REPUBLICANS are rejoicing and Democrats reeling in the wake of Scott Brown’s stunning victory over Martha Coakley in a special Massachusetts Senate election that Brown insists was not simply a referendum on President Barack Obama.

REPUBLICANS won two key state elections, dealing a stinging blow to President Barack Obama and his Democrats 12 months after they swept to power.

US President Barack Obama said he was “surprised and deeply humbled” to be honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize today.

The Republican Party chose its first black national chairman, just shy of three months after the nation elected a Democrat as the first black president.

Hurricane Ivan left Grenada a wasteland of flattened houses, twisted metal and splintered wood as it bore down on Jamaica with deadly winds and monstrous waves, prompting the Jamaican government to order half a million people to flee their homes.

Soldiers who burst into the Bogside on Bloody Sunday were “raring to go” and arrest rioters, a British Major General said today.