Greek police say they have killed Marian Kola, the Albanian mastermind of a daring prison escape, in an intense firefight after a four-month manhunt. …read more
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Tag Archives: Albania
Albania changes election committee despite concern
Lawmakers in Albania have voted to replace a member of the country’s election commission ahead of a national poll on June 23, prompting sharp criticism from the European Union and the United States.
Parliament late Monday voted 74-0 to replace an official on the seven-member Central Election Commission. The official had been backed by a small party that recently left the coalition government to join the opposition.
Post-Communist Albania has failed in the past to meet international election standards, and the U.S. ambassador to Albania, Alexander Arvizu, said the committee change had put Albania on a “collision course” with the international community.
The European Union also expressed concern ahead of a scheduled visit to Tirana later Tuesday by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/VEeVAc3r9Sg/
Albania northwest under floodwaters for a month
Villagers in northwestern Albania are running out of patience after their homes have been surrounded by floodwaters for a month.
They blame their ills on the operators of major hydropower dams that discharged vast quantities of water to keep levels manageable, and said Thursday the government has done little to ease their plight.
“They get millions of euros selling the electricity produced by this water you see in my yard,” farmer Hil Gjocaj said in Obot village, 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of the capital, Tirana. “But not a cent of that money has come here to protect me and my business from the water.”
The 51-year-old pointed in disgust to a water-covered greenhouse. Inside, his pepper plants — in which he has invested about 1,000 euros ($1,300) — lay under waters as placid as a lake’s.
Submerged orange and lemon groves stand around, while dry pockets that rise above the water here and there are covered in parked cars.
A month after heavy rains started, more than 700 houses in the Shkoder district remain surrounded by three feet (about a meter) of floodwater, although their residents stayed on as most buildings are dry inside. About 15,000 acres (6,000 hectares) of land are waterlogged, and rafts or small boats are the only mode of transportation.
Obot lies five kilometers (3 miles) from the national road. To cover that distance now takes half an hour by small boat. Most of the houses are two-story constructions, many built in the past two decades by returning immigrants — more than 1 million of whom left the impoverished Balkan country after the fall of Communism in 1990, to seek a better future in the west or neighboring Greece.
Their choice of a site may not have been the best. The area has experienced severe floods three times in the past four years, and serves as a basin for surrounding regions.
Pellumb Dani, an official at the Shkoder prefecture, said Thursday that the area is prone to flooding whenever there is heavy rain, particularly as the country’s three main hydropower stations that cover 95 percent of domestic electricity needs are built on the nearby Drini River.
When it rains a lot, operators are forced to discharge water to lessen the load on dams
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/gn1YRDU7NRI/
Albania to put trash import plan to referendum
Albania pledged Tuesday to hold a historic referendum on whether to scrap waste imports, a money-making program strongly opposed by environmentalists who say the poor Balkan country is already buried under its own trash.
A law passed in 2011 allows the import of non-radioactive waste for destruction or recycling in factories. But litter clogs rivers and piles up on the side of roads, and activists say the government can’t be trusted to track the imported garbage.
The referendum is a major step for a country still working out its democracy some two decades after the fall of the repressive regime of communist dictator Enver Hoxha. Bowing to a petition signed by 64,000 people, the president’s office on Tuesday set Dec. 22 as the date for the vote — the first forced by popular demand since the country gained independence from Ottoman Turkey in 1912.
The conservative government insists that the program is drawing foreign investment and has created some 3,000 badly needed local jobs to one of Europe‘s poorest countries. But environmentalists say the small country is in danger of turning into a garbage dump, and that the government must first build new landfills and take care of its own trash before it tries to take on more.
“How can we try to help the recycling business at a time when the country has not resolved its own waste management?,” asked Zamir Dedej, who heads the Institute of Nature Protection in Albania.
The government has already built about half a dozen factories to handle the waste, but it has been tight-lipped about where the rubbish is coming from, though Albanian media have reported that much of it is coming from Italy.
Although the law stipulates that special government approval is needed for hazardous waste, its opponents say that is not enough.
“Our country still does not have the proper institutions or personnel to check the incoming waste,” said Lavdosh Ferruni, an environmentalist and one of the leaders behind the referendum push.
A lawmaker with the main opposition Socialist Party, Besnik Bare, said his party will scrap the law if elected on June 23.
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Albania says rain hampering flood response effort
Albanian authorities say continuous rainfall is hampering efforts to address severe flooding that has left hundreds of homes swamped and without electricity or drinking water for the past three weeks.
Up to 8,000 acres of land in the northwestern Shkoder area have been submerged in up to three feet of water following weeks of heavy rain.
Interior Ministry spokesman Leonard Olli said Monday that the situation is of concern, but it is not yet serious enough to declare a state of emergency.
The Albanian army has been ferrying food and drinking water to residents in the flooded areas, most of whom have refused to leave their homes.
Power authorities are discharging water from reservoirs that supply major power stations in the area, where water levels have reached a critical point.
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North Korea's Nuclear Naivety
Was there ever a sadder sovereign than North Korea (NK)? Albania maybe…Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria spring to mind but I do not think their sense of delusion is as bad as NK. Saddam may have threatend in 1991 the “Mother of all Battles”, but the dangerous game of Kim Jong Un has the potential to kill all of his nation’s population such is the cult mentality that this curious nation is cast in. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Piece of Berlin Wall used in Albanian memorial
A memorial containing a 2.6-ton piece of the Berlin Wall has been unveiled in Albania to honor former political prisoners who suffered under the late dictator Enver Hoxha’s Communist regime.
The memorial was unveiled Tuesday at a residential area in the capital Tirana, known as the ‘Bllok,’ where senior members of the Hoxha regime once lived. The Berlin Wall fragment was placed next to a concrete bunker and concrete supports taken from a notorious mine where prisoners were once forced to work.
Some 100,000 Albanians were imprisoned, sent to internment camps or executed during Hoxha’s repressive regime, which lasted from 1944 until December 1990.
But many former political prisoners remain dissatisfied with unfulfilled pledges of compensation and reintegration into Albanian society.
Albania offers asylum to Iranian opposition group
The Albanian government says it is offering asylum to 210 members of an Iranian opposition group that currently live at a former U.S. military base near Baghdad.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha made the announcement Saturday after meeting with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, the U.N. envoy in Iraq, Martin Kobler, and other officials. He said the offer is made for “humanitarian reasons.”
Iraq‘s government is eager to have the group, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq , out of the country. The group opposes Iran‘s clerical regime and carried out assassinations and bombings in Iran until renouncing violence in 2001. It fought in the 1980s alongside Saddam Hussein‘s forces in the Iran–Iraq war.
The U.N. says over 3,000 MEK members live at the former U.S. base. They refuse to leave Iraq.
Bulgaria to revoke Czech power company license
Bulgaria announced Tuesday that the license held by a Czech company for power distribution in parts of the Balkan country will be revoked following allegations it systemically broke procurement rules.
Prime Minister Boiko Borisov told reporters that the state energy regulator will strip CEZ of the license later in the day. He did not elaborate. Prosecutors investigating CEZ‘s operations said earlier that there were “systematic violations” of public procurement rules.
CEZ, which insists it hasn’t breached regulations, had 9.9 percent of its 2011 revenue from Bulgaria, making it the company’s second-largest market after the Czech Republic.
In January, Albania revoked the license of CEZ and announced that electricity distribution would return to government control following a yearlong quarrel over missed contract commitments.
In Prague, the company’s spokeswoman Barbora Pulpanova on Tuesday called the statements by Bulgaria‘s prime minister and prosecution “a serious breach of Bulgaria‘s law as a member state of the European Union.”
“The only authority, which has the power to make a decision to start the procedure of license revoking, is the independent energy regulatory office. We have not received any official information from it about any intention to make such a step,” CEZ said in a statement.
The Czech company also said it “fully meets all its obligations” and “categorically denies any wrongdoing that might theoretically lead to start the procedure of license revoking.”
The move comes in the wake of nationwide protests against skyrocketing electricity prices. Tens of thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets over the last days to protest.
On Monday, the government sacked Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov, who was unpopular for his austerity budget policies, but the move failed to quell the protests.
Borisov, whose center-right government is losing public support ahead of general elections in July, also said electricity prices will be cut by 8 percent.
However, he categorically rejected demands by protesters about a nationalization of the three foreign-controlled power distributors that dominate the local market: CEZ and Energo-Pro from the Czech Republic, and Austria’s EVN.
“I won’t be the one who will go for nationalization of anything in Bulgaria,” Borisov said.
Bulgarians protest foreign power companies
Thousands of Bulgarians protested on Sunday against rising electricity and heating bills, and police clashed with demonstrators throwing eggs and tomatoes at government buildings.
The violence occurred in Sofia, the capital, when riot police struggled to keep demonstrators away from public buildings, but no injuries were immediately reported. Large parts of the city center remained blocked off for hours.
Similar rallies occurred in other cities across the country, with some temporarily blocking traffic on major highways.
Earlier, the protesters in Sofia burned their utility bills in public, accusing the government of failing to improve their falling living standards and demanding the expulsion of the three foreign-controlled power distributors that control the local market: CEZ and Energo-Pro from the Czech Republic, and Austria’s EVN.
In January, Albania revoked the license of CEZ and announced that electricity distribution would return to government control, but experts in Bulgaria have expressed doubt the government can legally do that.
Bulgaria, which joined the European Union in 2007, is the bloc’s poorest member country, with an average monthly salary of €360 ($480) and an average pension of €150 ($200).
The ruling center-right party of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, which won parliamentary elections in 2009, has been steadily losing public support in the wake of the country’s worst economic downturn in a decade.
Elections in July are expected to be a close race between the incumbents and the opposition Socialist party.
Crisis-hit Greece backs pipeline for Caspian gas
Greece, Italy and Albania signed an agreement Wednesday backing a proposed pipeline to transport natural gas from the Caspian Sea to western Europe, intensifying the rivalry with a competing project.
The 800-kilometer (500-mile) Trans-Adriatic pipeline system, or TAP, would have an initial annual capacity of 10 billion cubic meters (353 cubic feet) of natural gas from Azerbaijan. The venture is run by consortium comprised by Germany’s E.ON Ruhrgas, Norway’s Statoil and the Swiss-based Axpo group.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said the project would provide €1.5 billion ($2.02 billion) of private investment in his country, which is suffering through a sixth year of recession.
“This will change Greece from a second-tier energy destination to a significant transit point,” Samaras said. “It will create 2,000 Greek jobs in the early stages of the project in regions that are suffering high rates of unemployment.”
TAP is widely seen as a competitor of the Nabucco West pipeline, a separate proposed project that would transport gas to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. Both are vying for the right to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan‘s Shah Deniz gas field to western Europe by 2019.
The Shah Deniz gas producers will decide in June which route to use to export their gas to Europe.
TAP officials on Wednesday said they did not yet have an estimate of the total cost of the project and added that, if selected, construction of the pipeline would start in 2015. The pipeline’s annual capacity could be doubled to 20 billion cubic meters, they said.
Wednesday’s agreement was signed by Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos, along with Albanian Finance and Energy Minister Edmond Haxhinasto and Italian Development Minister Corrado Passera, while representatives of the Azerbaijani government also attended the ceremony.
“This is an important step for the diversification of Europe‘s energy supply and access by Azerbaijan to Europe‘s market,” Passera said.
European governments are keen to bring Azeri gas to their markets, and ease current domination by Russia.
Kjetil Tungland, TAP‘s Managing Director, argued the venture would also spur other badly-needed growth-boosting projects in Greece.
“Projects like TAP signal confidence for other investors,” he said.
UN takes charity founder off Al Qaida list
A Saudi Arabian government official who started an Islamic charity in Oregon has been taken off a United Nations list of people subject to sanctions for ties to al-Qaida but remains on a similar U.S. list.
The U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against al-Qaida removed Soliman al-Buthe, now a deputy minister in Saudi Arabia‘s Ministry of Municipalities, from the list Monday.
Al-Buthe still faces arrest if he returns to the United States. A federal indictment alleges he smuggled $150,000 in cash collected by Al Haramain Islamic Foundation in Ashland to Saudi Arabia in 2000 to help terrorists in Chechnya. His co-defendant, Iranian-American tree surgeon Pete Seda, is serving 33 months in prison after being convicted of conspiracy and tax fraud.
Al-Buthe’s attorney Tom Nelson said the U.N. action is some vindication for his client, but al-Buthe is still trying to get off the U.S. terrorism list.
“It all goes back to the days immediately after 9/11, when the government embarked on a crusade to find terrorists under every bed,” Nelson said. “A lot of innocent people got sucked in and harmed very significantly as a result. More and more of those cases are coming out all the time.”
Al-Buthe said in a statement that all he ever wanted was a fair chance to clear his name.
“While the Americans still refuse to disclose reasons behind their actions, the United Nations now prohibits unfair practices. It was this change that allowed me to clear my name.”
He and Al Haramain remain on the Treasury Department‘s al-Qaida sanctions list. The foundation disbanded after the department froze its assets in 2004 for allegedly aiding terrorists in Chechnya and Albania. A federal appeals court upheld the listing, but not the assets freeze.
Nelson said Treasury has not responded to his application to be taken off the list since he filed it two years ago.
Treasury spokesman John Sullivan said people are taken off the list, but he did immediately respond to questions about whether al-Buthe’s request to be removed had been received or why Nelson has received no response.
The reasons al-Buthe was taken off the U.N. list were not given by the committee, which said in a statement only that it considered …read more
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Albanian court clears police of protesters' deaths
An Albanian court acquitted two senior police officers on Thursday of shooting dead four opposition supporters during an anti-government protest in 2011.
The ruling was met with outrage by the opposition, fueling the country’s rising political tensions ahead of its June 23 national election.
The Socialist opposition party walked out of Parliament in protest Thursday, and one victim’s son hinted that relatives could take the matter into their own hands in accordance with Albania‘s long history of vendettas.
“Tradition says that blood is paid with blood,” the son, Renato Myrtaj, told the private News 24 television station.
“On behalf of the families of the four Jan. 21 victims, we pledge that (the perpetrators) will not escape justice,” said Socialist lawmaker Saimir Tahiri before leaving Parliament.
Presiding judge Besnik Hoxha said prosecutors were unable to prove the charges against Ndrea Prendi, head of the elite Republican Guard, and Agim Llupo, a senior officer in the unit.
A third officer was acquitted of concealing evidence about the January 2011 shootings.
An investigation found that police bullets killed four men at a Socialist Party protest against alleged corruption and vote-rigging by Prime Minister Sali Berisha‘s government. Prendi and Llupo admitted firing shots in the air, but denied hitting anyone.
The court decision angered the opposition, which has accused Berisha of authorizing police to use lethal force at the protest — a claim the prime minister rejects.
“I assure the families of the four martyrs that their deaths cannot be forgotten … until a fair verdict is obtained,” Socialist Party leader Edi Rama said.
“When justice speaks, you should keep silent,” responded Parliament Speaker Jozefina Topalli, a governing Democratic Party lawmaker.
Myrtaj, the victim’s son, said the decision left him feeling “buried alive.” He also hinted that relatives could lean toward mob justice.
“They can kill me too but there’s a big family behind,” he said.
A spokesman for the Prosecutor General‘s office, Albi Serani, declined to say whether prosecutors would appeal the ruling. …read more
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