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Georgia's top election official Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, is rejecting calls from within his own party to resign as the state moves toward two crucial runoff Senate elections that will determine the balance of power in that chamber.

"The voters of Georgia hired me, and the voters will be the one to fire me," Raffensberger said in a statement.

Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue - the incumbents heading towards January runoffs - have both demanded that Raffensperger step down.

In a joint statement, Loeffler and Perdue noted Raffensperger's "failures" in handling the state's election, without providing any evidence.

Raffensberger is overseeing the state's looming recount, but he has said that a change in outcome - from a Biden victory to a Trump victory - is "unlikely", comments that have likely angered some Republican colleagues.

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As the political transition in the US continues to be delayed, a second coronavirus wave there is gathering pace.

On Thursday at least 1,171 new coronavirus deaths and more than 163,000 new cases were reported. Daily cases have risen by more than 70% in the last two weeks. Six of the last nine days have set new records.

More than 242,000 people have now lost their lives to Covid-19 in the country. Texas and California have both recorded more than a million cases each.

The pandemic is seeing cities urge residents to follow new restrictions. Chicago has issued a stay-at-home advisory for thanksgiving.

Residents are "strongly advised" to not have family or friends round to their homes, the city's mayor said in a statement.

In New York, bars, restaurants and gyms must close by 22:00 and people can only meet in groups of 10 or less.

Joe Biden has made tackling the coronavirus pandemic his top priority following his win over Donald Trump.

One of his advisers has suggested a 4-6-week national lockdown to get cases under control but the top US virus expert Dr Anthony Fauci has said that won't be necessary if Americans wear masks and follow social distancing guidelines.

The rules of US democracy mean that Joe Biden will be the next US president regardless of Trump's legal efforts, ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has told the BBC.

Image source, Reuters/EPA

After nearly a week of silence, China has finally congratulated Joe Biden.

"We respect the choice of the American people. We extend congratulations to Mr Biden and Ms Harris," a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said on Friday.

Until this point, the Chinese government had been holding out, saying only that it had "noticed that Mr Biden had been declared winner".

The relationship between China and the US - the world's two biggest economies - is hugely consequential. A trade war initiated by President Trump has damaged relations, as has his insistence on referring to Covid-19 as the "Chinese virus" or "kung flu".

The two countries have also sparred over espionage, China's military build-up in the South China Sea and the mass detention of Muslims in western China.

It's unclear how much Joe Biden would shift US policy towards China, as there is rare cross-party agreement in Congress on getting tough with Beijing over trade and other issues.

Experts predict a tactical shift, however - they see a Biden White House working more with allies to confront China, while also seeking to co-operate in other areas, like fighting climate change.

Image source, EPA

Election staff in the southern state of Georgia will begin a recount of nearly five million votes on Friday - and they will be doing it by hand.

Biden leads in the state by about 14,000 votes according to the current tally, but because the margin is so slim, it automatically triggers a recount under state law.

Brad Raffensperger, the top election official in the state and a Republican, said there would be a hand tally of "every single lawfully cast, legal ballot".

Raffensperger has said he expects the recount to be complete by 20 November, the deadline for Georgia to certify its election results.

Election experts say that the recount is unlikely to change the outcome in Georgia as recounts often only adjust voting tallies by a few hundred votes.

Image source, AFP

The Las Vegas Review Journal newspaper says President Trump is trying to "delay the inevitable".

"It is too fitting that the Trump presidency concludes amid a babel of bluster and bravado," it adds. "But the president does a disservice to his more rabid supporters by insisting that he would have won the Nov. 3 election absent voter fraud. That’s simply false."

Why is this interesting?

Because the paper is owned by Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who has been one of Trump's best-known supporters, and one of his wealthiest donors.

In 2016, the Review-Journal was the first major newspaper to endorse Trump, according to the Washington Post, which says Adelson and his wife donated $75m (£57m) to a pro-Trump campaign group in August.

But reports suggest they might have fallen out.

"Mr Trump can keep fighting - and no doubt will. In the meantime, however, he has nothing to lose by cooperating with President-elect Biden’s transition team," the editorial says., external

As Trump continues to refuse to admit defeat, the BBC's Ros Atkins looks at what this means for democracy in the US.

On Thursday, Donald Trump claimed on Twitter, without proof, that 2.7 million votes for him had been "deleted".

The tweet was flagged - as many of his missives on the platform are these days.

But hours later, there was a more significant rebuttal.

"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," a committee made up of federal and state election officials said in a strongly-worded statement., external

They added: "The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result."

Trump's claim about vote-deletion was linked to the initial miscounting of votes in one Republican-leaning Michigan county. Unofficial results there at first favoured Mr Biden but were later corrected in President Trump's favour.

State election officials acknowledged what had happened, external, saying human error was to blame, rather than a software malfunction.

Image source, Reuters

Joe Biden has won Arizona, the BBC and US broadcasters project.

The state is worth 11 electoral college votes, and widens his lead on Donald Trump - the President-elect now has 290 electoral college votes, while the incumbent president has 217.

(A reminder: You need 270 to win.)

Of course Biden has already won the election, so does this really matter?

Well it does in some ways. Firstly, Biden has a margin of about 11,400 votes - so this is a very narrow win.

But Arizona has not voted for a Democrat since 1996 and Trump won here by 3.5 percentage points in 2016, so flipping the state is a considerable victory for the Biden campaign, which targeted the growing population of young Latino voters.

It also further cements the Biden-Harris victory, at a time when many senior Republicans are still yet to acknowledge the result.

Biden now leads Trump nationally by 5.3m votes.

Former US President Barack Obama has said senior US Republicans are undermining democracy by going along with President Donald Trump's refusal to admit that he lost last week's election and his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.

Obama - Trump's Democratic predecessor - said the allegations were motivated by the fact that "the president doesn't like to lose".

Mr Obama was speaking ahead of the release of his new memoir, A Promised Land, which charts his rise to the US Senate and first term as president. Due for release on 17 November, it is the first of two books covering his time in the White House.

Read more here

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Hours after polls closed in the US election, as votes were being counted, Donald Trump claimed fraud - without providing evidence - and said: "We'll be going to the US Supreme Court."

To date, the only election that hinged on a US Supreme Court decision was in 2000 when Al Gore was defeated by George W Bush.

So it's tempting to make comparisons between the two elections but they can be misleading.

The 2000 election came down to one state - Florida - where both candidates were separated by only a few hundred votes. By contrast, Donald Trump has filed lawsuits in several states, and the margins with his rival Joe Biden are far greater.

So what happened in Florida, and how is this year's election different? Find out here

Image source, Reuters

Thanks for joining our live coverage of US politics. President-elect Joe Biden is stepping up preparations for office while President Trump continues to make unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.

There have been quite a few major developments since we paused our coverage:

• A group of top federal and state election officials directly rebutted claims emanating from the Trump campaign that many votes were deleted - saying the election was the "most secure in American history"
• Meanwhile Joe Biden was projected to have won Arizona - increasing his tally of electoral college votes to 290 and further cementing his victory
• And China, after nearly a week of silence, finally extended congratulations to Biden and Kamala Harris