Dusseldorf - Folding electronic carts and text-reading mobile phones are just some of the latest gadgets exhibited at the recent Rehacare Fair in Dusseldorf for the handicapped.

Around 758 exhibitors from 30 countries attended the show.

First there's Luggie, a folding electronic cart intended as a travel aid. Folded, it's about as big as a suitcase and weighs 21.5 kilograms including batteries. Its patented mechanics allows the suitcase to unfold in seconds and turning into a cart with a maximum speed of 6.5 kilometres an hour and the capacity to climb grades of up to eight degrees.

Swiss producer FreeRider Corp hopes to start production in January and sell the Luggie for about 2,000 euros (2,663 dollars) each.

Srinagar, Oct 26 : Jammu and Kashmir People''s Conference has launched a mass programme calling for boycott of forthcoming elections in the state.

Peoples'' Conference party leader Sajad Gani Lone said his party''s village-level units would campaign for poll boycott.

"We have launched a programme to boycott elections. People Conference is a cadre-based party. We have passed a resolution that all our village-level units will work as anti-election boycott units till the elections. We will run boycott campaigns in their respected villages," said Lone.

The All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference has called for a complete boycott of the elections scheduled to be held in seven phases.

Miami - As if it were a generational war, Florida's Cuban- Americans are divided by age over centre-left Democrat Barack Obama and centre-right Republican John McCain for the White House.

As in earlier elections, particularly the controversial vote in 2000 when the country was left hanging for weeks like so many ballot chads, Florida is likely to play a key role on November 4.

New York - The US has always been proud of the fact that for decades its museums, theatres and concert halls have lived almost exclusively off private donations.

But the financial crisis has caused the winds to shift, which means some money sources could run dry.

Small cultural facilities now fear for their survival and the traditional establishments face an uncertain future.

Tallinn - Estonia has already given the world the internet telephone service Skype and recently opened a NATO cyberdefence academy in its capital, Tallinn.

Now the Baltic nation, which is so in love with all things online that it sometimes brands itself "e-stonia," has come up with another internet first - a virtual travel fair.

The inaugural online travel fair, entitled "Travel Expo," runs October 27 through November 5. It is the idea of Estonian company Online Expo, run by young entrepreneurs Anna Lepp and Sergei Semjonov.

Bangkok ­ One thing is for sure: the next US president will come to the White House with some first-hand experiences in Asia.

Republican John McCain, 72, a decorated war hero, was shot down on a bombing mission in 1967 over North Vietnam, captured and tortured in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton," where he was kept as a prisoner of war until 1973.

Democrat Barack Obama, 47, spent part of his peripatetic youth in Indonesia, where he attended a public Muslim school - not a Madrassah as some of his critics have alleged - in Jakarta between 1969-71.