Blind US soul music star Stevie Wonder struck up a singalong at a UN agency Monday as he urged countries to unlock access to copyrighted material that disabled people need for their education and livelihoods.

"What I would like to do today is launch what I call the 'Declaration of freedom for people with disabilities'," he told delegates at the opening of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) assembly in Geneva.

October was the busiest month for United Nations commemorative days. There were 16 in total, including World Sight Day when representatives from large international organisations gathered in Switzerland to raise awareness about blindness.

Meanwhile, rural Bihar, which had the worst blindness problem in the world 10 years ago, is still the place on our planet with the most people unnecessarily blind. The good news is that this state now boasts one of the best success stories related to restoring sight. It involves not just a hospital but entire communities.

Breaking records is almost a way of life for 30-year-old Mumbai boy Ashish Goyal. He was the first blind student to make it to Wharton Business School, Philadelphia, four years ago. If that isn't enough, Ashish cleared his MBA with honours and went on to win the Joseph P Wharton award, given to one student every year who symbolizes Wharton's way of life. Ashish, who now lives in London, is the first blind trader at J P Morgan, and possibly in any bank anywhere in the world.

A dictionary of contemporary Tamil will shortly be available in Braille form.

The work, based on the 2008 Tamil-Tamil-English dictionary brought out by Chennai-based Crea-A, has been published by 25-year-old Indian Association for the Blind (IAB), which is Madurai based.

S.M.A. Jinnah, founder and secretary general of the association, says that 33 differently abled persons, including 20 visually challenged and three orthopaedically challenged persons, were involved in the production of the dictionary.

Once believed to be a male bastion, Gatka— a traditional form of Sikh martial art is also being practiced by the fairer sex now. Determined to learn this form of self-defence, many Punjabi girls are also picking up the art.

On Guru Gobind Singh's birthday, the residents of City Beautiful were enthralled with breath-taking performances on Nagar Kirtan on Tuesday.

King c3,DK Chopra muttered as the five hour long contest entered the endgame. It may have seemed unusual to onlookers for the player to call out his move, but then his opponent was a visually impaired boy who went on to beat Chopra in the final round of the Chennai Open chess tournament here on Wednesday.

The lanky, 16-year-old Darpan Inani,wearing blue glasses, rose to his feet and felt the chessboard to close out the game, and his mother, sitting beside to help him make the moves, could barely conceal her delight.

A blind man in the US is said to have created history by driving a car around a race track in a test which could one day lead to all visually impaired people taking to the roads, a media report said.

Mark Riccobono, 34, successfully navigated his way round the Daytona International Speedway in Florida, overtaking a van and dodging some cardboard boxes thrown in his way, the 'Daily Mail' online reported.

Actor Shriya Saran’s newly opened spa in Lokhandwala, called Shree Spa, promises to rejuvenate the mind and body through improved blood circulation, memory and sleep. It also offers relief from fatigue, depression, hangovers, jetlag, PMS and electromagnetic stress. There are also treatments for removal of toxins and boosting the immune system through hormone secretion.

When blind sculptor Felice Tagliaferri was forbidden to touch one of Italy's most famous statues, he decided revenge was best served not just cold but stone cold.

Tagliaferri, 41, spent much of two years creating his marble interpretation of "Cristo Velato," or "Veiled Christ," a 1753 masterpiece that he has neither seen nor touched.

Giuseppe Sanmartino's exquisitely detailed sculpture of the body of Christ lying wrapped in a fine shroud is one of the prime tourist attractions in Naples.