Latest News from Albania
Civil Aviation extends flight restrictions through Aug. 31
A new notice to airmen issued by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Wednesday extends travel bans with Balkan and European countries through August 31, to protect passengers and residents of Greece from a rise in new coronavirus cases.
According to the notice:
- Flights between Greece and Turkey remain suspended to August 31 (midnight).
Don’t Blame Balkan Citizens For the Latest COVID Surge
What explains this shift, from being the region that initially had among the fewest cases in Europe, to a surge?
Some country-specific reasons might explain individual cases, such as recent elections in Serbia and North Macedonia, or the government crisis in Kosovo, or protests in Montenegro and Serbia. However, none provides an overarching regional perspective.
UPDATE Coronavirus: How the health crisis has influenced the activity of European news agencies
The health crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic greatly influenced the activity of European news agencies in terms of working procedures, and some expect a drop in revenues, according to the directors of some of these media outlets in interviews published on Monday on the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) website.
EU proposes opening of external borders from July
The European Commission has proposed to gradually lift travel ban from July 1 for non-EU citizens coming from countries where the epidemiological situation is the same or better than that in the EU.
The detailed list will be announced later, Ylva Johansson, EU commissioner for home affairs, told reporters on June 11.
Greece, Italy to sign agreement on EEZ
Athens and Rome are expected to sign an agreement delimiting an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) between Greece and Italy on Tuesday.
The deal will be signed at a meeting in Athens between Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias and his Italian counterpart Luigi Di Maio, after concerns expressed by Rome were addressed and resolved, mainly concerning fishing rights in the Ionian Sea.
Three’s a Crowd: the Albanian Crime Gang that Wasn’t
Much was expected of the Special Anti-Corruption and Organised Crime Prosecution, better known by its acronym SPAK, but within weeks it had ruled that the so-called Bajri Group was not a group at all, saying it had no evidence to prove any of the crimes, bar the match-fixing, was committed by more than two of the defendants at a time - the benchmark for an organised criminal enterprise under Al