Image source, Getty Images

Taking her first question (from AP news agency) as the White House press secretary, Psaki is asked about whether her priority is to promote the interests of President Biden, or provide "the unvarnished truth".

"I have deep respect for the role of a free independent press," Psaki responds. "There will be moments when we disagree… but we have a common goal, which is sharing accurate information with the American people.”

Psaki adds that she will join Biden in bringing "transparency and truth back to government".

US press secretaries have often had combative relationships with the media.

Donald Trump's first White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, faced early scrutiny after he claimed his boss had "the largest audience to ever see an inauguration".

Press secretary Jen Psaki says "rebuilding trust with the American people" will be the central focus of the Biden administration.

"When the president asked me to serve in this role," says Psaki in an implicit slight against her predecessors at the podium during the Trump era, "we talked about the importance of bringing truth and transparency back to the briefing room."

Image source, Getty Images

The first White House press briefing of the new administration is now underway.

Press secretary Jen Psaki will field questions from the White House Press Corps.

It is the first White House briefing in over a month.

President Trump's press secretary Kayleigh McEnany last took questions on 15 December before coming down with Covid.

We're watching it here, external.

Image source, Getty Images

We saw a handful of Twitter accounts change hands earlier today, as members of the new administration took ownership of official government accounts.

After Democrats recaptured the majority in the US Senate, it looks like Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell is now using his secondary account @LeaderMcConnell.

He previously held the account @senatemajldr, which as of now no longer exists.

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer remains at @SenSchumer, though the bio has been modified to include his new title: Senate Majority Leader. It is not clear if he will be migrated to the @senatemajldr account.

Image source, Getty Images

Joe Biden may be the 46th US president, but he's also among more than 20 presidents to have claimed Irish ancestry.

The new president's great-great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt was a brickmaker who hailed from the town of Ballina, County Mayo, in north-west Ireland.

Blewitt left the country in 1851 during the Great Famine and settled in Scranton, Pennsylvania - the city where Joe Biden was born.

Back home in Ballina today, the president's distant relatives cheered on "cousin Joe" as he took the oath of office.

Taoiseach (Irish PM) Micheál Martin also congratulated Biden on his "immense achievement", saying: "He is one of us, part of our global family."

In a letter to Biden, President Michael D Higgins offered his "heartfelt congratulations" and - taking a page from his US counterpart's well-known love of Irish poetry - finished with a poem.

Mark Savage
Music reporter, BBC News

Later tonight, the Foo Fighters will join the likes of Justin Timberlake, John Legend, Demi Lovato and Luis Fonsi at a televised concert marking Joe Biden's inauguration.

The band were asked to play one song - Times Like These, from their 2003 album One By One - and frontman Dave Grohl says the choice made "perfect sense, because of everything our country has been through".

"The song was written 18 years ago when I was at this crossroads in my life, questioning which way to go," he explains.

"And as terrifying as that can seem at times, it's necessary to be hopeful when you have to start again.

He continues: "This is a bit morbid - but whenever someone close to me has passed away, I've always found that you have to do everything in life once without them before you can move on. You have to learn to live again, you have to learn to love again.

"So there's optimism in the lyric and I think it's something that the world needs a lot of now.

"Change, as slowly as it may happen, is possible."

Image source, Getty Images

If Day One of the Joe Biden administration is any indication, the new president is wasting no time.

The 15 executive orders - and two presidential memos - he has just signed show Biden is moving forward at unprecedented speed in enacting his agenda and rolling back plenty of his predecessor Donald Trump's policies.

He is expected to sign several more orders in the next few days.

By comparison, after two weeks in the White House, President Donald Trump had signed just eight executive orders and President Barack Obama had signed nine.

The new administration has argued that the current state of the country - facing a surging pandemic and the economic fallout from it - warrant urgent action from the president.

Image source, Reuters

Biden's not done yet as he still has a few more actions to take before he spends his first night in the president's official residence at the White House.

Next up on his list is swearing in several White House appointees (the ones that don't require Senate confirmation).

At 19:00 EST, his press secretary Jen Psaki will give her first press conference from the James Brady Briefing Room. She's no stranger to a room full of reporters, having served as spokeswoman of the US State Department during Obama's tenure.

At 20:30 EST, actor - and Covid survivor - Tom Hanks will host a primetime televised event in lieu of an official inaugural ball. It will feature musical performances from Demi Lovato, Jon Bon Jovi, Justin Timberlake and other superstars.

Image source, EPA

As we've just reported, Joe Biden has now signed his first executive orders since becoming president, including measures requiring the use of masks and allowing the US to rejoin the Paris climate accord.

But what exactly are executive orders and why do they matter?

An executive order is a written action issued by the president that does not require Congressional approval.

Barack Obama used them frequently; Donald Trump issued a flurry in his first week in office.

Enshrined in the Constitution, this presidential power must work within the law, but executive orders are a controversial way for the president to act on his own.

An unhappy Congress could pass a law to override an executive order, but the president could then ultimately veto that law.

Presidents past have issued them to flesh out details of new laws, enact wartime orders, or avert domestic crises.

Read more about presidential executive orders here.

Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent

Make no mistake, returning to the Paris climate agreement is not mere symbolism - it is an act cloaked in powerful, political significance.

While re-joining the pact involves the simple signing of a letter and a 30-day wait, there could be no more profound signal of intention from this incoming administration. Coming back to Paris means the US will have once again have to follow the rules.

Those rules mean that sometime this year the US will have to improve on its previous commitment to cut carbon, made in the French capital in 2015.

This new target, possibly for 2030, and President Biden's commitment to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, will be the guide rails for the US economy and society for decades to come.

Coming back to Paris really means it is no longer "America First".

Read more from Matt here

Donald Trump may have broken with many traditions but there's one he did follow: leaving a note for his successor in the Oval Office.

It's not known what the letter says, but President Joe Biden has described the message as "very generous".

"Because it was private, I won't talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous," Biden said, according to CNN.

Image source, Getty Images

Wearing a black mask to prevent the spread of Covid-19, President Biden has just spoken to journalists for his first time as president from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

He refers to the "Covid crisis", "economic crisis" and the "climate crisis" as his highest priorities.

His first executive order, which does not require congressional legislation, calls for all Americans to wear masks to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Another will have the US rejoining the Paris climate accord, he said.

Chelsea Bailey
Digital producer, BBC News

Given how 6 January ended with a riot at the US Capitol, it’s not surprising that we’ve forgotten another seismic political event that day. Democrats unexpectedly won two run-off races in Georgia, handing control of the US Senate to the Democrats.

Looking back at my notes from interviews with celebrating Democratic voters in Georgia that morning, I was struck by how worried they were - oddly prescient, given a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol just a few hours later.

Ryan Shephard, a 34-year-old voter who attends Rev Warnock’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, warned Republicans against continuing to elevate baseless claims of voter fraud because of their racist undertones. “I think it’s in our nature as humans to feel attached to our team,” he said. “We’re all susceptible to it but there are darker elements too.”

He went on: “I hope that this moment transcends party and the Georgia election is a moment of reckoning for Democrats and Republicans that if we engage in practices of suppression, that will ultimately and always come back to haunt us.”

Hannah Gebresilassie, a 30-year-old voting rights activist, struck a more hopeful note. “2020 was a year of awakening to injustices and it ignited a flame in us,” she said. “I think we should let ourselves be in this moment but we also have to realise the work is going to continue. We have to hold them accountable and we’re not going to stay silent anymore.”

Image source, Getty Images

Kamala Harris has just overseen the swearing in of three new Democratic senators including Georgia lawmakers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, whose victories gave her party a majority in the Senate.

Kicking things off, Harris - who was a California senator until becoming vice-president earlier today - began by reading out her own resignation.

“Yeah, that feels very weird,” she said with a big chuckle after referring to herself as a "former senator".

Her replacement is Alex Padilla.

Reality Check

During his final speech as president earlier on Wednesday, Donald Trump said “we have the greatest economy in the world”, and prior to the pandemic the numbers were “at a level nobody had ever seen before”.

The US economy had certainly done well under Trump prior to the coronavirus outbreak, but there have been periods under previous administrations when it did better.

In his first three years in office, Trump oversaw an annual average growth of 2.5%. This was slightly higher than the final three years of the Obama era.

However, there have been many periods when the growth of GDP - the value of goods and services in the economy - was a lot higher.

And in 2020 the economy saw the largest contraction on record because of the pandemic.

It rebounded by 33% in the third quarter last year, itself a record for a quarterly increase, but this did not bring economic activity back to pre-pandemic levels.

President Trump also said: “Now the stock market is actually substantially higher than it was at its higher point prior to the pandemic”

The financial markets have been remarkably resilient. Although there have been recent wobbles, the stock market has bounced back to above pre-pandemic levels.

Kamala Harris was the first vice-president to have attended one of America's HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities).

Harris graduated from Howard University in Washington DC in 1986.

Her alma mater has brought sound and colour to today's proceedings, with its famous Showtime marching band escorting the vice-president along the inaugural parade route.

Harris and her friends at Howard were children of the civil rights generation.

Read more: The other women in the Kamala Harris college photo

Will Gompertz
BBC Arts Editor

Amanda Gorman, a 22-year-old Harvard graduate, is the youngest inaugural poet in US history, although you’d never know it from her wise words and the poise with which she spoke them. Her poem, The Hill We Climb, began:

When day comes we ask ourselves,

Where can we find light

In this never-ending shade

The tone was set for a six-minute recitation full of word-play, cautious optimism, and two references to Hamilton - the smash-hit musical about America’s founding fathers. The past, present and future were recurring themes.

It is a poem about national unity read in front of the Capitol building that was stormed earlier this month, a moment of national division to which she referred.

Image source, EPA

Looking down the National Mall towards the Lincoln Memorial where Rev Martin Luther King made his legendary civil rights speech in 1963, the Los Angeles-born poet invoked her own vision of the American Dream:

We, the successors of a country and a time,

Where a skinny black girl descended from slaves,

And raised by a single mother;

Can dream of becoming President,

Only to find herself reciting for one.

America’s first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate did her job, which was to find the right words at the right time. It was a beautifully paced, well-judged poem for a special occasion, but it will live long beyond the time and space of the moment.

Image source, Getty Images

Queen Elizabeth sent a private message to the newly inaugurated US president, Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

The contents of the message, which was sent before he officially took office, have not been disclosed.

Mr Biden is the 14th US president in office during the Queen's 68-year reign - the first was Harry Truman.

According to the UK Press Association, it is thought that Biden and the Queen have never met before.

Image source, Getty Images

Jessica Murphy
BBC News, Canada

Image source, Reuters

President Biden has made clear he will quickly cancel permits for the controversial Alberta-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline project.

It spells a rocky start for the relationship between the new US administration and Canada’s government, led by Justin Trudeau.

On Tuesday, the Canadian prime minister said his team was already “communicating our arguments in favour of Keystone XL directly to the highest levels of this administration”.

But any bilateral friction over the controversial pipeline project will be a bump in the road for the two leaders, who have more in common on policy than not. And Trudeau told Reuters recently he plans to meet Biden soon after the inauguration.

US presidents have made it a tradition to make Canada their first foreign visit - a tradition recently broken by Donald Trump.

And the leaders will have more than Keystone to discuss.

The two nations have deep bilateral ties on trade and security, and there’s the ongoing extradition case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and the two Canadians detained in China shortly after her arrest in Canada on a request by the US.

There is also the eventual re-opening of the Canada-US land border, which was closed last spring due to the pandemic and most recently extended into late February.

The Senate is coming into session now for the swearing in of three Democratic Senators-elect: Alex Padilla, Jon Ossoff, and Raphael Warnock.

Padilla replaces Vice-President Kamala Harris while the latter two were victorious in the recent Georgia state run-offs.

Their arrival means there's a 50:50 split but the Democrats effectively control the upper chamber, with Harris the deciding vote if each side votes with their party.