Berlin - Germany's government on Wednesday approved an anti- recession package of tax cuts and grants that supporters predict will secure up to 1 million jobs over the next two years.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said the move showed her coalition could beat the economic problems expected in the near future.

"We are going to build a bridge toward the possibility that it will get better again in 2010," she said.

Washington/Chicago - A steady flow of well-wishes came in from around the world Wednesday after Democratic candidate Barack Obama's historic victory made him the first African American ever to be elected president of the United States.

Obama, 47, stormed to victory Tuesday night over Republican rival John McCain, 72, capturing a series of reliable Republican states that voted for President George W Bush in the last two elections, including Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

But there was little time for the president-elect to rest. Transition talks have already been well underway and Obama planned to meet with his top advisors later Wednesday to discuss their next moves, US media reported.

Governments and leaders around the globe were overwhelmingly positive Wednesday to the election of Barack Obama as the next US president, but it was clear that they also had high expectations of him in repairing America's damaged standing in the world.

The president-elect - the first African-American ever to be elected to the highest office in 232 years of US constitutional history - was being offered plenty of free advice on issues ranging from foreign affairs to the environment to the economy.

Nairobi - A regional summit on the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo is to take place in Nairobi Friday, a Kenyan foreign ministry official said Wednesday, as renewed fighting continued for a second day.

"There will be a summit on Friday," Patrick Wamoto, head of the Kenyan Foreign Ministry's African and African Union Directorate, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "The agenda is DR Congo."

Vienna - Eastern European leaders lapped up Barack Obama's pledge of a "new dawn" of US leadership and heaped praise on the president-elect, although some questioned his toughness toward Russia.

From the Baltics to Bulgaria, the ex-communist area that provided some of President George W Bush's most loyal European allies looked for even closer ties under Obama - minus the us-against-them tension of the last eight years.

"Barack Obama now faces immense tasks, and I place hopes on his youthful energy," Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said Wednesday.

Mexico City - The number of dead in an airplane accident late Tuesday in Mexico City rose to 13, while 10 people were taken to hospital for treatment of their injuries, the authorities said Wednesday.

Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino - one of President Felipe Calderon's closest advisors - and four other officials were among the dead. However, Mexican authorities stressed Wednesday that they have so far found no evidence that the crash was not an accident.