A round-up of today's other stories in brief...
Democrats keep Pelosi as leader
WASHINGTON – Democrats in the US House of Representatives voted yesterday to retain Speaker Nancy Pelosi as their leader when Republicans take control of the chamber in January.
Rejecting complaints that Ms Pelosi was to blame for Democrats losing the House in the November 2nd elections, they chose her as their incoming minority leader. In a ballot for the post, Ms Pelosi won 150-43, comfortably defeating her only challenger, Heath Shuler. – (Reuters)
Murkowski retains Alaska Senate seat
WASHINGTON – Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska defeated Tea Party rival Joe Miller in her historic write-in bid to keep her US Senate seat.
The Associated Press called the race yesterday after confirming that state officials had only about 700 votes left to count. Ms Murkowski had a lead of more than 10,000 votes.
State election officials reported yesterday that Ms Murkowski had 92,715 undisputed write-in votes from the November 2nd election plus another 8,153 that were counted in her favour over Mr Miller’s challenges, for a total of 100,868 votes.
Ms Murkowski will not declare victory until all the overseas ballots are counted. – (Bloomberg)