In the suffocating atmosphere that was East Germany, a whole range of misfits managed to find air to breathe and now, two decades after the Berlin Wall's fall, new films are putting communism's "freaks" in focus.

Screening at the Berlin film festival, "This Ain't California" and "Among Men - Gay in East Germany" look at underground skater culture and homosexuality and the drive for individual freedom against rampant repression.

Filomeno de Guzman does not know Sparta from medieval Scotland, but the Philippine sword smith is an expert at replicating ancient warriors' tools for killing each other.

A stubby ex-military sergeant who has never set foot abroad, de Guzman and 15 rice farmer-neighbors who moonlight as blacksmiths craft old truck leaf springs into things of terrible beauty.

Gangs of metal thieves are targeting London's sculptures, statues and even war memorials, stripping them from their plinths and melting them down for their scrap value as commodity prices soar.

Thieves have been plundering pipes and cables for months, but police are increasingly concerned that they are turning their attention to valuable works of art.

A hotly awaited documentary on Bob Marley has premiered to cheers at the Berlin film festival, tracking his journey from bullied biracial Jamaican boy to reggae superstar.

"Marley" by Oscar-winning Scottish film-maker Kevin Macdonald is a two-and-half-hour-long tribute to a child of the Kingston ghettos who made reggae a global phenomenon by the sheer force of his talent and charisma.

Several schools in Russia have received an official recommendation to purchase copies of a book about the childhood and school years of Vladimir Putin, who is set to return to the presidency in March polls.

Several schools in the central Tver region to the northwest of Moscow have received a written recommendation to buy copies of the book entitled "Vladimir Putin. Parents. Friends. Teachers" published in 2004, a local official said.

Jason Wu brought the mystery of the Forbidden City to New York fashion week on Friday with a fall-winter collection inspired by his Chinese heritage and 1930s Hollywood glamor.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Canada and the United States, 29-year-old Wu famously designed the gown First Lady Michelle Obama wore to the January 2009 balls that accompanied the inauguration of her husband Barack Obama as president.

A Belgian court refused Friday to ban the sale of "Tintin in the Congo," rejecting arguments by a Congolese man that the iconic comic book was filled with racist stereotypes about Africans.

The Brussels court ruled that Belgian anti-racism laws only apply when there is a willful intention to discriminate against someone, said an attorney for Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, the man who tried to get the strip off bookshelves.

Cuba on Thursday opened its 21st annual international book fair, the high point of the communist nation's cultural calendar, with a new book by former president and revolutionary icon Fidel Castro.

More than 200 foreign writers and intellectuals were to take part in the celebration, which lasts through February 19.

From culture-jamming youths wired into a networked world, to neo-dandies or take-it-slow types, what tomorrow's man will look like -- and what he might want to buy -- is a capital issue for big brands.

Back in 1994 the term "metrosexual", short for "metropolitan heterosexual", was coined to describe an emerging breed of male: urban, single, sophisticated and ready to spend what it takes to look good.

Dark, bare photos of modern Chinese society by Liu Xia, detained wife of China's best known dissident, went on show in New York without her knowledge after they were spirited out of her country.

The photos were brought out of China under the noses of the authorities by French academic, writer and economist Guy Sorman, a friend of the artist and her Nobel Peace prize-winning husbandLiu Xiaobo.