Albania starts mass COVID vaccinations before tourist season
A man receives a dose of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine in Tirana, Albania, Sunday, March 28, 2021. Albania started a mass vaccination campaign trying to inoculate half a million people opening the way to a more relaxed incoming summer tourism season. (AP Photo/Hektor Pustina)TIRANA โ Albania started a mass inoculation campaign Sunday ahead of the summer tourism season after acquiring 192,000 doses of Chinese coronavirus vaccine Sinovac earlier this week. AdEarlier this week, Prime Minister Edi Rama went to Turkey and brought back the 192,000 Sinovac doses. The remainder of the 500,000 Sinovac doses Albania is due to receive will come in two months.
The Latest: Metro Manila, outlying provinces go on lockdown
___ROME โ Police in Italy have been cracking down on violators of ordinances aimed at reining in what has been weeks of stubbornly high incidences of COVID-19 cases. North Macedonia has recorded more than 126,000 coronavirus cases and more than 3,600 deaths. ___TIRANA โ Albania started a mass inoculation campaign Sunday ahead of the summer tourism season after acquiring 192,000 doses of Chinese coronavirus vaccine Sinovac earlier this week. The church drew media attention after reports it had opened the service to its entire congregation despite a tough coronavirus lockdown and sharply rising infection rate in the Netherlands. ___MEXICO CITY โ Mexicoโs government is acknowledging that the countryโs true death toll from the coronavirus pandemic now stands above 321,000.
Greece: Thousands spend night outdoors after powerful quake
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of over 6.0 struck central Greece on Wednesday, March 3, 2021. ATHENS โ Fearful of returning to their homes, thousands of people in central Greece were spending the night outdoors late Wednesday after a powerful earthquake, felt across the region, damaged homes and public buildings. The shallow, magnitude-6.0 quake struck near the central city of Larissa. In 1999, an earthquake near Athens killed 143 people. Ad___ Elena Becatoros and Theodora Tongas in Athens, Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed.
Snow, heavy rain in Balkans cause floods, disrupt traffic
Stranded residents try to reach their cars in the flooded street, following heavy rain and snowfall in Fushe Kosove, Kosovo on Monday, Jan. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)BELGRADE โ Days of heavy rain and snow across the Balkans left homes and fields flooded Monday, disrupted traffic on highways and at ports and caused power outages. In central and eastern Serbia, thousands of people were left without electricity as heavy snow collapsed distribution lines. Authorities urged drivers not to take to the road unless absolutely necessary because of heavy snow. Floods were reported in Albania and Kosovo, where days of heavy rain mixed with snowy weather.
Albania Holocaust memorial honors locals who protected Jews
Israeli Ambassador in Albania Noah Gal Gendler speaks during the inauguration of a memorial in Tirana , on Thursday, July 9, 2020. A memorial to the six million Jews murdered during the World War II and for the Albanians who protected them from the Nazis was inaugurated Thursday in the capital. (Xhulio Hajdari /Tirana City Hall via AP)
With measures lifted, Balkans hit by coronavirus case spike
Serbia went from having very strict lockdown measures to a near-total lifting of the government's emergency rules. Serbia reported 71 new confirmed cases of infections on Thursday, compared to 18 new cases on June 1. The total number of confirmed cases in the country with about 2.1 million people stands at 3,364, including 164 deaths. Authorities in Albania reported reported 44 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest daily number so far and the third consecutive day with an increase. As of Wednesday, Albania had a total of 35 virus-related deaths and 1,385 confirmed cases.
Western Balkan leaders seek to create region without borders
Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama talks for the media during a joint news conference, following the Western Balkan leaders' meeting in the southwestern town of Ohrid, North Macedonia, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2019. Western Balkan leaders say they are committed to work closely and to remove administrative barriers for free movement of goods and people between their countries. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)OHRID Leaders in the Western Balkans say they are committed to working closely together to remove barriers on the free movement of goods and people between their countries. Zaev said the initiative aims to create a completely different Balkans that will make it a better place to live. Relations among Western Balkan countries still remain tense after the wars amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Incoming EU chief presses for Balkan membership talks
BERLIN The incoming head of the European Union's executive branch is pressing for the bloc to open membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania after its leaders failed to agree last month on launching the negotiations. Ursula von der Leyen said in Berlin Friday that the EU demanded a great deal from the two countries "and they fulfilled it all." She added: "Now we also must stand by our word and make membership talks possible." French President Emmanuel Macron was the most vocal opponent of membership talks at last month's EU summit, arguing that enlargement procedures should first be improved. Von der Leyen said that if Europe doesn't offer prospects to the western Balkans, "then others will push into this gap, be it China or Russia or Turkey or Saudi Arabia."
Michigan woman describes life with kids in Albania after deportation
WATCH IN FULL: Un-Wanted: The Deportation of an Immigrant Michigan Family's American DreamMikie, a 10th grader, tells his father that he is traumatized. A star pupil in her school near her Sterling Heights, Michigan home, she is not a top student in Albania. She tells her father she feels lost and misses him, her grandmother and her friends back in the United States. She is a woman learning to live a new normal -- life without her husband. The children are learning to live a new normal -- life as Albanians -- giving up their birthright to their own homeland because of the DNA of their parents.