US Elections

The first mention of Donald Trump's victory appeared in a news report on a different matter entirely - and then only as a means to attack Pyongyang's sworn enemy, South Korea.

Hidden deep down in a commentary calling for the resignation of embattled South Korean President Park Geun-hye, state news agency KCNA refers to her ruling Saenuri Party making use of a "Trump emergency system" to divert the public's attention away from the current cronyism scandal threatening Ms Park's leadership.

So seriously, in fact, that they can come across as rather pompous to a British reader. When it comes to a presidential election they seem to believe that their endorsements are of huge significance and that their words will be weighed with utmost seriousness by their readers.

Well now we know how wrong that is because just about every major newspaper either backed Hillary Clinton or at least failed to endorse Donald Trump - and that went for papers who had faithfully swung behind Republican candidates in the past.

Obama insisted that despite his differences with President-elect Donald Trump he would uphold the central tenet of American democracy.

Speaking in the Rose Garden as some of his aides sobbed, Obama made a deliberate effort to counter Democrats' crushing sense of doom at the prospect of four years of President Trump.

"It is no secret that the President-elect and I have some pretty significant differences," Obama said with Vice President Joe Biden at his side. "We are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country."

Demonstrators smashed storefront windows and set rubbish and tyres alight in downtown Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco. A few miles away, students at the University of California at Berkeley protested on campus.

In Portland, Oregon, protesters blocked downtown traffic while chanting "not my president".

Hundreds of students in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Seattle, Washington, as well as in smaller towns around America, walked out of class in an effort to "stop president Trump".

Where were you, we'll ask each other, days or years from now. Where were you when Donald J. Trump confounded pundits and upended projections to become the President-Elect of the United States?

It will be hard to forget such a moment, or the pivotal images that have immortalized it.

The emotion was instant. You could see it in the crowds dotted with bright red hats who cheered, sobbed and embraced at Trump's election night event at the New York Hilton Midtown hotel.

It was a moment of pure elation.

For them, it was a moment of pure desolation.

Trump's election as the 45th president of the United States rocked Washington's political establishment and sent shock waves overseas, as US allies and foes alike scrambled to understand how the real-estate mogul and political outsider had pulled off an upset victory and would change their ties to the world's most powerful country.

South Korea called a meeting of its National Security Council as Japan's top financial officials huddled amid a 1,000-point plunge in the Nikkei stock market. Markets in the UK and France also dropped.

The Republican nominee's projected victory came down to a handful of key swing states, despite months of polling that favoured Mrs Clinton.

The battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and North Carolina cleared the way for his Brexit-style upset.

Global markets plummeted, with the Dow set to open 800 points down.

Mr Trump's projected victory in Wisconsin put him over the 270 out of 538 electoral college votes needed to win the White House.

He has won Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, while Democratic nominee Mrs Clinton took Virginia, ABC projects. Pennsylvania is too close to call.

The race is deadlocked in Michigan, which has not voted for a Republican White House candidate since 1988.

Markets lurched as Mrs Clinton's path to victory seemed less assured.

The US dollar and Mexican peso plummeted while the Dow futures dropped more than 650 points.

Mr Trump's Ohio win was a big boost to him, as no Republican has ever taken the White House without winning the Midwestern bellwether.

A 12-second video making the rounds on social media Tuesday appears to show a voter repeatedly touching a voting machine screen to select Donald Trump, while a red light stays on in the column for Hillary Clinton.

But even as some people claim it's clear evidence of vote rigging in Pennsylvania, the man who originally posted the video says that's not what he's saying.

The video has been shared tens of thousands of times on social media.

RNZ reports investors have started to sell risky assets, such as shares and commodities, and are chasing the security of currencies such as the Japanese yen and Swiss franc and gold.

The markets had started the day banking on Mrs Clinton winning, but the strong showing for Mr Trump in swing states such as Florida and Ohio has seen markets overturn early modest gains and head lower.

The New Zealand sharemarket, which was up about 0.3 percent in early trading has fallen nearly 2 percent in less than an hour.