Madrid - Representatives of Spain's black community Wednesday hailed US president-elect Barack Obama's victory as changing the perception the world had of black people.
"This totally changes the vision" that people have of "the capacity of the black community," said Luis Alberto Alarcon, an Afro-Colombian activist who lives in Madrid.
Obama's election as US president proved that blacks could reach the highest levels whenever "the political context allows them to move forward," Alarcon, who heads the Spanish section of the ecologist Life Foundation, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Washington - President-elect Barack Obama faces a mammoth task in averting a series of domestic and global crises and managing the near-impossible expectations that have built up around his candidacy.
Cairo - In a region where the presence of the US can not be more evident in political life, Egyptian political forces are hopeful that the victory of Barack Obama will bring the "change" he vowed, to their part of the world.
Brussels - Turkey has proven itself to be a reliable international partner and a key energy transit route, but it must work harder on political and human-rights reforms if it wants to join the European Union, the EU's executive said Wednesday.
Brussels - Croatia should be able to finish all talks on joining the EU by the end of 2009, paving the way for it to enter the bloc as early as 2011, the EU's executive body said Wednesday.
