BUCHAREST (AFP) – Romania’s government adopted an emergency decree yesterday reauthorizing access to the archives of the communist-era secret police, days after a court blocked a commission from studying the files. “This decree was necessary because, 18 years after the fall of the communist regime, we could not stop midway in our efforts to reveal the crimes of communism,” Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu said. The constitutional court declared last Thursday that several clauses in the law allowing access to the files were unconstitutional.

SARAJEVO (AFP) – Rights group Amnesty International called on Bosnian authorities yesterday to end widespread abuse of prisoners and detained suspects by local police. “A persistent culture of impunity among law enforcement and prison officials as well as prosecutors is fueling ill-treatment in places of detention in Bosnia,” AI said in a report presented here. The practice “continues to be disturbingly common” across the country, it added.

Local consumer protection groups urged Croats yesterday to limit their shopping to bare necessities for one week, in the first nationwide protest at recent price hikes. The boycott starting tomorrow follows severe hikes in food prices which, together with energy and utility prices, threaten to nibble away at already meager living standards in the EU candidate country. “We call on citizens to refrain from shopping as much as possible from February 8 to 15,” Vesna Brcic-Stipcevic, head of the biggest local consumer protection association, said. “We want... lower prices.” (Reuters)

A Romanian train driver leapt aboard a runaway engine to stop it after having left the brake off in a station but was killed when the stunt backfired, railway police said yesterday. Ioan Colceriu, 55, was at a train station in the central town of Odorheiu Secuiesc when he realized he had forgotten some papers in the station office. He went to fetch them but forgot to put the hand brake on the engine. When it moved off without him, the driver flagged down a taxi and chased it for 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) before catching up with it. He jumped aboard the moving engine but slipped and fell under its wheels, police said. (Reuters)

Experts defused a 250-kilogram (550-pound) WWII bomb in the Croatian capital while some 1,000 residents were evacuated, police said. The bomb was the fifth of its kind found during excavation work at a Zagreb building site since mid-December. (AFP)