by Congress - for when he takes office.

And on immigration he plans (among other things) to:

• Restore protection from deportation for some 650,000 people who arrived illegally as minors (the Daca programme)
• Build no more of the Trump border wall on the southern border with Mexio
• Reverse the travel ban on people visiting from 13 mainly Muslim-majority nations
• Find the parents of more than 600 children separated under the Trump "zero-tolerance" border policy

Ritu Prasad
BBC News writer, Florida

We've been asking our readers for their most pressing questions about the US election. Now it's our turn to respond.

Colin, 78, from Keighley, UK, asks: Why are there more postal votes for Biden?

Let's take a look back at the months preceding Election Day. You may recall Trump early on disparaged the use of postal voting, alleging without evidence that there was widespread fraud.

Though the president's campaign, later on, told supporters voting by mail was OK, many chose instead to turn out to the polls.

This is why analysts correctly predicted we'd see an initial "red wave" on Election Day because many votes cast in person were from Republicans.

On the other hand, Biden supported postal voting in the pandemic from the start so, in turn, more Democrats opted for this method.

And as more of the postal votes sent in were counted (which is all legal), Biden saw his vote count rise.

Click here to learn more about this project - or submit a question of your own.

Nearly 72 million people voted for Donald Trump last week. Some of the president's supporters in Pennsylvania spoke to the BBC about the election result and explained what Joe Biden could do for them as president.

"If he could be fair and if he could listen to us, the working-class people, the people that are paying the taxes and paying their salaries instead of just handing everything out, I think we could all get along, I do," one supporter told the BBC.

Image source, Reuters

Donald Trump has made numerous, unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in this election - before voting even began he questioned the safety of postal ballots, despite experts saying there was no evidence to support this.

US news site Politico has now conducted an opinion poll among voters, external. Of the 1,987 questioned, 70% of Republicans said they did not think the vote was free or fair, compared with 35% before the election.

And among those Republicans, 78% said they thought mail-in ballots led to widespread voter fraud, as Trump argued.

In contrast, 90% of Democrats expressed confidence in the vote, up from 52% before 3 November.

The poll's margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The BBC's Reality Check team has fact-checked five of the most viral claims about the election. You can read their piece here

Image source, Getty Images

We reported earlier about the states where legal challenges have been launched (apart from Pennsylvania) by the Trump campaign after the vote result. The count in those states stands thus:

• In Michigan, Biden leads by 148,645 votes with 100% of votes counted. He has been projected as the winner here
• In Nevada, he leads by 36,870 votes with 95% of votes counted
• In Arizona, he leads by 11,635 votes with 99% of votes counted

Image source, Reuters

Joe Biden held a double-digit lead in national polls before the election on 3 November. In the end, the result was closer than that, with Donald Trump performing far better than predicted, and the Republican party winning some key contests for seats in Congress.

Nate Silver, who founded the polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight, has defended those polls. In an article published Wednesday on the site, external he said the polling situation in 2020 was "complicated" and stressed that polls could not predict anything with certainty.

"If you want certainty about election outcomes, polls aren’t going to give you that — at least, not most of the time," he wrote, and defended the practice, writing that he was "amazed" polling was as accurate as it was.

"The main reason that polls aren’t going to provide you with the certitude you might desire is because polls have alwayscome with a degree of uncertainty," he said.

The BBC’s head of statistics, Robert Cuffe, has noted that most opinion polls did call most states correctly.

But he added: “Joe Biden’s lead in the national poll and most battleground states is consistently smaller than the final polling averages suggested.”

Aside from Pennsylvania, which we covered earlier, the Trump campaign has launched lawsuits in several states after the vote result.

• In Michigan, the campaign filed a suit on 4 November demanding a halt to vote counting, saying there was no access to poll watchers. A judge dismissed the suit due to insufficient evidence. Another lawsuit was filed on 9 November, external, seeking to block the certification of results in Wayne County, citing further complaints from poll watchers
• A lawsuit filed on 5 November in Nevada alleging "lax procedures for authenticating mail-in ballots and over 3,000 instances of ineligible individuals casting ballots"
• The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit, external in Arizona on 7 November, saying some legal votes were rejected. The lawsuit is under review, but Arizona's secretary of state said it was "grasping at straws".

Despite all this effort, the outlook doesn't look good for the Trump campaign. Karl Rove, chief strategist for George W Bush's 2000 presidential campaign - an election which was settled in the Supreme Court - wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, external that the lawsuits were "unlikely to move a single state from Mr Biden’s column, and certainly they’re not enough to change the final outcome".

You can read about all the different legal cases and requests for recounts here

Image source, EPA

Pennsylvania - the state of Joe Biden's birth - handed the president-elect his victory, with major news organisations projecting him to have clinched its 20 electoral votes on Saturday.

Donald Trump, however, has made numerous unsubstantiated allegations about voter fraud, and has filed several lawsuits there.

The day after the election, his campaign filed a suit alleging a lack of access for poll watchers, demanding they be allowed to stand closer to the count. The next day they filed a federal suit to stop the count in Pennsylvania, which was rejected.

Election officials in the state insist they have behaved properly. And it's unclear how likely any of this is to succeed.

Another Trump campaign suit filed on 9 November demanding a stop to the certification of results was dismissed as "meritless" by Pennsylvania's attorney-general.

In the background is a dispute over postal ballots received after election day, which could end up in the US Supreme Court.

Before 3 November - election day - state Republicans demanded that any votes which arrived after that date even if postmarked before should not be counted, something a court rejected. The Supreme Court was eventually deadlocked on the issue - before its newest ninth justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed - and this legal challenge continues.

State officials say the 10,000 ballots that arrived in the three days after 3 November have been kept to one side after a court order to do so. After 99% of ballots have been counted, Joe Biden is ahead of Donald Trump in the state by 53,000 votes.

Although Latinos historically lean Democrat, their support for the Republican party has been increasing.

We look at how the Latino vote helped shape the outcome of the election.

Democrats and Republicans are worried social media platform bans on political adverts could prevent them from reaching voters ahead of the Georgia Senate run-offs, CBS reports, external.

Two key Georgia races in January will decide control of the Senate. Adverts ahead of those races aim to increase voter turnout, they say.

Facebook has said that its temporary post-election ban on political advertising - aimed at preventing the spread of misinformation - is likely to be extended for another month.

In an email to advertisers, the social media giant said a four-week extension should be expected, but that there "may be an opportunity to resume these ads sooner".

Announcing in October that it would stop running all political and social-issue adverts after polls close in the US presidential election, Facebook said it was necessary to "reduce opportunities for confusion or abuse" ahead of official results.

Meanwhile, Google also appears to be extending its ban on political advertising in the US. The tech company confirmed to the Financial Times newspaper that the measure - initially put in place for the duration of a week following the 3 November election - remained in force.

Image source, Reuters

The hubbub over recounts has also added to criticisms of another aspect of US elections: projections.

Some Republicans have lashed out at news networks for projecting a winner in the states, claiming it's not their job to do so and results aren't certified.

What does all this mean?

As there's no single nationwide electoral body in the US, news organisations have long made their own projections during election day (or week, in this case).

They do this by analysing voter interviews, polling data and actual votes counted in precincts. Major networks have always projected winners when all this data shows a candidate has an unbeatable lead - some have described this as 99.5% certainty.

Remember: these are always predictions and not official results, which typically take several weeks as states canvass (or review) all their votes.

Once this review process is done, the states say the results are certified and their groups of electors - who are the people who actually vote for the president in the Electoral College - are put together.

This year, they have until 8 December to do so. Electors must cast their ballots on 14 December.

If you need a refresher on the electoral college system, check out our explainer here.

Since 1946, US presidents have been given a daily summary of national security and classified intelligence data. Presidents-elect are also traditionally granted access to the President's Daily Brief (PDB) - Bill Clinton started giving George W Bush a copy of the brief before he was confirmed as winner of the election in 2000.

Joe Biden, however, has not yet received the PDB. It means he is not getting updates on US enemies abroad or threats to the nation at home.

Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma has pledged to "step in and push" if Biden is not receiving it by Friday.

"I’ve already started engaging in this area," he told local radio station KRMG in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Andy Card and John Podesta - White House chief of staff to Bush and Clinton, respectively - this week wrote in the Washington Post, external of the dangers of a delayed transition, stressing that the US had "learned the serious costs of a delayed transition".

"Less than eight months after Bush’s inauguration, two planes flew into the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 Americans," they wrote.

Image source, Reuters

Four former Homeland Security chiefs have warned that the delay in transitioning powers to the Biden team is threatening US national security.

In a statement, Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson - who together have formed the groupCitizens for a Strong Democracy, external- said Mr Trump's legal claims "cannot and must not prevent the transition process from beginning".

"Our country is in the middle of twin crises: a global pandemic and a severe economic downturn. The pandemic will make any transition more complicated.

"At this period of heightened risk for our nation, we do not have a single day to spare to begin the transition. For the good of the nation, we must start now.”

Ridge and Chertoff served as secretaries of Homeland Security under Republican President George W Bush, while Napolitano and Johnson headed the agency under Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Chertoff oversaw the department's transition to Napolitano. Johnson oversaw its transition to the Trump administration.

The US is seeing a surge in coronavirus cases, with a record 65,368 Americans in hospital on Wednesday. The Covid Tracking Project also reported a record 144,270 new cases. An average of over 900 people a day are now dying with the disease.

Texas has become the first state with more than one million confirmed cases, and California is getting close to that number, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reports.

Cases per day are on the rise in 49 states, and deaths per day are climbing in 39, AP says.

Experts warn hospitals across the country could soon be overwhelmed.

President-elect Joe Biden has assembled a panel of experts to devise ways to combat the pandemic.

On Wednesday, one of them said a four- to six-week lockdown could bring the pandemic under control.

The US has now seen more than 10.4 million cases of the virus, and more than 240,000 deaths, according to figures collated by Johns Hopkins University.

As we've explained before, the US picks its presidents using something called the electoral college. Each state votes for a candidate, and the winner is assigned a certain number of electoral college votes - and once one candidate has more than half the total 538 electoral college votes, they win the presidency.

Joe Biden crossed the crucial halfway mark of 270 votes last Saturday when he was projected to win Pennsylvania. States however need to officially confirm their vote tallies. There are three states which technically remain up-for-grabs:

• As things stand in Georgia, Joe Biden is ahead of Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes. Georgia is heading for a recount, as under its election rules a defeated candidate can request a recount if a margin of victory is under 0.5%. The state has not voted for a Democratic candidate since 1992
• Biden is similarly ahead in Arizona, and some media organisations have already projected he has won the state - although the BBC has not done so yet. Arizona's secretary of state will certify results on the fourth Monday after the election under state law, external - meaning 30 November this year
• Things are far less close in North Carolina, where Trump leads by around 73,000 votes. The state board of elections says the final county canvass of results is on 13 November, external and final state canvass on 24 November

You can see the BBC's full results page here

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

It's been days since the White House race was called for Democrat Joe Biden, but Donald Trump has yet to concede - or show any signs of acknowledging his defeat.

Instead, he is making unproven allegations of widespread voter fraud, which he says tipped the race to Biden.

The maths, however, are daunting - he trails by tens of thousands of votes in several states he would have to overturn in order to succeed. Most see it as a lost cause.

Trump's position, in defiance of political norms and traditions, is sending tremors throughout the nation, as public officials and American voters react to a situation that, while telegraphed for months in advance, is still travelling uncharted terrain.

Here's a look at how some key groups are handling these days of uncertainty. And how it might all play out.

Image source, g

If (like us) you're into pretty maps, graphs and charts showing all the nitty-gritty of elections, then you're in luck.

Our team has done an in-depth guide to how Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump - showing which states flipped from Republican to Democrat, who voted for which candidate, and how the election night played out.

You can see for yourself here