Leading Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, who turned against his Marxist beliefs, went into exile and then branded his old doctrine "the greatest fantasy of the 20th century", died yesterday, aged 81.
Mr Kolakowski, who won international renown with his monumental Main Currents of Marxism, died in hospital in Oxford.
"We have lost a man who rendered remarkable services in the cause of a free and democratic Poland," the speaker of Poland's Parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, said.
Starting off as an orthodox Marxist in postwar Poland, Mr Kolakowski became progressively disenchanted and his calls for a more democratic version of socialism led him into conflicts with the censors which finally forced him to move to the West.
In exile, first at Berkeley University in California and then at Oxford's All Souls, Mr Kolakowski wrote books on the history of ideas, culminating in his Main Currents of Marxism, which chronicled the origins, rise and decline of Karl Marx's philosophy. He argued that the totalitarian cruelty of Josef Stalin's Soviet Union was the logical end of Marxist thought.
From Britain, he backed Poland's pro-democracy Solidarity movement (Solidarnosc) which finally overthrew communist rule in 1989. (Reuters)
Police free man from station locker
German police had to rescue a 20-year-old man from a train station suitcase locker after he shut himself in for fun and began to suffocate.
After a night out drinking with friends, squeezing into the locker had seemed like an amusing idea to the man, police in Ludwigshafen said. But the laughter faded when he started to run out of oxygen and his companions couldn't open the locker.
Police broke open the door and dragged the groggy man to safety. (Reuters)
British trash irritates Brazilians
Brazilians are kicking up a stink over 1,200 tonnes of British garbage, including toilet seats, dirty diapers and used syringes, that are rotting at two southern ports after arriving in container ships.
The trash, which arrived in Brazil earlier this year, was destined for Brazilian companies that said they were expecting shipments of recyclable plastic. Instead, port officials found the containers that originated at the British port of Felixstowe packed with trash, ranging from the chemical toilet seats to food remnants and computer pieces.
Brazil's federal prosecution office have asked the foreign ministry to request that Britain take back the shipments.
Roberto Messias, the president of Brazilian environment agency IBAMA said, "Clearly, Brazil is not a big rubbish dump of the world."
The British Embassy said it was investigating the case and would "not hesitate to act" if it was found that a company had violated the Basel Convention on the movement of hazardous waste. (Reuters)
Multi-million-euro Paris wine thefts
Police arrested a 44-year-old man on Thursday on suspicion of having stolen more than 500 bottles of fine wine worth hundreds of millions of euros from some of the best restaurants in Paris.
He was collared whilst returning to his home in Colombes, west of the French capital, with 262 bottles of wine in his truck that were allegedly lifted from a Paris restaurant overnight Tuesday, Bastille Day.
But he had been under police surveillance since the March 13 theft of several dozen bottles of vintage wines from the upmarket Hediard restaurant and fine grocery shop, a police source said. (AFP)
Wealthy woman victim of blackmail
German police arrested three men suspected of attempting to blackmail Susanne Klatten, the country's wealthiest woman, by claiming they had a secret video of her affair with a Swiss gigolo, prosecutors said yesterday.
Munich state prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said the trio had been arrested on suspicion of trying to extort €800,000 and a BMW luxury SUV from Ms Klatten, heiress to the BMW empire.
"They sent a letter to her threatening to give the sex video they claimed to have to Italian media if she did not give them €800,000 and a BMW," Mr Steinkraus-Koch said.
The three men were contacted by a police officer posing as an acquaintance of Ms Klatten. They set up a contact phone number for the blackmailers and that led to their arrest.
Ms Klatten is a member of the Quandt family - the leading shareholders in carmaker BMW. Her wealth is estimated by Forbes magazine at almost $10 billion, making her the 68th richest person in the world. (Reuters)
82-year-old's transport challenge
An 82-year-old Briton was celebrating yesterday after completing his bid to travel on 100 different types of transport within a year.
Edwin Shackleton, a retired aircraft engineer from Bristol started off his odyssey with a ride in his car on New Year's Day. Seven months on, the bowel cancer survivor travelled by his 100th mode of transport by taking a ride in a hot air balloon.
On his way to the 100 mark, Mr Shackleton travelled in a sledge, a fire engine, a rubbish truck, a rickshaw, a police car, a chairlift, a quad bike and a microlight plane.
Now the widowed pensioner has decided to carry on and try to take 240 different modes of transport, which he hopes will score him a Guinness World Record.
Mr Shackleton has already made a Guinness World Record, for flying the biggest variety of aircraft as a passenger. On his bid for another record, he is scheduled to ride in a three-wheel car, a brewer's dray and a privately-owned Russian T-55 tank.
Mr Shackleton said he also wanted to travel on a Cessna 208 Caravan bush plane used in Scotland, plus a transporter bridge and a steam-propelled bus in northeast England. (AFP)