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Other countries’ propagation of a stricter form of Islam in Albania is causing tensions with Christians and with other Muslims, a charity leader says. Peter Rettig, head of the South-East Europe Section of the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, said that young imams trained in Turkey and Saudi Arabia are spreading “a different form of Islam from what is customary” in Albania. The countries are strongly promoting the building of Islamic schools. “This is leading to tensions,” he told Aid to the Church in Need. The Catholic charity’s project partners have reported incidents that are “not dramatic”...

The Greek Minority Party "OMONIA" reports extreme ignorance of Albanian authorities regarding the protection of Orthodox churches in areas where Greek minorities reside. The Organization specifically condemned the desecration of the church of Agioi Pantes in Chimara that took place a few days ago. "Unknown criminals vandalized the church and caused multiple damage in priceless icons of great religious and historical value," reports the announcement of OMONIA. "We have repeatedly denounced similar cases in previous official announcements, but the authorities have unfortunately never taken specific measures for the protection of the churches and the arrest of the suspects. The cases...

(TIRANA) - Albania on Thursday slammed calls from a Kosovo hardline opposition leader to temporarily block the border with Serbia as a way of barring Serb products from entering the breakaway territory. Albania's foreign ministry said in a statement that the attempt to block the border was contrary to constructive efforts to make Kosovo a democratic state and multi-ethnic society. "The use of nationalist and pseudo-patriotic rhetoric" will not help key goals of the Albanians in both Kosovo and Albania to progress towards integration into the European Union, or new recognitions of Kosovo's independence, the ministry warned. Albin Kurti, a...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Two teams of Michigan State University researchers – one working at a medieval burial site in Albania, the other at a DNA lab in East Lansing – have shown how modern science can unlock the mysteries of the past. The scientists are the first to confirm the existence of brucellosis, an infectious disease still prevalent today, in ancient skeletal remains. The findings, which appear in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest brucellosis has been endemic to Albania since at least the Middle Ages. Although rare in the United States, brucellosis remains a major problem in...

Several dozen young men are basking in the warm mid-day sun. They are Afghan and Pakistani. Behind them, on a white wall, is graffiti extolling the glories of the UÇK -- ex-Kosovo Albanian guerilla fighters.Over the past two years, the Macedonian village of Lojane, which borders Serbia, has become a stop-over on the illegal migration routes to Western Europe. “It started when groups of three or four would arrive periodically. It didn’t disturb us at first,” says Selam Mehmeti, the head of the village community. “But since this summer, it’s grown to a whole other dimension: there were 500 in...

After six grave sites, 133 coins and over 10,000 fragments of animal bone, archaeologists with assistant professor of classics David Hernandez's excavation team hit pay dirt, or rather, pay pavement, in the form of an ancient Roman forum. This summer, Hernandez and a team of Notre Dame undergraduates embarked on a six-week excavation trip to Butrint, Albania, where they made the discovery... Since the 1920s archaeologists have probed the site, producing evidence of a Greek sanctuary of Asclepius, a medieval house, a Venetian castle and now, a Roman forum, he said. The forum was a rectangular plaza surrounded by government...

The world court ruled Monday that Greece was wrong to block a bid by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) to join NATO in 2008 because of a long-running dispute over the fledgling country's use of the name “Macedonia.” In a 15-1 ruling, the court found that Greece's veto breached a provisional 1995 deal under which Greece had agreed not to block membership of the country in international organizations if it used the name FYROM, while the matter was submitted to further negotiations. More than 15 years later, mediation over the name is still ongoing. The victory is partly...

Ilir Kumbaro is wanted for torture and kidnapping in Albania. An arrest warrant has been issued for him after he failed to appear in a London court today A former Albanian spy chief wanted for torture and kidnapping was on the run yesterday after failing to appear at an extradition hearing in London. Ports and airports were put on alert after 58-year-old Ilir Kumbaro did not turn up at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where he faced being sent back to Eastern Europe. The Daily Mail has learned that despite Kumbaro being regarded as ‘clever and resourceful’, his bail conditions did not...

KFor soldiers from the US stand guard at a barricade at the closed Serbia-Kosovo border crossing of Jarinje. Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters Cultural claims persist in regions as Belgrade refuses to acknowledge independence of Kosovo MILEVA PREMOVIC and her neighbours while away the afternoon in the shade of a broad tree. The unseasonable warmth makes it hard to imagine that the green Kapaonik mountains, rising up a few miles away in Serbia, will soon be white with snow and busy with skiers. It would also be hard to believe that bullets were fired and blood shed here just a few days...

On September the 16th NATO forces, overstepping their UN Security Council (UNSC) mandates, amid tensions on the administrative border between Serbia and the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, have fired the first shots at bare-handed Kosovo Serbs in the village of Zupce. The Kosovo Serbs have erected barricades, in a life or death situation, to defend themselves against the Muslim Albanian onslaughts which desire to forcefully incorporate northern Kosovo into the US/EU created Republic of Kosovo, an amputated province from the Republic of Serbia. The Albanian police, aided and assisted by NATO’s KFOR, have taken over two border crossings: Jarinje and...

Cameramen cover a protest in front of Albania's Central Election Commission in Tirana, May 21 2011. The opposition said its victory in the Tirana mayor's race has been overturned by the counting of so-called stray and misplaced ballots while the CEC says it is living up to its duty to count every vote. [Reuters] Socialist Party supporters shout slogans as police stand guard during a protest in front of Albania's Central Election Commission in Tirana, May 21 2011. [Reuters] Opposition Socialist Party lawmaker Namik Dokle, centre, shouts slogans in front of police during a protest at Albania's Central Election...

TENS of thousands of demonstrators have started a silent protest in the Albanian capital Tirana, a week to the day after clashes during an opposition rally killed three. The demonstrators, headed by the leadership of the opposition Socialists and the families of the victims, started a march on the government buildings. People continued to pour into the downtown area near the government, bringing traffic in central Tirana to a standstill. Many protesters carried flowers.

Did you know that the EU has ensured that there has been no war between its members for last 60 years?

In my December 2010 essay "Amorality of US Kosovo Policy: Friends with the Snake", I published reactions to the Council of Europe’s (CoE) 27-page report authored by the Swiss-Italian politician, senator and prosecuting lawyer Dick Marty. The report, which is the culmination of his two-year investigation, claimed that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) thugs headed by the current Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci, known as “the Snake”, abducted mostly Kosovo Serbs and also some Albanian so-called “collaborators,” transported them to northern Albania, murdered them, extracted their kidneys and other organs, and sold them on the black market. These macabre Nazi/Croatian...

Although the campaign of elections is not officially opened yet, Prime Minister Sali Berisha has launched the tour of inaugurations, promising the Albanians to increase the investment and the improvement of their lives regardless of where they reside. In the picturesque village of Daias in the municipality of Petrela, where with an investment of 52 million is build a road and a new school, Prime Minister Berisha said that the government has funded any project that every village in the country have the infrastructure like that of the city. According to the Prime Minister Berisha, Petrela municipality, where during 5...

Croatia, Kosovo and Montenegro have started to count their populations as part of a year of censuses across the ethnically tense Western Balkans to keep up with EU countries doing the same... Because of the painful history organisation of the count sparked debate and controversy throughout the region: from Macedonia, where ethnic Albanians fear that their importance will be reduced, across Montenegro, where there are complaints that Serbs are being "assimilated", to Bosnia which did not even manage to adopt a census law. In Kosovo, where the last census was held in 1981 while it was still a province in...

The attack came as the bus sat outside Terminal 2 at the airport, according to Frankfurt police spokesman Manfred Fuellhardt. The bus driver and a passenger were killed, and one person suffered serious wounds and another light injuries, he said. A source tells Fox News that the shooter yelled "Allah Akbar" when opening fire on the U.S. military personnel. He then dropped his gun at the scene, ran into the terminal and was subdued. U.S. Air Force Europe spokeswoman Maj. Beverly Mock said all four victims were airmen. They were all based at the Lakenheath military base in Britain. A...

A Silver Spring man convicted of falsifying immigration documents had threatened to blow up the White House, the U.S. Treasury building, a federal courthouse and a Metro stop, vowing to "slaughter the enemies of Islam," federal prosecutors said Monday in court. Lajqi, an ethnic Albanian who came to the United States through Mexico in the mid-1980s, is a self-described "extremist militant," who said he was trained by Bosnian Muslim rebels, according to court papers. He was angry about American military involvement in Kosovo in the 1990s, and "blamed all Albanian deaths in Kosovo on the United States," the court papers...

Ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo gave detailed testimony in 2003 on an alleged program to kill Serb captives, sell their organs, and bury hundreds of victims to hide evidence of civilian killings, according to a U.N. document obtained by The Associated Press.....

A classified document obtained by FRANCE 24 suggests the United Nations knew about organ trafficking in postwar Kosovo as early as 2003, five years before prosecutors in The Hague first raised the issue. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was expected to deliver a report on the situation in Kosovo to the Security Council in New York on Wednesday, reaffirming UN support for investigations into human organ trafficking during Kosovo’s postwar period. But a classified document obtained by FRANCE 24 indicates the UN knew of trafficking well before the issue was first raised by Carla del Ponte, a former prosecutor at...