Cologne, Germany - Cameras with satellite-navigation features and switches that ensure subjects are smiling are among the highlights of the Photokina trade fair that opened on Tuesday.

The fair, held every two years in Cologne, is a major venue to launch new digital and film cameras, camera-phones, camcorders, lenses, flash systems, photo printers and
software.

Cologne - Far-left protesters set up the first road blocks in Cologne to prevent a scheduled far-right anti-Islam rally in the city on Saturday.

Elsewhere in the city, police secured access to the site where the demonstration is planned. However, the scene was dominated by peaceful demonstrators streaming into the city in large numbers to protest against the right-wing rally.

Several hundred police forces were deployed across the city ahead of the controversial "Anti-Islam Conference" organized by a city group, Pro Cologne.

Pro Cologne which won 5 per cent of votes at the last city-council elections, has invited 1,000 to 1,500 rightists from all over Europe to join it Saturday at a protest against building a grand mosque.

Cologne, Germany - Anti-immigrant rightists from around Europe gathered Friday to protest against a planned mosque in the German city of Cologne and chased a man of Turkish appearance.

Police have called in reinforcements, fearing the rightists may clash with Cologne's ethnic minorities and German leftists.

Reporters said they saw the rightists chase a lone man across a main road near a suburban Cologne town hall and then shove him.

Police did not act till the unnamed man, whose hair colour suggested that he might be of Turkish origin, ran to them and asked for protection. Police then shielded him from the pursuers.

Cologne,

Cologne, Germany - The latest cameras at the Photokina trade expo next week in Germany will have satellite-navigation features and switches that ensure subjects are smiling, an industry figure says.

The fair, held every two years in Cologne, is a major venue to launch new digital and film cameras, camera-phones, camcorders, lenses, flash systems, photo printers and software.

Organizers describe the six-day event, which begins September 23, as the world's biggest camera show, with 1,500 exhibitors from 50 nations taking part.

Constanze Clauss, spokeswoman for the German photo industry federation PIV, said at a pre-fair briefing, "You are now seeing the global positioning system (GPS) coming into some camera models."

Cologne, Germany - An anti-mosque demonstration in one week's time in Germany is likely to attract 1,500 rightists from around Europe, according to an organizer, Markus Beisicht, in Cologne on Friday as fears grew of violent clashes.

Riot police throughout North Rhine Westphalia state have been put on standby to separate the rightists from up to 40,000 opponents.

The two groups are at odds over the start of building work for Cologne's grand mosque.

The right-wing Pro Cologne group rejects the house of worship for the city's large Muslim community as alien.