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The owners of two dogs that mauled and killed jogger from Livonia last week are in the country illegally and have been fighting deportation proceedings for several years, according to media reports. Now, Albania national Valbona Lacaj, 44, and her Italian husband, Sebastiano Quagliata, 45, may face involuntary manslaughter charges, the Detroit Free Press reports. Their Cane Corso dogs attacked and killed Craig Sytsma, 46, as he jogged past the couple’s Metamora home on July 23. It was the third attack by the large Italian dogs – mastiff-type dogs the American Kennel Club describes as “noble, majestic and powerful in...

A couple whose two dogs mauled a jogger on a rural Michigan road have been charged with murder, reports CBS Detroit....In addition to the murder charges, federal authorities said Quagliata and Lucaj are Albanians living in the U.S. illegally. A report in the Detroit Free Press stated they were facing imminent deportation at the time of the attack. It is unclear if their citizenship status will affect their trial.Authorities said it was the third attack by the dogs in the past two years. The couple was apparently breeding dogs at their property, officials said.

Albanian-American model Amanda Lajcaj has been suggested as a candidate for either Miss America or Miss Albania, and not only is she incredibly good-looking... she's also a good girl: Amanda is a professionally trained dancer. She has been competing in various dancing styles (ballet, jazz, hip hop, modern, contemporary, lyrical, etc.) since the age of seven. She is known for her sense of humor, said to be excellent at doing impressions. Amanda is regular at the charity events and loves to help others.  She is a devoted Catholic and attends mass regularly... Pics/more at Reaganite Republican...

Near-continuous gunfire rang out Tuesday from a lawless village in southern Albania as hundreds more police arrived to battle well-armed marijuana growers who were trying to thwart a government crackdown. By mid-day, about 800 police had surrounded the village of Lazarat after shooting overnight wounded a special forces police officer. With local television broadcasting the events live, police and the Interior Ministry urged the village's 5,000 residents to stay indoors and warned others to stay away from the area, some 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of the capital, Tirana. On Monday, about 500 police raided Lazarat, running into 30 suspected...

Albanian Catholic women at prayer in northern Albania. The Pope visits the country in September (CNS) Pope Francis is making a day long pastoral visit to Albania this coming September, he has announced. His words at yesterday’s Angelus were as follows: “I want to confirm the Church of Albania in the faith, and bear witness to my encouragement and love for a country that has suffered for so long in consequence of the ideologies of the past.”This will be the second trip of any Pontiff to the country. (Saint John Paul II was there in the spring of 1993, also...

KIEV - The man Russian President Vladimir Putin has cast as one of Europe's potential new Adolf Hitlers is a little late for coffee this Saturday morning. Igor Mazur, or Topoyla (Poplar) as he's known because he's 6'7" is the leader of the Ukranian Right Sector at Maidan, Kiev's Independence Square. The Right Sector are the radical nationalists of this Ukranian Revolution. There are others: the right-wing Svoboda (Freedom) Party, for one, which has an actual political following, 12 percent of the vote in the last elections. It used to identify itself as a national socialist movement, just like the...

As the U.S. Senate took up a bill to provide financial aid to Ukraine, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, rose to object to an IMF bailout Majority Leader Harry Reid attached to the legislation. In the process he blasted Reid for repeatedly demonizing the billionaire Koch brothers - Reid tried to blame the Koch brothers for halting progress on the Ukraine bill. "I'm beginning to think [the Koch brothers] are a character almost out of Dr. Seuss in the majority leader's mind, they are the grinch who stole Christmas in his telling," Cruz said. Cruz accused Reid of "using his...

Russia could launch a 'full scale' invasion that would see troops overrun Ukraine in hours, a senior security official warned today. The secretary of Ukraine's National Security and National Defence Committee Andriy Parubiy claimed Russia has 80,000 troops, 280 tanks and 170 aircraft massed on the border ready to invade. 'They are adding to this military potential,' he said. 'We have a critical situation on the entire southeastern border. The Russian army is only two to three hours from Kiev.' Ukraine's defences would be incapable in the face of a Russian invasion, he said.

Despite the relentless protests of Kiev, and of course the G7 group of world's most indebted nations, in the past two weeks Vladimir Putin once again succeeded in outplaying the west and annexed the Crimea peninsula without firing a single shot (granted there is still potential for material situational deterioration, one which would involve military participation by NATO whose outcome is not exactly clear). The market has "priced in" as much, with prevailing consensus now dictating that Russia will preserve its foothold in the Crimea however without additional attempts for annexation: certainly Poland is hoping and praying as much. However,...

Ron Paul has basically said that Crimea has the right to self-determination and by extension a right to an independence referendum vote. The Obama administration seems to be goading Europe (not that it would take that much) into agreeing with it that Crimea (and Eastern Ukraine) do not have the right to self-determination, and that Western powers will not accept a referendum vote in Crimea (or Eastern Ukraine for that matter) that leads to Crimea joining Russia, or becoming independent. Margeurite, yesterday, nailed it on the head, though, in a thread of mine: "The West cannot have it both ways....

Bride’s family protests dance by groom’s relatives during weddingA wedding in Saudi Arabia quickly snowballed into a scuffle between the families of the groom and his bride after relatives and friends of the groom infuriated their opponents by performing the famous ‘penguin dance’, a newspaper said on Sunday. Relatives and guests began to pour into the massive wedding hall in the eastern Saudi town of Dammam when a heated argument erupted before it led to a scuffle between the relatives of the groom and his bride. Friends and other guests intervened and managed to end the fight that threatened to...

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

Delegates at the U.N. General Assembly applauded enthusiastically on Monday as the Palestinian representative to the world body for the first time cast a vote on behalf of the “State of Palestine.” The vote itself—for a judge to serve on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)—was a relatively minor one, but Palestinian delegate Riyad Mansour called it symbolically significant. … The modern-day State of Israel came into being as a result of a U.N. resolution in 1947, which partitioned the then-British mandated territory into a Jewish and an Arab state. The resolution was accepted by the Jewish...

Two decades after Serb soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in a campaign of ethnic killings in Bosnia, forensic scientists are digging up what could turn out to be the largest mass grave from the 1992-95 war.

Albania’s new Socialist premier says former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will assist as an adviser in his country’s efforts to join the 28-nation European Union. Edi Rama said today that Blair would be “personally, totally and voluntarily” advising the Albanian government and helping with his “extraordinary experience and political geniality.” …

The DF-21D is China’s answer to America’s carriers, with an unusual origin in the Kosovo War In 1999, the U.S. was engaged in an air and missile war with Serbia. As NATO bombs exploded around Belgrade — part of a campaign to force an end to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Serb forces — several U.S. missiles slammed into the Chinese embassy. It was the most controversial U.S. action of the war. China’s leaders were outraged, but could do little in response. The result? The bombing became a pivotal moment in the decision to pursue a sophisticated weapons project: a ballistic missile...

European banks would leave London “in very short order” if Britain voted to exit the European Union, a senior Goldman Sachs executive said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Michael Sherwood, a vice-chairman at the bank, said the prospect of a British withdrawal was a real worry given Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to hold a referendum on the subject if re-elected in 2015. … Goldman’s Sherwood predicted European banks would quickly relocate if Britain did sever its EU ties. “Forget what we would do. Every European firm would be gone in very short order,” he was quoted as...

Balkan former guerrillas join Syria rebels AFP - Some fought as guerrillas during the bloody Balkans wars of the 1990s, battling powerful tanks and artillery. Others grew up under the influence of radical Islam that has gained ground in poverty-hit areas in the Balkan countries and regions populated by Muslims. Today, both experienced fighters and their younger followers are leaving the Balkans to join Syrian rebels on the front line. Many return home in body bags with their families often unaware they had even joined the fight.

Sometime early in the third century BCE, a ship carrying a cargo of amphoras wrecked near a rocky shore on the Albanian coastline. These ancient ceramic vases will break upon impact, but do not disintegrate once they have come to rest on the sea floor. This durability has left them as the sole witnesses to many ancient shipwrecks, and the stories they have to tell have transformed our understanding of history. During an underwater survey in July of 2007, conducted by the RPM Nautical Foundation, researchers discovered a grouping of these amphoras resting on the seabed. About forty of them...

(Vatican Radio) The Vatican Secretariat of State issued a tweet on Monday: “Intolerance against Christians, especially in the name of ‘tolerance’, should be condemned publicly.” The tweet referenced a Statement of the Holy See delivered by Bishop Mario Toso, SDB, at the High Level Conference on Tolerance and Non-discrimination (including Human Rights Youth Education), which took place May 21-22 in Tirana, Albania. The Conference was held under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Since the last High Level Conference, Bishop Toso said, “examples of intolerance and discrimination against Christians have not diminished, but rather...