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Joe Biden has picked veteran political operative Ron Klain to be White House chief of staff.

Klain has served as a top aide to Biden since the 1980s in the Senate and later when he was vice-president.

The ultimate Washington insider, Klain was also a senior White House aide to Barack Obama and chief of staff to Vice-President Al Gore.

He was played by actor Kevin Spacey in the movie Recount, about the presidential election of 2000.

The White House chief of staff - who manages the president's daily schedule and is often described as his gatekeeper - is a political appointee who does not require confirmation by the Senate.

On winning the election, US presidents call up their peers around the world. Whom they speak to and what they talk about can show their foreign policy agendas for the years ahead.

On Wednesday Biden’s transition team announced he had spoken with the leaders of Australia, Japan and South Korea, external. All three are key US allies in the region, and the president-elect told Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea that he wanted to deepen those ties.

Trump made security in the region - particularly against a nuclear-armed North Korea - a key feature of his presidency, holding historic meetings with its leader Kim Jong-un. But he also clashed on occasion with traditional US allies in the area, including Australia. Trump infamously rang then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the start of 2017 over the fate of some 1,000 refugees - a call Turnbull called “very frank and forthright”.

Welcome to our US election live page, where you can follow the latest political twists and turns from the country where a stand-off rarely seen in American democracy continues with President Donald Trump refusing to accept defeat.

However, President-elect Joe Biden is ploughing on with preparations to take power on 20 January, with the Trump administration so far not co-operating with the handover. Here are some of the headlines:

• Biden has spoken to more national leaders as prime ministers and presidents the world over congratulate him on his victory over Trump
• US media report that the US state department is stopping the president-elect from reading a stack of international messages. Some leaders however have been noticeably silent since the election – you can find out who here
• The Trump administration is also refusing to help with a more pressing issue – national security. Biden still hasn’t got access to the President’s Daily Brief, a summary of classified intelligence offered to presidents since 1946. Republican Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma has pledged to “step in and push” if Biden hasn’t started receiving it by Friday
• Biden has started appointing key members of his team. On Wednesday he announced Ron Klain as White House chief of staff, a top aide of his since the 1980s and his chief of staff when he was vice-president
• Trump however continues to make unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud and his teams have filed several lawsuits seeking to overturn the result