US Election Results 2020 live: Trump alleges ballot counting abuse

Congress began a lame-duck session Monday facing uncertain odds for a new Covid-19 relief bill, with the split decision in the election empowering both President-elect Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell while eroding the hardline negotiating posture of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The outlook for legislation was also clouded by President Donald Trump's refusal to concede his defeat in the election. He was the chief GOP force pushing for the legislation this fall _ at least when he thought it could assist his reelection _ but his posture now is at best uncertain.

Republican surrogates for President Donald Trump resumed their legal fight Monday to try to stop the vote count in key battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan, but faced long odds given the Electoral College tally and recent court rulings that found no evidence of widespread vote fraud.While some Republican officials invoked the Trump mantra that only ``legal votes'' should be counted, others emerged to counter the campaign narrative and urge voters, and perhaps the president, to support the results.

It was supposed to be a scene of celebration. Instead, the Trump campaign's election night watch party in the White House East Room _ with few masks and no social distancing _ is being eyed as a potential coronavirus super-spreading event and yet another symbol of President Donald Trump's cavalier attitude toward a virus that is ripping across the nation and infecting more than 100,000 people a day. Ben Carson, the secretary for Housing and Urban Development, is the latest attendee to test positive, a department spokesman confirmed. The event has been under scrutiny since another attendee, the president's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, contracted the virus, which has now killed more than 237,000 people in the U.S. alone. Carson's deputy chief of staff Coalter Baker said the secretary ``is in good spirits`` and ``feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery.'' Carson is a retired neurosurgeon.

Two Indian-American surgeons Dr Vivek Murthy and Dr Atul Gawande, have been included in Covid-19 Advisory Board, which will help shape President-elect Joe Biden's response to the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 2, 37,000 in the US.The US is the worst-hit nation from the pandemic with nearly 10 million Covid-19 cases.

A police chief in the southern US state of Arkansas has resigned after taking to social media following Joe Biden's presidential win to urge violence against Democrats.Lang Holland, the police chief in Marshall, a small city located about 100 miles (180 kilometers) north of the state's capital Little Rock, vented his anger at Biden's victory on Parler, a right-wing social media site.

President-elect Joe Biden, a champion of green energy and a higher minimum wage, could prove to be a game-changer for some US businesses. How far-reaching the new administration's reforms can be, however, will depend largely on who controls the Senate, and that outcome will not be decided until January 5 after two run-off elections in Georgia. President Donald Trump has shaken up US trade relations, imposing steep tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of goods, sparking retaliation from trading partners and pushing prices higher.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday China's attempt at coercive diplomacy by imprisoning two Canadians in retaliation for the arrest of a top Huawei executive isn't working and he expects President-elect Joe Biden administration's to be a good partner in convincing Beijing to release them.

US President-elect Joe Biden on Monday said that the vaccine process to fight the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic should be "grounded in science and fully transparent" to the American people.

The European Union will "regrettably" impose tariffs on imports of $4 billion in US goods from Tuesday, EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said, while hoping that President-elect Joe Biden will foster a sharp improvement in transatlantic ties. The bloc will exercise the right to counter-measures awarded to it last month by the World Trade Organization in a case against US planemaker Boeing, part of a long-running US-EU battle over civil aviation subsidies.

Global financial markets soared Monday as news of a successful coronavirus vaccine trial and Joe Biden's US election victory bolstered investor confidence, sending New York to record highs. Already up strongly in on Biden's victory, markets massively accelerated gains after Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said a Phase 3 trial showed that their vaccine was 90 percent effective in preventing Covid-19 infections.

The Trump campaign's strategy to file a barrage of lawsuits challenging President-elect Joe Biden's win is more about providing President Donald Trump with an off-ramp for a loss he can't quite grasp and less about changing the election's outcome, according to senior officials, campaign aides and allies who spoke to The Associated Press.