Berlin - For Americans in Germany, election parties this week are not likely to get really exciting until long after midnight: it will be 5 am Wednesday, local time, when the polls finally close on the US west coast.

Not that the time difference has taken any edge off the excitement over the historic choice between Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, and John McCain, the Republican contender. Obama visited Berlin in the summer and gave a speech to huge crowds. German media has closely followed the race.

Nairobi - US presidential election favourite Barack Obama's life is being depicted in musical form in his ancestral homeland Kenya in the last days before the US election.

Obama the Musical opened Sunday at the Kenyan National Theatre in Nairobi on Sunday and will run until Wednesday.

The performance uses a mixture of song, dance and narration to follow the senator's life so far.

"I want to use the show not only to tell Obama's story but also to unite Kenyans," George Orido, the playwright and director of the musical, told The Daily Nation.

Johannesburg - The new party of breakaway African National Congress members that is generating huge excitement in South Africa in the run-up to elections has finally been given a name.

One of the party's founders, the former premier of the richest province, Gauteng, Mbhazima Shilowa, confirmed Monday that supporters of the new party attending a weekend convention had decided on South African Democratic Congress (SADC).

Washington, Nov. 3: Congressional Republicans have spent this past weekend scrambling to save their seats in both the House of Representatives and the U. S. Senate ahead of the final vote on Tuesday, reports the New York Post.

With the election imminent, Senate Republicans threw their remaining resources into protecting endangered lawmakers in Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Oregon, while House Republicans were forced to put money into what should be secure Republican territory in Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia and Wyoming.

Virginia (USA), Nov. 3: With less than 48 hours to go before American voters decide on who their 44th President will be, the Indian American community appears to have already decided that the United States is ready to have its first Afro-American head of state.

In their view, Illinois Senator Barack Obama is on all counts, a transformational candidate, a man who has the potential to lead the country, a candidate who will bring fresh energy to the White House and to the administration in Washington.

Washington - After an historic 20 months of rallies, debates and countless commercials in the most expensive election campaign ever, voters will finally get their chance Tuesday to pick Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain as the next US president.

Across the country, state officials are preparing for record turnout and huge lines at polling stations, a testament to the massive interest that has been generated in an election widely considered the most important in recent memory.