Beijing - China expects continuity but fears trade protectionism once Barack Obama takes office as US president, a leading scholar said on Wednesday.

"China's expectation of the new president is the same as the whole world's expectation, that is, to develop US finance and the economy away from the global financial crisis and economic recession," said Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at People's University in Beijing.

Kansas City, Kansas - As Presidential candidate John McCain conceded victory to his rival Barack Obama Tuesday night, voters in Kansas City, Kansas, rooted for the Illinois Senator with Kansas roots.

While Obama was born and reared in Hawaii, his mother and maternal grandparents, who help raise him in the absence of his Kenyan father, had deep roots in Kansas, an agricultural, heavily rural state on the Great Plains - the geographic and figurative middle of America.

Kansas, long a conservative stronghold,

Mexico City - Mexican President Felipe Calderon congratulated Senator Barack Obama for his triumph in the US presidential election and said he hopes for "a new stage" in relations between the two neighbours.

An official statement that was made public late Tuesday, said Calderon also invited the next US president to visit Mexico "soon" and reiterated his country's commitment "to strengthen and deepen bilateral relations and work in the construction of a better future for the region."

Washington - Republican John McCain quickly conceded defeat in Tuesday's election, congratulating Democrat Barack Obama for his historic victory and urging Americans to help the new president meet the country's challenges.

Speaking from his campaign headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, McCain told his supporters to cast aside differences with Obama and the Democrats. McCain, 72, said he telephoned Obama, 47, a few minutes earlier to congratulate Obama and his family.

London, Nov 5: The absentee ballot from Barack Obama’s late grandmother will be counted, election officials in Hawaii have confirmed.

State elections chief Kevin Cronin said state law typically would require an absentee ballot cast by someone who dies before Election Day to be discarded.

But that would only be if certification of death is received from the state Department of Health before the election.

Cronin said the absentee ballot sent by Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was received by the elections office on October 27.

New York, Nov 5 : Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has said she has “zero” interest in trading her Senate seat for a high-profile job in an Obama Administration, but that hasn’t stopped some of her fervent supporters from dreaming.

Many women want to see her on the Supreme Court, largely to protect Roe v. Wade; health care advocates think she’d make an energetic Secretary of Health and Human Services; and there is talk of her becoming secretary of State or Ambassador to the United Nations.