Istanbul - Villagers in the east of Turkey have slaughtered 44 sheep in honour of the victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election, Zaman daily reported Sunday.

Beijing - Chinese President Hu Jintao and US president-elect Barack Obama have discussed Taiwan and the global financial crisis by telephone, China's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.

Hu told Obama that bilateral relations could improve if the two sides showed respect for each other's concerns and "properly handle sensitive issues ... particularly the Taiwan issue," the ministry reported on its website.

The ministry quoted Obama as saying late Saturday that resolving the current financial crisis needed the close cooperation of every national government.

Obama said he hoped that China and the United States would strengthen cooperation at the international summit on the financial crisis and the global economy on November 15.

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - An international meeting on Middle East peace opened Sunday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh amid hopes that a Barack Obama administration in the United States will accord adequate attention to settling Arab-Israeli differences.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were present at the meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were to brief participants on negotiations over 12 months that failed to reach a final status agreement, or a framework for one.

New York, Nov. 9 : U. S. President-elect Barack Obama will act on his campaign promise to tax the wealthiest Americans, an Obama senior adviser has told the New York Daily News. 

He said that Obama plans to raise taxes on the wealthy by asking the Democratic-controlled Congress to allow President Bush''s tax cuts to expire at the end of 2010. When they expire, it could pump in about 72 billion a year toward balancing the budget, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. 

London, Nov. 9 : Here, according to The Telegraph, are the fifty facts about US presidential elect Barack Obama that you might know of.

• He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics 

• He was known as "O''Bomber" at high school for his skill at basketball 

• His name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili 

• His favourite meal is wife Michelle''s shrimp linguini 

• He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father 

Washington, Nov. 9 : Agents of the United States Security Service have squarely blamed Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the death threats against president-elect Barack Obama.

According to the agents, Palin’s repeated questioning of Obama’s patriotism sparked off the death threats from white supremacists.

According to The Telegraph, Palin attracted criticism for accusing Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.