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This is a video about the Socialist People's Republic of Albania, a state that lasted for half a century and epitomised an isolationist and quasi-xenophobic foreign policy. While today Albania is open to the world and nominally democratic, despite its issues with corruption, in the mid to late 20th century it was ruled by a paranoid tyrant akin only to North Korea's Kim Il Sung - this video intends to shed some light on this relatively unknown period of European history and specifically the life and disposition of one of the most brutal dictators Europe has ever seen. There's so...

TIRANA, Albania (AP) – Ukraine´s president pleaded Wednesday for more ammunition to repel Russian advances as he co-hosted a summit with Albania’s government to build further support for Kyiv among southeastern European countries while signs of war fatigue grow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that increasing the supply of armaments, and especially ammunition, was paramount for Ukraine just over two years since Russia´s full-scale invasion. “I think this is the question of: Will we stand or not,” he said during his speech to the summit. His impassioned plea comes as Russian troops have seized the initiative on the battlefield in...

The trial in Sweden of Hamid Noury, an agent of the Iranian regime, ended on May 5th. The prosecutor told the court that there was plenty of evidence to show that Hamid Noury committed the crimes he had been charged with and she asked for him to be sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict is expected later. The court case in Stockholm has been a direct embarrassment to Iran’s executioner president, Ebrahim Raisi, dubbed ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ for his hands-on role in the killing of thousands of political prisoners, including teenagers and even pregnant women, during a notorious massacre...

Anxious FBI chiefs are trawling through 'numerous' top-level investigations spanning 22 years for fear they were compromised by convicted bureau spook Charles McGonigal, DailyMail.com can reveal. The forensic clean-up operation ranges over the entire time the philandering former head of counterintelligence in New York worked for the agency. McGonigal, 55, has already been sentenced to four years and two months in prison for taking money and conspiring with a sanctioned Russian oligarch who is a crony of despot President Vladimir Putin. But the full possible repercussions of his treachery are outlined in a sentencing memorandum by the US government for...

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that he believed supporters of former President Donald Trump were “engaging in threats of violence,” while supporters of President Joe Biden were not prone to violence. Strzok said, “My biggest concern is that we have the presumptive Republican nominee for president who has and continues to engage in calls for violence from his supporters. Look, there’s an interesting data point here. Just shortly after the Michigan Supreme Court indicated they weren’t going to take this up, Donald Trump took to Truth Social and lauded their decision, talked about how they...

Former high-ranking FBI official Charles McGonigal started tearing up Thursday as he was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison for colluding with a Russian oligarch to evade US sanctions. McGonigal, 55, was ordered to surrender by Feb. 26, 2024, made to serve three years of supervised release following his time behind bars, and was fined $40,000. After he exited the courthouse, McGonigal told onlookers, “Happy holidays.” McGonigal, who helmed the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York from 2016 to 2018, pleaded guilty to the charge back in August. “[McGonigal] well knew his actions violated those sanctions,” Manhattan federal judge...

A George Soros-backed prosecutor in Virginia mistakenly freed a man charged with murder who was apprehended the following day in Georgia. The office of Loudoun County prosecutor Buta Biberaj (D.) on Thursday dropped second-degree murder charges in general district court for 25-year-old Stone Colburn, who last year was accused of stabbing his brother’s girlfriend to death. Biberaj’s office dropped charges in an effort for the Loudoun County Circuit Court to declare Colburn mentally fit to stand trial. Biberaj said the district court was on the verge of committing him to a mental hospital.

Rome CNN — Italy will build two detention centers in Albania to house migrants trying to reach its shores, Prime Minister Georgia Meloni said Monday, in an attempt to control migration figures that have almost doubled in the year since she took office. Meloni said the facilities are due to open next spring and will initially take in 3,000 people. Once the centers are “fully up and running,” Meloni said her government could process up to 36,000 people a year. Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party is facing growing domestic pressure as it has failed to deliver on an electoral...

LIN (Albania) (AFP) – Beneath the turquoise waters of Lake Ohrid, the "Pearl of the Balkans", scientists have uncovered what may be one of Europe's earliest sedentary communities, and are trying to solve the mystery of why it sheltered behind a fortress of defensive spikes. A stretch of the Albanian shore of the lake once hosted a settlement of stilt houses some 8,000 years ago, archaeologists believe, making it the oldest lakeside village in Europe discovered to date. Radiocarbon dating from the site puts it at between 6000 and 5800 BC. "It is several hundred years older than previously known...

CNA Staff, Jul 5, 2023 / 15:10 pm Pope Francis met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in a private audience at the Casa Santa Marta papal residence on Wednesday. Clinton’s delegation included several prominent Americans, including Alex Soros of the Open Society Foundations. Clinton, who now focuses his efforts on philanthropy and public affairs, had visited Albania July 3-4 and received from the Albanian prime minister a public gratitude medal for his support of Albania and for NATO's intervention in the Kosovo War, the news site Euractiv reports. Soros, son of the billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros, accompanied...

NATO has condemned as "totally unacceptable" attacks by demonstrators in Kosovo that left some 25 of its peacekeepers injured. Police and NATO troops clashed with Serb protesters in the north where there has been unrest over the installation of ethnic Albanian mayors. Tear gas and stun grenades were used to deter protesters in Zvecan, after they tried to invade a government building. NATO soldiers also formed a security cordon around two other town halls... The NATO-led troops in Zvecan at first tried to separate protesters from the police, but later dispersed the crowd using shield and batons, AFP reported. Several...

(Video of the riot in the Kosovo region by the Serbian minority against Albanian rule the local police and US led KFOR troops getting beaten up)

NATO peacekeeping soldiers formed security cordons around three town halls in Kosovo on Monday as police clashed with Serb protesters, while Serbia's president put the army on the highest level of combat alert. The tense situation developed after ethnic Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo's Serb majority area after elections the Serbs boycotted. In Zvecan, one of the towns, Kosovo police - staffed by ethnic Albanians after Serbs quit the force last year - sprayed pepper gas to repel a crowd of Serbs who broke through a security barricade and tried to force their way into the municipality building,...

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg called on Kosovo to tone down tensions with Serbia on Sunday, two days after clashes between Kosovan police and protesters who are opposed to Albanian mayors taking office in ethnic Serbian areas. Stoltenberg, the transatlantic military alliance's Norwegian secretary-general, said he had spoken to European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell about Kosovo and that Pristina and Belgrade must engage in the EU-led dialog. "Pristina must de-escalate & not take unilateral, destabilizing steps," Stoltenberg said in a tweet. Serbs, who form the majority of the population in Kosovo's northern region, do not accept its 2008 declaration...

The most circulated newspaper in Europe killed a major corruption story to please Joe Biden. A new report details how editors at Bild, the outlet in question, canned an extensive investigative piece on Albanian PM Edi Rama because he and the US president are friends and political allies.Per The Washington Examiner, Albania has become a narco-state over the last decade under Rama, and Bild was getting ready to expose him further.So, who is Rama? He’s the far-left leader of Albania’s Socialist Party. Accusations against him range from drug trafficking to money laundering, to extortion and vote buying.A few days ago,...

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer issued a subpoena on Wednesday requiring the FBI to turn over an unclassified record that reportedly details allegations of a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national.The subpoena comes after Republican Senator Chuck Grassley’s office was made aware of the FBI-generated whistleblower form. The FD-1023 form allegedly outlines a scheme involving the exchange of money for policy decisions.“It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” Grassley and Comer wrote in a letter to FBI...

Now that Republicans have narrow control of the House of Representatives, the GOP is investigating the Biden administration with gusto. Still, Republicans seem not to have noticed one major foreign policy scandal that's hiding in plain sight. As I recently reported , the rising scandal surrounding retired FBI senior official Charles McGonigal is perhaps the worst in the bureau’s history. Multiple sources have told me that McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI as head of counterintelligence in New York, shook down Balkan business people, most of them Albanian, in an audacious political corruption scheme worth many millions of dollars....

The FBI’s reputation problems have accelerated with the arrest on corruption charges of Charles McGonigal, the former chief of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office, one of the most powerful spy-hunters in the country - who also happened to be connected to Hunter Biden. In twin indictments last month, McGonigal was charged with taking secret cash payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, holding secret meetings with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and attempting to remove top Kremlin oligarch Oleg Deripaska from a US sanctions list. The Albanians cited by prosecutors tie this scandal to Hunter Biden and...

The ancient Greek historian Strabo referred to the presence of an important shrine located on the west coast of the Peloponnese some 2,000 years ago. Remains of such an Archaic temple have now been uncovered at the Kleidi site near Samikon, which presumably once formed part of the sanctuary of Poseidon.Researchers of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in collaboration with colleagues from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), Kiel University, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Elis unearthed the remains of an early temple-like structure that was located within the Poseidon sanctuary site and was quite possibly dedicated to the deity himself....

The situation in Kosovo is "on the brink of armed conflicts", Serbian prime minister Ana Brnabic said Wednesday, amid mounting tensions in former Belgrade province's volatile north. "We have to give our best, all of us together, to try to keep the peace. We are really on the brink of armed conflicts, thanks to unilateral moves from Pristina," Brnabic said during a meeting with Serbian NGOs. Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but Belgrade still does not recognise it and encourages the territory's Serbs to defy Pristina's authority. Hundreds of ethnic Serbs, outraged over the arrest of an ex-police...