But Ukraine's President has come up with what looks like an effective solution: legislate them out of existence. Sick of people telling him how they have been fleeced by public servants who are supposed to ensure their road safety, President Viktor Yushchenko has abolished the state traffic police at the stroke of a pen. "I have warned ministers three times. If the traffic police continue to keep hiding in the bushes with speed cameras and do nothing else there will be no traffic police," he told a meeting of law enforcement chiefs at which various heads rolled "You have discredited this agency. That is why I have taken the decision that from today there will be no traffic police."Mr Yushchenko acted after a farmer complained to him how the traffic police had begun extorting bribes with renewed vigour since last year's orange revolution, which was supposed to eradicate the country's appalling corruption.Policemen across the former Soviet Union supplement their often meagre salaries by extracting bribes from drivers for the most minor infractions. So commonplace is the occurrence that many drivers keep a few banknotes tucked in their driving licence to save time.

Mr Yushchenko, who knows that the decision is likely to do his ratings no harm, assailed Sergey Kolomitsa, the head of the traffic police, before breaking the bad news that he had abolished his 23,000-strong department."What are your people doing on the roads?" he demanded to know."I have personally witnessed incidents where policemen have been patrolling the roads with the sole purpose of receiving bribes. In fact the only reason you go out on the road is to torment people."Ukrainian motorists should not celebrate too soon, though. The discredited state traffic police will soon be replaced with a new state patrol service, albeit one which will apparently be dedicated exclusively to road safety rather than racketeering.. Magistrates investigating the death of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 are focusing on Licio Gelli, the former "grand master" of the illegal P2 Masonic lodge that plotted against Italian democracy in the 1970s. Mr Gelli denies he was involved but has acknowledged that the financier, known as "God's banker" because of his links with the Vatican, was murdered. He said the killing was commissioned in Poland. This is thought to be a reference to Calvi's alleged involvement in financing the Solidarity trade union movement at the request of the late Pope John Paul II, according to the sources quoted by La Repubblica newspaper.Two Roman investigating magistrates, Judge Maria Monteleone and Judge Luca Tescaroli, sent Mr Gelli a judicial letter informing him that he is formally under investigation on charges of ordering the murder along with four other people - Flavio Carboni, a shadowy businessman with secret service contacts, his girlfriend Manuela Kleinsing, the Cosa Nostra boss Giuseppe Calo and an entrepreneur, Ernesto Dioatallevi. Mr Gelli said the murder was related to Calvi's dealings with the Vatican Bank, which has always denied any moral responsibility in the Ambrosiano affair "One evening I was at dinner with Calvi He was angry, black in the face.

He told me that the next day he had to go and see 'the most Holy one' in the Vatican to get $80m that he had to pay for bills relating to Poland and that if he did not get the money everything would blow up," Mr Gelli was quoted as saying in La Repubblica."This happened between 1979 and 1980, and that is why I said that to find Calvi's assassins one ought to have investigated in Poland," Mr Gelli was quoted as telling the magistrates.. East Germans desperate for a whiff of the good old days can now get Communism in a can with a brand new Trabant perfume. "Trabi Duft", a tin of exhaust fumes from the ubiquitous East German car, is the latest in a seemingly unending line of "Ostalgie" products marketed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although many argue that the books, films, music, food and drink inspired by the defunct German Democratic Republic encourage a far too sentimental image of a regime which shot those who tried to escape it, the thirst for Ostalgie continues. Producers of eau de Trabant, costing a socialist €3.98 (£2.75) a can, stress it is not intended for cosmetic use. But they say it remains the closest we will get to recapturing the true smell of East Germany."There used to be so many Trabis in the GDR, the entire country used to smell of them," said Thorsten Jahn, who developed Trabi Duft and sells it on his website, "Now you can count the number of Trabants on the fingers of one hand. I decided we just had to preserve this unique smell for future generations."Mr Jahn, 32, from the former East German town of Eisenh?nstadt, has long since swapped his Trabant for a Volkswagen Passat.