WARSAW, Sept 30, 2007 (AFP) - The European Union's 10 ex-communist states, which were hit by massive unemployment after they shifted to a market economy almost two decades ago, are now facing a labour shortage, according to the World Bank.

The EU newcomers need to enact new reforms to boost their workforces, singling out measures to discourage early retirement and to open their labour markets to foreigners, the bank said.

The region has undergone a 'major shift,' said economist Jan Rutkowski, the lead author of the World Bank report released in Warsaw last Thursday.

WARSAW, Sept 27, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly two decades after the fall of communism, Europe's former Moscow-dominated states are using the Internet to make public the files of the security services that helped keep their regimes in power.

In the latest step, the body in charge of Poland's communist-era secret police files began Tuesday posting documents related to top officials, including the President Lech Kaczynski and his identical twin Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

GENEVA, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - The collapse of Communism has led to a 'catastrophic' decline in access to education and widening inequalities in the former Soviet bloc, the United Nations Children's Fund warned Thursday.

More than 14 million children enter the workplace each year without any kind of formal education or school diploma, in contrast to the near-universal levels of education enjoyed in Soviet times, UNICEF said in a report.