"We the Kenyan people are immensely proud of your Kenyan roots," President Mwai Kibaki said. The BBC's Juliet Njeri says Mr Obama's step-grandmother was seen dancing and cheering jubilantly outside her house after the results were declared. She says Mr Obama's family stayed up all night in the western Kenyan village of Kogelo watching the election count, and they are now preparing for a big party.

African leaders from South Africa to Somalia have sent their congratulations to the US president-elect. Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, welcomed Mr Obama's victory as a sign of hope for everyone. "Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place," he said in a letter of congratulations.

In January, Kisumu was the scene of running battles between members of the public and police after riots broke out over the Kenya's contested elections. But correspondents say the US election seems to be a unifying moment for the country, with people reported to be saying that Mr Obama's victory is a victory for all Kenyans.

"It's been a long time coming, but tonight… change has come to America," the president-elect told a jubilant crowd at a park in Chicago. His rival John McCain accepted defeat, saying "I deeply admire and commend" Mr Obama. He called on his supporters to lend the next president their goodwill. The BBC's Justin Webb said the result would have a profound impact on the US.

"On every level America will be changed by this result, it will never be the same," he said. Mr Obama appeared with his family, and his running mate Joe Biden, before a crowd of tens of thousands in Grant Park, Chicago. "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," he said.

But he added: "Even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - TWO WARS, A PLANET IN PERIL, THE WORST FINANCIAL CRISIS IN A CENTURY. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep... But America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there."

But some business groups want the Bank to go further and cut rates by one percentage point to 3.5%, which would be the biggest cut since 1993. The interest rate decision will be announced at midday GMT on Thursday.

Last month, the Bank cut its base rate from 5% to 4.5% in an emergency co-ordinated move by the world's central banks. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is calling for a cut to 4% on Thursday but says rates will need to fall further. PwC predicts that the UK economy will grow by 1% this year and shrink 0.5% in 2009 before reaching "calmer waters in 2010".

"The Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee needs to cut interest rates progressively to 3% or lower in order to prepare the economy for the recovery we hope to see in 2010," said John Hawksworth, head of macroeconomics at PwC. The report also calls for the government to introduce stimulus measures, such as bringing forward some of the public spending that is currently planned for future years.

However, David Smith, the chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, said a dramatic one percentage point was "absolutely vital" to kick start the economy. "We need a real shock to the system that a significant rate cut will provide. Stimulating demand is crucial to avoid a deep and long recession, and interest rates are the place to start," Mr Smith said.

Conservative leader David Cameron hailed Mr Obama as the "first of a new generation of world leaders". Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the outcome of the US elections was "vital to our future".

In a statement, Mr Brown also paid tribute to the Republican candidate, senator John McCain. He said he fought a "good campaign and has shown the characteristic dignity that has marked a lifetime of service to his country". Mr Brown, who held talks with Mr Obama in London during the summer, added: "The relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is vital to our prosperity and security. This is an important moment not just for America but for the world"

Higher education minister David Lammy, who knows Mr Obama after meeting him at a Harvard alumni event in 2005, told the BBC the election of the first black American president was a "watershed moment in history". He said: "Martin Luther King's dream was that people would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. Today, Dr King's dream has come true."
(Martin Luther King - Jan 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

Mr Cameron said the US presidential race had been an "exciting and inspirational contest". He said: "In electing Barack Obama, America has made history and proved to the world that it is a nation eager for change. In these difficult times people everywhere are crying out for change. Barack Obama is the first of a new generation of leaders who will deliver it - he has my whole-hearted congratulations. This is an important moment not just for America but for the world. Barack Obama's victory will give people a new opportunity to look at the United States and see her for what I believe she is - a beacon of opportunity, freedom and democracy."

Alex Salmond, Scotland First Minister, said, "The world will not succeed in this era of globalisation without the leadership of the new American President. The weight of peoples' hopes and expectations on Barack Obama is immense." He sent a message to Mr Obama offering his "heartfelt congratulations" on a "wonderful and historic" election victory. "It ushers in a new era of hope for the United States and its role in the world. This was a victory for optimism over pessimism, for hope over fear," he told him.

First Minister for Wales Rhodri Morgan said Barack Obama's "stunning victory represents a triumph of hope over fear".

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE BECOMING, LITERALLY, A DIFFERENT PEOPLE - The most obvious change exposed by this election is in attitudes to race. Little more than 40 years ago Barack Obama would have found it hard to be served lunch in a restaurant, let alone be US president.

THE WORLD IS CHANGING AND WITH IT AMERICA'S PLACE IN THE WORLD - America remains the greatest single power in the world, yet the rise of China, the new belligerence of Russia and the wealth of the Gulf set this election in a very different context to its predecessors.

AMERICAN POLITICS IS BEING CAPTURED BY THE RISING MIDDLE CLASS - For 40 years American politics has been shaped by the split in the Democratic Party over civil rights. Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, launched at the end of the 1960s, was to bring over to the Republicans disaffected voters from the segregationist states. It was almost completely successful.

THE CONVENTIONAL REPUBLICAN AGENDA HAS STOPPED WORKING - The big themes of Republican politics - cut income tax, fight crime, reform social security, outlaw abortion, support marriage - no longer cut it politically. The Democrat tunes play better. The Republicans were forced to select a maverick because they did not have an electable mainstream Republican candidate. This was because the mainstream Republican agenda is no longer a winner.

Welcome to a new American president. Welcome to a new American politics.

It began taking bets on the question that has plagued thinkers for centuries in September, to coincide with the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider that physicists hope may lead to the discovery of an elusive sub-atomic object called the "God particle".

Initially the odds that proof would be found of God's existence were 20-1, and they lengthened to 33-1 when the multi-billion pound atom smasher was shut down temporarily because of a magnetic failure. But interest in the wager has increased greatly following the recent launch of a campaign to have atheist adverts placed on London buses declaring that "there's probably no God". As a result of a flurry of small bets Paddy Power, has cut the odds on proof being found of God's existence to just 4-1.

The bookmaker stands to lose more than £50,000 if proof emerges to justify religious belief. A spokesman for Paddy Power said that confirmation of God's existence would have to be verified by scientists and given by an independent authority before any payouts were made, however. He added: "The atheists' planned advertising campaign seems to have renewed the debate in pubs and around office water-coolers as to whether there is a God and we've seen some of that being transferred into bets. However we advise anyone still not sure of God's existence to maybe hedge their bets for now, just in case."

Damn, the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four will be cursing in his celestial attic, why didn't I think to have Big Brother spy on Winston Smith's tea?

Envirowise, which is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, estimates that more than 30 billion cups of water are needlessly boiled each year in British offices. It has advised that companies re-introduce tea urns and encourage staff to brew collectively, in tea pots.

American Express announced that it will slash 7,000 positions — some 10% of its staff — as part of an effort to save $1.8 billion next year as a counterweight to the rising number of consumers defaulting on their payments. Within hours of that announcement, communications giant Motorola Inc., which cut some 2,600 jobs in April, said it would trim an additional 3,000 staffers over the next several months after posting a third-quarter loss of nearly $400 million. It will also postpone a planned spin-off of its ailing cell phone division.

With the country perched on the edge of a deep recession, the national unemployment rate above 6% and nine straight months of a national net decline in jobs, the question is whether the U.S. labor market's fortunes are about to plunge even more steeply. In the eyes of many experts, the answer is a bleak one. "Unfortunately, the worst is to come," says Robert Reich, a former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reich argues that consumers have only begun to tighten their purse strings, which will shrink business markets and force employers to cut costs largely through payroll reductions. "We will see substantial layoffs in the coming months, and probably through 2009," he says. It's a dire prognosis, but there are bright spots. Necessities like health care will remain steady, and "Hollywood should do O.K.," Reich says, suggesting that "Americans want to be cheered up."

Consumers and businesses are sharply reducing their spending and the government is awash in red ink. "He will inherit an economy that is in recession and… is likely to get worse before it gets better," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services. The current administration on Wednesday will detail its plans to borrow a record $550 billion in the final three months of the year as a down payment for the various financial rescue packages put into effect in response to the global crisis.

A Treasury Department official on Monday projected the government would need to borrow an additional $368 billion in the first quarter of 2009. Treasury is expected to bring back its three-year notes to help cover the increased borrowing needs.

Still, investors seemed to draw hope Tuesday from the selection of a new presidential administration, while shrugging off the latest in a series of grim economic reports. The Dow Jones industrial average surged more than 300 points. The Dow and the other major stock indexes all finished with gains of more than 3 percent. Analysts said investors appeared to be looking forward to the end of political uncertainty and hoping the new U.S. president will move to boost the economy.

Obama's fundraising revolutionized the way presidential campaigns are financed and may kill the Watergate-era system of providing public money for the general election. His cash advantage helped him defeat New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who began the campaign as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Obama then swamped Republican candidate John McCain in the last two months.

"I don't think he wanted the campaign's identity to be that he could raise a lot of money, but it was indispensable for the Washington-insider community that wanted to dismiss us and would have, if not for that money," said David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist. Almost half of Obama's money came from people giving $200 or less, compared with 34 percent for Arizona Senator McCain, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington- based research group.

Obama reversed himself in June and became the first major party candidate to forgo federal funding for the general election, calculating that he would be able to raise more than the $84.1 million in federal funds that candidates would receive. His campaign argued that his large number of contributors was, in itself, a form of public financing.

The Israeli army said the clashes erupted late Tuesday after its forces uncovered a tunnel in central Gaza that militants planned to use to abduct Israeli soldiers. It said a special army unit headed to the area to destroy the tunnel. One Palestinian was killed in fierce gunbattles that ensued.

Hamas then fired mortars across the Gaza border into southern Israel and Israel answered with the airstrike in the early hours of Wednesday, killing five suspected Palestinian militants, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. The army said the airstrike aimed at the mortar launchers and hit them.

The clashes threatened to unravel the cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups reached in June after months of indirect negotiations. The deal halted a deadly cycle of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli reprisals, though sporadic rocket attacks on southern Israel have persisted.

FINANCIAL CRISIS - The U.S. financial crisis is the worst since the Great Depression. Economists say the country is in a recession that may get worse by the time the next president takes office in January.

HEALTH CARE - Both candidates identify bringing down high health-care costs and reforming the health insurance system as an economic priority.

ENERGY - U.S. dependence on foreign oil is seen as both a security and economic threat.

TAXES - The two candidates have clashed over taxes at the close of the campaign, with McCain accusing Obama of wanting to spread people's wealth around and Obama saying McCain's policies would benefit big corporations rather than the middle class

A record turnout of up to 130million voters spelled chaos for America's voting system today. The presidential election could descend into electoral farce as unprecedented numbers of voters turn out to cast their ballot in a system that is largely untested. THE U.S. HAS AN ELECTORAL SYSTEM THAT IS NOT ORGANISED, DESIGNED OR FUNDED TO COPE WITH 'ANYWHERE NEAR A 100 PER CENT TURNOUT', a director of a leading independent electoral reform group has said.

It is estimated that more Americans will vote in this election than in any other. Doug Chapin, director of The Pew Charitable Trust's Electionline.org, said voter turnout will 'dwarf' all other problems in this year's presidential election. There were also fears that the allegations of stolen votes that marred the 2000 and 2004 would be repeated, especially if the result is closer than the polls suggest.

Widespread claims have been made in the past few days that electronic voting machines have 'flipped' people's choices, so that votes cast for Barack Obama have ended up being counted as McCain votes. Similar claims have been widely reported in the last week of early voting, in which 27million Americans made their choice.

In an internal memo obtained exclusively by NBC 24 News, officers are ordered to "HAVE THEIR RIOT EQUIPMENT WITH THEM TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY". Police chief Mike Navarre confirms, officers will have gear similar to the equipment they used during the 2005 race riots. "THEY HAVE BEEN ASKED TO HAVE THEIR HELMETS AND THEIR GAS MASKS AVAILABLE TOMORROW AND WEDNESDAY.", Navarre says, "That's the equipment they would not normally carry with them on a normal day".

Navarre also says, officers will not be stationed at individual polling stations. But the memo says otherwise. It reads, "On Tuesday, units shall be directed to patrol the polling locations".

Berlin worries the verdict could set off an avalanche of World War II-related court cases against the German government. On Oct. 22, Italy's highest appellate court, the Cassation, ruled that Germany must pay €1 million in compensation to the descendents of those killed by Nazi soldiers in the Italian town of Civitella in 1944. Now, Germany has taken the case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the hopes that it will rule that the payments don't have to be made. A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Berlin on Saturday confirmed a report in this week's SPIEGEL, saying that the ICC "has been asked to clarify this question."

The October verdict in Rome also sentenced a German officer named Max Josef Milde in abstentia to life in prison. The court found that the officer was involved in the June 29, 1944 massacre which saw over 200 villagers, including the village priest, executed in revenge for the killing of three German soldiers by partisans 10 days earlier. Germany and Italy signed an agreement in 1961, which resulted in a blanket payment of 40 million deutsche marks.

Of particular concern to Berlin, however, is the finding that Germany can also be held liable for the massacre. SUCH A PRECEDENT COULD TRIGGER AN EXPENSIVE WAVE OF INDIVIDUAL LAWSUITS AGAINST GERMANY.