The Obama campaign said on Monday that the Democratic presidential candidate will take off two days from his campaign to go to Hawaii this week, to visit the ailing grandmother who helped raise him.

Obama is canceling events, scheduled for Thursday, in Madison, Wisconsin, and Des Moines, Iowa. Instead, he instead will go to an event in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Thursday, from where he will fly to Hawaii to see his grandmother. He will return to the campaign trail on Saturday.

The Chief Executive of Google Inc., Eric Schmidt will actively hit the campaign trail this week on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, after having kept a low partisan profile till now, in the 2008 election.

Making the announcement in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Schmidt said his planned endorsement of the Illinois senator is a ‘natural evolution’ from his role as an informal adviser to the Obama campaign. He noted that he has been advising the campaign on technology and clean-energy issues for most of the summer.

The Election Commission today announced the first-time, seven-phase assembly poll in Jammu and Kashmir.