The man who served as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard has died aged 96.

Rochus Misch was by the Nazi leader’s side for five years throughout the Second World War.

It is thought he died on Thursday following a short illness. Misch travelled with Hitler from bunker to bunker throughout the 1940s.

Following a German defeat on January 16, 1945, Misch and the rest of Hitler’s personal staff moved into the Führerbunker in Berlin.

He was told not to leave the bunker for any significant period of time until the end of the war and handled all of the direct communication from the underground area.

After Hitler killed himself on April 30 1945, Misch was one of the first to find the Nazi leader’s body.

He fled the bunker and was captured by the Russian Red Army – but was released in 1954 and lived in Berlin, only two miles away from the bunker, until he died.

Before his death he spoke several times about his experience of working with the Nazi leader.

In a 2005 interview with the Associated Press, Misch said Hitler, who he referred to as ‘boss’, was ‘a very normal man’.

Misch said, ‘He was no brute. He was no monster. He was no superman.’

He told newspaper Berliner Kurier that, with most of the letters he receives asking for autographs, it was ‘no longer possible’ to reply because of his age.

He said: ‘[The letters] come from Korea, from Knoxville, Tennessee, from Finland and Iceland – and not one has a bad word to say.’

Wildfires are scorching large areas of forest in Portugal and the country has asked other European nations to send two more water-dropping aircraft to help battle the blazes.

Jorge Dias, spokesman for Portugal’s National Civil Protection Authority, said Friday that France and Spain have each sent three Canadair planes designed for dropping water on wildfires, but more are needed.

Some 1,300 firefighters were fighting six major blazes in the north of Portugal amid continuing hot weather and high winds.

The two biggest wildfires were in dense, hilly woodland near Viseu, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Lisbon, the capital.

More than 900 firefighters and 288 vehicles were deployed at those blazes.

An ‘exceptionally rare’ pocket-sized calculator from the 17th Century is expected to attract £100,000 at auction.

The Arithmetical machine is one of the first mechanical calculating devices known to exist and is the first portable device.

The antique ‘pocket calculator’ will go under the hammer at Christie’s in October and is one of three examples of the design to have survived.

The wooden machine measures around 15cm in width and 32cm in length and dates from 1673.

It was crafted by René Grillet de Roven, who was a Parisian mechanician and watchmaker to His Royal Highness King Louis XIV.

James Hyslop, head of Travel, Science and Natural History at the auction house, said: ‘This pocket-sized calculator is one of the earliest surviving pieces in the history of the computer.’

The Arithmetical machine performs all the arithmetic operations including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division through the use of these rolling rotating Napier’s ‘bones’.

There are only three other known examples of this design, two of which are in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris and the other in the collections of IBM in New York.

A fragment of the meteor which injured over 1,500 people when it exploded over a Russian town earlier this year is up for auction.

It was part of a small asteroid that entered the earth’s atmosphere at an estimated speed of 41,000 miles per hour, 50 times the speed of sound, on February 15.

The meteor exploded, creating thousands of small pieces of meteorite, 15 miles above the city of Chelyabinsk.

A factory was knocked down, windows blown in and 1,500 people injured by flying glass.

Rob Elliot, from Milton of Balgonie in Fife, is the owner of the UK’s largest private collection of space memorabilia.

He arranged for pieces of it to be smuggled out of the country and it is one of the only pieces of the Russian meteorite to have made it to the West.

‘The Russian government told the local residents that they would arrest anyone selling pieces of the meteorite overseas, so my contact had to disguise the airmail package and mix the meteorites with pieces of electronic equipment to hide them,’ said Elliott.

Although the package was opened by Russian customs and several meteorites confiscated, most of them made it to Mr Elliott.

The Chelyabinsk meteorite, lot 44 in the auction, weighing 27.1g, has been valued at £400 to £600.

A museum dedicated to the founder of the modern Turkish state has reopened in his native city in northern Greece following a year’s restoration work.

Greek and Turkish government officials said the museum, at the house where Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is believed to have been born in 1881, would help efforts to strengthen ties between the two historic rivals.

The three-level house inaugurated in Thessaloniki on Friday lies within the Turkish Consulate complex. It has been declared a modern monument by Greek cultural authorities, and was restored to the appearance it had in 1881.

Ataturk, who led Turkey’s defeat of Greek expeditionary forces in the 1919-22 war, lived part of his childhood in Thessaloniki. He became Turkey’s first president, heading efforts at reconciliation with Greece, and died in 1938.

German consumer goods company Henkel has caused a stink with its brand of toilet freshener after Ukrainians complained that it resembled their national flag.

The yellow-and-blue Bref Duo Stick freshener has been removed from sale in eastern Europe after a TV advertisement aired on a Russian channel was seen in neighbouring Ukraine.

The advert shows the freshener that looks like the flag being put under the toilet rim.

Tore Birol, Henkel’s general manager for laundry and home care products in Ukraine, said yesterday that the company had pulled the product within three days of the complaints.

He said: ‘We are very sorry if people were offended by the design of our new product’

Mr Birol explained that the freshener was coloured yellow to represent its lemon scent and blue to symbolise water and hygiene.

Uno problemo… Construction firm builds 47-storey skyscraper in Benidorm but forget to fit a liftThe 200metre high InTempo towers in Benidorm were billed as ‘a vision of the future’ and a symbol of Spain’s reemergence from a crippling financial crisis.

With 47 floors of living space it was intended to be the tallest residential building in Europe.

But with only months until it is due for completion, contractors have hit upon a slight problem .

They forgot to build a lift.

The towers were originally designed to be only 20 floors high, but ambitious developers decided to double the scale of the project midway through.

A lift exists for the first 20 floors, but beyond that there is only the stairs. And reports seen by Spain’s El Pais newspaper suggest there is no more space for another lift or motor equipment.

Despite plans to open the twin towers to great fanfare in 2009, the block remains only 94 per cent complete. Only 35 per cent of the 269 units have been sold. It is now expected to be finished in December of this year, and the remaining flats will go on sale at a lower price.

Firefighters and soldiers are battling a wildfire that broke out overnight and burned through forest near Greece’s capital city, Athens. Authorities have managed to prevent the flames from moving into a nature reserve near the city’s northern suburbs.

The fire department says nearly 300 firefighters, soldiers and volunteers struggled through the night to contain the blaze that broke out in the Varibobi area north of Athens. At first light Tuesday they were joined by 10 water-dropping planes and two helicopters. At least four homes in the area were burned.

The blaze broke out late Monday night, the fire department said in a statement. Earlier Monday, another large wildfire burned about 10 homes as it raged through a hamlet near Marathon, north of Athens.

In a bid to protect its ancient glories from modern perils, Rome has banned cars and motors scooters from the boulevard that slices through the city’s ancient Roman forums toward the Colosseum.

Traffic police started enforcing the new restrictions at dawn Saturday, diverting private cars and motor scooters to side streets so they will no longer clog the famed Via dei Fori Imperiali.

Only buses, taxis, bicycles and pedestrians will be allowed on that boulevard, which was constructed in the 1930s by dictator Benito Mussolini so military parades could roll past reminders of the ancient Roman empire.

Rome’s new mayor, Ignazio Marino, says the ban will stop the Colosseum from being a traffic “roundabout” and reduce pollution.

Sidewalks have been widened so people can stroll in leisure down the boulevard.

The bizarre behaviour of a troop of ‘hysterical’ s at a Dutch zoo has been blamed on everything from an earthquake to a UFO.

Ordinarily seen scampering around on their island at the in the northern Netherlands, the gang of 112 monkeys have been sitting frozen on the ground and turning their backs on visitors this week.

The baboons have even lost their appetites, say baffled zoologists at the park, who have heard various theories as to what may be behind the animals’ strange behaviour.

‘They became panicked at the end of the day on Monday, they were hysterical, not jumping around but behaving strangely,’ zoologist Wijbren Landman told AFP.

‘On Tuesday and Wednesday they just sat in the trees or on the ground, hardly moving or eating.’

Mr Landman described various theories put forward to explain the bizarre scenes at the zoo, with some suggesting the baboons may have spotted a predator – either a real one or an image of one on a visitor’s t-shirt – or felt the rumblings of an earthquake.

The zoologist admitted he was yet to hear an explanation that ‘holds water’.

‘The craziest suggestion was that it was caused by a UFO,’ Mr Landman said.

Baboons at the zoo, who were all born in captivity, have behaved this way four times in the past 20 years, the team at Emmen Dierenpark said.

But their activity has not been observed among any baboons anywhere else, either in captivity or in the wild, according to a report in the Huffington Post.

Experts consulted by staff at Emmen Dierenpark have so far failed to shed any light on the mystery, but the animals have shown signs of returning to normal.

The Government has stepped in to stop U.S. singer Kelly Clarkson taking a gold and turquoise ring once owned by Jane Austen out of the country. The star, who shot to fame when she won the American Idol show, bought the jewellery at auction last year for more than £150,000, but culture minister Ed Vaizey has put a temporary export bar on the piece in a bid to keep it in the UK. The ring is one of only three surviving pieces of jewellery known to have belonged to the Pride and Prejudice author, having been given to her sister Cassandra and then passed down through the family before it was sold. Mr Vaizey said: ‘Jane Austen’s modest lifestyle and her early death mean that objects associated with her of any kind are extremely rare, so I hope that a UK buyer comes forward so this simple but elegant ring can be saved for the nation.’ The decision on the export licence will be deferred until September 30 and can be extended to December 30 if proof emerges of “a serious intention to raise funds” to match its six-figure price tag.