Mumbai: When US President-elect Joe Biden was in India’s financial capital in 2013, he had told an audience that his distant relatives live in Mumbai.

Biden reiterated his claim two years later at an event in Washington, saying there are five Bidens living in Mumbai.

With the 77-year-old Democrat set to take oath as the 46th US President in just over two months, nobody in Mumbai has so far turned up to claim that he is Biden’s relative.

Decades after he received a letter from someone by the last name of Biden from Mumbai, soon after becoming a senator, Biden learned that his “great, great, great, great, great grandfather” had worked in the East India Company.

“There are five Bidens in Mumbai, India,” Biden, then Vice President, told a Washington audience in 2015 at an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of India-US civil nuclear deal.

In 2013, when Biden travelled to Mumbai on his maiden vice presidential trip to India, he spoke about this letter he received when he became the senator for the first time several decades ago.

In his address to the Bombay Stock Exchange on July 24, 2013, Biden narrated his story of the ‘Biden from Mumbai’.

“It’s an honour to be back in India and to be here in Mumbai.

Off script for a second here, I was reminded I was elected to the United States Senate when I was a 29-year-old kid back in 1972, and one of the first letters I received and I regret I never followed up on it.

“Maybe, some genealogist in audience can follow up for me, but I received a letter from a gentleman named Biden – Biden, my name – from Mumbai, asserting that we were related,” Biden had told the Mumbai audience seven years ago.

In his 2015 speech in Washington, Biden had claimed that his “great, great, great, great, great grandfather” George Biden was a Captain in the East India Trading company and after retirement, decided to settle in India and married an Indian woman.

Biden had also said someone provided him with the details including the phone numbers of the Bidens in Mumbai. He had informed the audience that he was yet to call his Mumbai kin but was planning to do so.

It is not clear if Biden did manage to contact them as the five Bidens he spoke of have not ‘surfaced’ yet.

Washington: President Donald Trump never admits defeat. But he faces a stark choice now that Democrat Joe Biden has won the White House: Concede graciously for the sake of the nation or don’t and get evicted anyway.

After nearly four tortured days of counting yielded a victory for Biden, Trump was still insisting the race was not over.

He threw out baseless allegations that the election wasn’t fair and illegal votes were counted, promised a flurry of legal action and fired off all-caps tweets falsely insisting he’d WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT.”

While some in his circle were nudging Trump to concede graciously, many of his Republican allies, including on Capitol Hill, were egging him on or giving him space to process his loss at least for the time being.

Trump has not lost, declared South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham in an appearance on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures, rejecting the reality of the situation.

Do not concede, Mr. President. Fight hard,” he urged.

Trump is not expected to formally concede, according to people close to him, but is likely to grudgingly vacate the White House at the end of his term. His ongoing efforts to paint the election as unfair are seen both as an effort to soothe a bruised ego and to show his loyal base of supporters that he is still fighting. That could be key to keeping them energised for what comes next.

He intends to fight, Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said as it was becoming clear that the president was headed for defeat.

Would Trump ever concede? I doubt it, said Trump’s longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone, whose prison sentence was commuted by Trump in July.

Stone asserted that Biden, as a result, will have “a cloud over his presidency with half the people in the country believing that he was illegitimately elected.

Allies suggested that if Trump wants to launch a media empire in coming years, he has an incentive to prolong the drama. So, too, if he intends to keep the door open to a possible 2024 comeback he would be only a year older than Biden is now.

Others in his inner circle egging him on, including his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The former New York mayor has been promising to provide the president with evidence of voter fraud but has produced little, including during a press conference he held Saturday in the parking lot of a small Philadelphia landscaping company next to an adult bookstore.

Trump’s adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have also urged their father to keep fighting and challenged Republicans to stand with them, as have congressional allies like Graham.

What I would tell President Trump is: Don’t give up. My advice is do not concede, said Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona in a podcast interview. Let’s fight this thing through. It is too important to give up. Some in the president’s orbit have been nervously looking toward Capitol Hill for signs of a Republican defection. But so far, most seemed to be giving him time.

I look forward to the president dealing with this however he needs to deal with it, Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.” Still, he said it was time for Trump to turn this discussion over to his lawyers, time for the lawyers to make the case that they have, both in court and to the American people, and then we’re going to have to deal with those facts as they’re presented. That has to happen and then we move forward.

At this point, we do not know who has prevailed in the election, said Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, telling Fox News he believes Trump “still has a path to victory. Other political allies and White House officials, however, have pressed Trump to change his tone and commit to a smooth transition. They’ve emphasized to him that history will be a harsh judge of any action he takes that is seen as undermining his successor. And they have advised him to deliver a speech in the coming week pledging to support the transition.

Trump senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner has told others that he is among those who have urged the president to accept the outcome of the race even if Trump won’t come to terms with how it was reached.

At Fox News, where prime-time hosts wield enormous influence over Trump, Laura Ingraham gave voice to the president’s belief that the election had been unfair, while also pleading with him to keep his legacy in mind and preserve his status as a GOP kingmaker by gracefully leaving office.

President Trump’s legacy will only become more significant if he focuses on moving the country forward,” she said Thursday.

This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen Trump aides and allies, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

That the peaceful transfer of power was even in doubt reflected the norm-shattering habits of the now-lame duck president, who even in victory never admitted that he had lost the popular vote in 2016.

Most aides believed the president would take the weekend to decide on a plan, which will most certainly involve more legal action. But some aides believe the legal skirmishes are more about putting up the appearance of a fight than producing results.

There were some indications Trump was moving in a less contentious direction, even as he continued to angrily complain to aides, reviving old grievances about the Russia investigation that began under President Barack Obama. (AP)

Kamala was the target of online disinformation laced with racism and sexism about her qualifications to serve as president.

Vice president-elect Kamala Harris on Saturday paid tribute to the women, particularly Black women, whose shoulders she stands on as she shatters barriers that have kept mostly white men entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for more than two centuries.

“Tonight I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision to see what can be unburdened by what has been,” Harris said, wearing a white suit in tribute to women’s suffrage. President-elect Joe Biden had the character and audacity “to break one of the most substantial barriers that exists in our country, and select a woman and his vice president.” she added.

“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” Harris said in her first post-election address to the nation.

The 56-year-old California senator, also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, represents the multiculturalism that defines America but is largely absent from Washington’s power centres. Her Black identity has allowed her to speak in personal terms in a year of reckoning over police brutality and systemic racism. As the highest-ranking woman ever elected in American government, her victory gives hope to women who were devastated by Hillary Clinton’s defeat four years ago.

Harris told little children to “dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they’re never seen it before.” After Biden’s speech, she was joined on stage by her family, including her two grandnieces who wore white dresses.

A rising star in Democratic politics for much of the last two decades, Harris served as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general before becoming a US senator. After she ended her own 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Joe Biden tapped her as his running mate. They will be sworn in as president and vice president on Jan. 20.

Biden’s running mate selection carried added significance because he will be the oldest president ever inaugurated, at 78, and hasn’t committed to seeking a second term in 2024.

Harris often framed her candidacy as part of the legacy of pioneering Black women who came before her, including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party’s presidential nomination, in 1972.

She paid tribute to Black women “who are too often overlooked but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy.”

Despite the excitement surrounding Harris, she and Biden face steep challenges, including a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on people of color, and a series of police killings of Black Americans that have deepened racial tensions. Harris’ past work as a prosecutor has prompted scepticism among progressives and young voters who are looking to her to back sweeping institutional change over incremental reforms in policing, drug policy and more.

Jessica Byrd, who leads the Movement for Black Lives’ Electoral Justice Project and The Frontline, a multiracial coalition effort to galvanize voters, said she plans to engage in the rigorous organizing work needed to push Harris and Biden toward more progressive policies.

“I deeply believe in the power of Black women’s leadership, even when all of our politics don’t align,” Byrd said. “I want us to be committed to the idea that representation is exciting and it’s worthy of celebration and also that we have millions of Black women who deserve a fair shot.”

Harris is the second Black woman elected to the Senate. Her colleague, Sen. Cory Booker, who is also Black, said her very presence makes the institution “more accessible to more people” and suggested she would accomplish the same with the vice presidency.

Harris was born in 1964 to two parents active in the civil rights movement. Shyamala Gopalan, from India, and Donald Harris, from Jamaica, met at the University of California, Berkeley, then a hotbed of 1960s activism. They divorced when Harris and her sister were girls, and Harris was raised by her late mother, whom she considers the most important influence in her life.

“When she came here from India at the age of 19, she maybe didn’t quite imagine this moment. But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible,” Harris said Saturday night.

Kamala is Sanskrit for “lotus flower,” and Harris gave nods to her Indian heritage throughout the campaign, including with a callout to her “chitthis,” a Tamil word for a maternal aunt, in her first speech as Biden’s running mate. When Georgia Sen. David Perdue mocked her name in an October rally, the hashtag #MyNameIs took off on Twitter, with South Asians sharing the meanings behind their names.

The mocking of her name by Republicans, including Trump, was just one of the attacks Harris faced. Trump and his allies sought to brand her as radical and a socialist despite her more centrist record, an effort aimed at making people uncomfortable about the prospect of a Black woman in leadership. She was the target of online disinformation laced with racism and sexism about her qualifications to serve as president.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington said Harris’ power comes not just from her life experience but also from the people she already represents. California is the nation’s most populous and one of its most diverse states; nearly 40% of people are Latino and 15% are Asian. In Congress, Harris and Jayapal have teamed up on bills to ensure legal representation for Muslims targeted by Trump’s 2017 travel ban and to extend rights to domestic workers.

“That’s the kind of policy that also happens when you have voices like ours at the table,” said Jayapal, who in 2016 was the first South Asian woman elected to the US House.

Harris’ mother raised her daughters with the understanding the world would see them as Black women, Harris has said, and that is how she describes herself today.

She attended Howard University, one of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, and pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first sorority created by and for Black women. She campaigned regularly at HBCUs and tried to address the concerns of young Black men and women eager for strong efforts to dismantle systemic racism.

Her victory could usher more Black women and people of color into politics.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who considers Harris a mentor, views Harris’ success through the lens of her own identity as the granddaughter of a sharecropper.

“African Americans are not far removed from slavery and the horrors of racism in this country, and we’re still feeling the impacts of that with how we’re treated and what’s happening around this racial uprising,” she said. Harris’ candidacy “instills a lot of pride and a lot of hope and a lot of excitement in what is possible.”

Harris is married to a Jewish man, Doug Emhoff, whose children from a previous marriage call her “Momala.” The excitement about her candidacy extends to women across races.

Friends Sarah Lane and Kelli Hodge, each with three daughters, brought all six girls to a Harris rally in Phoenix in the race’s closing days. “This car is full of little girls who dream big. Go Kamala!” read a sign taped on the car’s trunk.

Lane, a 41-year-old attorney who is of Hispanic and Asian heritage, volunteered for Biden and Harris, her first time ever working for a political campaign. Asked why she brought her daughters, ages 6, 9, and 11, to see Harris, she answered, “I want my girls to see what women can do.”

Biden will restore and defend the naturalisation process for green card holders, the policy document said.

Joe Biden will be the new US President.

At least, according to all prominent US media outlets, after they called Pennsylvania for the Democratic candidate.

The projection of at least 273 electoral college votes for Biden came about an hour after President Donald Trump proclaimed victory – “BY A LOT” – on his favourite stomping ground Twitter.

With this win for Democrats, Kamala Harris will be the nation’s first Black and South Asian vice president, and first woman to hold that office.

As we had reported earlier, longtime Biden aide Ted Kaufman is leading efforts to ensure the former vice president can begin building a government. These efforts should now gather steam.

Washington: US President Donald Trump has warned his Democratic challenger Joe Biden against “wrongfully” claiming the presidency.

“Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President. I could make that claim also. Legal proceedings are just now beginning! Trump said in a tweet Friday.

As the counting of votes in key battleground states continued, Trump did not make a public appearance but remained active on Twitter.

As per the latest projections, Biden has 264 electoral college votes and Trump trails behind with 213. Biden, 77, was leading in four of the five key battleground states where counting of ballots was still going on. Trump was trailing behind Biden in Arizona (by 38,455 votes), Georgia (4,224), Nevada (22,657) and Pennsylvania (19,500) but leading in North Carolina with 76,587 votes.

To be declared the winner of the US election, either of the two candidates needs at least 270 of the 538 electoral college votes.

Trump has challenged the authenticity of the elections, alleging massive voters fraud and electoral malpractice. In another tweet, he said his leads in all of these states were significant on election night but suddenly started vanishing. He asserted that the lead would come back once the legal proceedings move forward.

“I had such a big lead in all of these states late into election night, only to see the leads miraculously disappear as the days went by. Perhaps these leads will return as our legal proceedings move forward! Trump said.

Earlier in the day, he said that “with the attack by the Radical Left Dems on the Republican Senate, the Presidency becomes even more important!”.

Biden, who was expected to make an address to the nation in primetime, did not tweet or make a public statement on Friday. There were no public remarks either from his running mate Senator Kamala Harris.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday called Biden president-elect.

“President-Elect Biden has a strong mandate to lead, and he’ll have a strong Democratic House with him and many Democrats in the Senate. This has been a life or death fight for the fate of our democracy, as he says, the soul of our country.’ We did not win every battle in the House, but we did win the war, she said.

Pelosi said Biden is a unifier. She said, He is determined to bring people together because he respects all points of view. And as he has said, I ran as a Democrat; I’ll govern as President for all of the people, whether they voted for me or not.'”

It is clear that the Biden-Harris ticket will win the White House. His election is historic, propelled by the biggest vote ever in the history of our country, 73.8 million and counting Americans, the most votes ever received by any presidential ticket in history, Pelosi said.

Houston: Shri Thanedar, an Indian-origin millionaire businessman who ran for Governor two years ago, has been elected to the House of Representatives in Michigan with 93 per cent votes.

Thanedar, 65, also a scientist, raised a record-breaking USD 438,620, primarily from his own wealth, in the state House primary against six other opponents of the Democratic Party.

The former gubernatorial hopeful cashed in on his high name familiarity after he moved from Ann Arbor to Detroit after losing the 2018 primary. His campaign two years ago featured a heavy dose of “Shri for We” television ads.

He won from the 3rd District of Michigan with 93 per cent of the total votes.

Thanedar had spent almost USD 10 million of his own fortune to finish third behind Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Abdul El Sayed in the 2018 gubernatorial primary, but he won the most votes in Detroit.

Originally from Karnataka’s Belgaum, he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at 18 and master’s degree from University of Bombay. Later, he migrated to the US in 1979 to pursue higher studies from University of Akron and later University of Michigan.

Thanedar told the media in a recent interview that he began campaigning last fall prior to the pandemic and has spent time during the outbreak passing out masks, hand sanitiser and door knockers.

He said that he wants to tackle a long list of challenges plaguing his district, including blight, water shutoffs, foreclosures, crime and unemployment.

“I’m seeing people have no hope. Conditions are really bad and nothing has changed in years. People are disenfranchised. I’ve slept and ate on the floor, with no running water,” Thanedar said, referring to his upbringing in India.

“I understand the pain of poverty, he said.

The AP called Michigan for Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday. Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia are undecided.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s campaign filed lawsuits Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, laying the groundwork for contesting battleground states as he slipped behind Democrat Joe Biden in the hunt for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.

The new filings, joining existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, and raise absentee ballot concerns, the campaign said. However, at one Michigan location in question The Associated Press observed poll watchers from both sides monitoring on Wednesday.

The AP called Michigan for Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday. Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia are undecided.

The Trump campaign also is seeking to intervene in a Pennsylvania case at the Supreme Court that deals with whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said.

The actions reveal an emerging legal strategy that the president had signaled for weeks, namely that he would attack the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat.

His campaign also announced that it would ask for a recount in Wisconsin, a state the AP called for Biden on Wednesday afternoon. Campaign manager Bill Stepien cited “irregularities in several Wisconsin counties,” without providing specifics.

Biden said Wednesday the count should continue in all states, adding, “No one’s going to take our democracy away from us — not now, not ever.”

Campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said legal challenges were not the behavior of a winning campaign.

“What makes these charades especially pathetic is that while Trump is demanding recounts in places he has already lost, he’s simultaneously engaged in fruitless attempts to halt the counting of votes in other states in which he’s on the road to defeat,” Bates said in a statement.

Election officials continued to count votes across the country, the normal process on the day following voting. Unlike in previous years, states were contending with an avalanche of mail ballots driven by fears of voting in person during a pandemic. At least 103 million people voted early, either by mail or in-person, representing 74% of the total votes cast in the 2016 presidential election.

Every election, results reported on election night are unofficial and the counting of ballots extends past Election Day. Mail ballots normally take more time to verify and count. This year, because of the large numbers of mail ballots and a close race, results were expected to take longer.

The Trump campaign said it is calling for a temporary halt in the counting in Michigan and Pennsylvania until it is given “meaningful” access in numerous locations and allowed to review ballots that already have been opened and processed.

The AP’s Michigan call for Biden came after the suit was filed. The president is ahead in Pennsylvania but his margin is shrinking as more mailed ballots are counted.

There have been no reports of fraud or any type of ballot concerns out of Pennsylvania. The state had 3.1 million mail-in ballots that take time to count and an order allows them to be received and counted up until Friday if they are postmarked by Nov. 3.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a CNN interview the lawsuit was “more a political document than a legal document.”

“There is transparency in this process. The counting has been going on. There are observers observing this counting, and the counting will continue,” he said.

The Michigan lawsuit claims Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, was allowing absentee ballots to be counted without teams of bipartisan observers as well as challengers. She’s accused of undermining the “constitutional right of all Michigan voters … to participate in fair and lawful elections.” Michigan Democrats said the suit was a longshot.

Poll watchers from both sides were plentiful Wednesday at one major polling place in question — the TCF Center in Detroit, The Associated Press observed. They checked in at a table near the entrance to the convention center’s Hall E and strolled among the tables where ballot processing was taking place. In some cases, they arrived en masse and huddled together for a group discussion before fanning out to the floor. Uniformed Detroit police officers were on hand to make sure everyone was behaving.

Mark Brewer, a former state Democratic chairman who said he was observing the Detroit vote counting as a volunteer lawyer, said he had been at the TCF arena all day and had talked with others who had been there the past couple of days. He said Republicans had not been denied access.

“This is the best absentee ballot counting operation that Detroit has ever had. They are counting ballots very efficiently, despite the obstructing tactics of the Republicans.”

GOP lawyers had already launched legal challenges involving absentee votes in Pennsylvania and Nevada, contesting local decisions that could take on national significance in the close election.

In one appeal to a Pennsylvania appellate court, the Trump campaign complained that one of its representatives was prevented from seeing the writing on mail-in ballots that were being opened and processed in Philadelphia. A judge in Philadelphia dismissed it, saying that poll observers are directed to observe, not audit.

The Georgia lawsuit filed in Chatham County essentially asks a judge to ensure the state laws are being followed on absentee ballots. Campaign officials said they were considering peppering a dozen other counties around the state with similar claims around absentee ballots.

Trump, addressing supporters at the White House early Wednesday, talked about taking the undecided race to the Supreme Court. Though it was unclear what he meant, his comments evoked a reprise of the court’s intervention in the 2000 presidential election that ended with a decision effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush.

But there are important differences from 2000 and they already were on display. In 2000, Republican-controlled Florida was the critical state and Bush clung to a small lead. Democrat Al Gore asked for a recount and the Supreme Court stopped it.

To some election law experts, calling for the Supreme Court to intervene now seemed premature, if not rash.

A case would have to come to the court from a state in which the outcome would determine the election’s winner, Richard Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, law professor, wrote on the Election Law blog. The difference between the candidates’ vote totals would have to be smaller than the ballots at stake in the lawsuit

“As of this moment (though things can change) it does not appear that either condition will be met,” Hasen wrote.

Ohio State University election law professor Edward Foley wrote on Twitter Wednesday: “The valid votes will be counted. (The Supreme Court) would be involved only if there were votes of questionable validity that would make a difference, which might not be the case. The rule of law will determine the official winner of the popular vote in each state. Let the rule of law work.”

Biden campaign attorney Bob Bauer said if Trump goes to the high court, “he will be in for one of the most embarrassing defeats a president has ever suffered by the highest court in the land.”

The justices could decide to step into the dispute over the three-day extension for absentee ballots if they prove crucial to the outcome in Pennsylvania.

Even a small number of contested votes could matter if a state determines the winner of the election and the gap between Trump and Biden is small.