Environmental Protection Agency

Locals assess the damage to the Faculty of Geology and Mining building in Tirana. Photo: EPA-EFE/MALTON DIBRA

A policeman stands next to a car that was crushed by falling debris outside the Faculty of Geology and Mining in Tirana when the earthquake struck on Saturday. Photo: EPA-EFE/MALTON DIBRA

The Alliance, which comprises a number of centrist, conservative and right-wing parties, indicated it would not go back on a decision confirmed on September 16 to boycott the election.

"Their efforts come too late," Marinika Tepic, deputy leader of the Party of Liberty and Justice, SSP, a member of the Alliance, told BIRN. "This is our final decision."

For the EU, this means developing a new plan for the Western Balkans that is less about Enlargement and more about projects and programs that address immediate core problems involving regional structures, laws and institutions that have led to state capture, dysfunction, and instability. 

Xenophobic violence is a common phenomenon in predominantly poor, black areas of post-apartheid South Africa, where jobs are scarce and locals blame entrepreneurial foreign communities - their numbers swelled via the country's porous and corrupt borders - for the prevalence of drugs, crime and unemployment.

It is easy to take exception to the "infelicitous semantic choice" of ditsy new job titles that "reflect a sense of detachment from European realities", as one EU law professor put it to The Guardian.

They warn that years of political divisions, zero-sum games, distrust and poor communication between local leaders, as well as growing tensions among key regional and global actors, have left Bosnia a ticking time-bomb that could go off at any moment, leading to the collapse of the remaining joint institutions or even the breakup of the country.

Saimir Tahiri. Photo: EPA-EFE/MALTON DIBRA

The trial in Albania of the former Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri is approaching the finish line with prosecutors demanding a 12-year sentence for him and Jaeld Çela, a former police officer who is currently on the run.

He is a distinguished legal scholar, specializing in constitutional and European law. No dry academic, he is a pleasant person, with a background in diplomacy.

A two-times ambassador, to Belgium and France, he is one of those few Hungarian politicians who speak both French and English.

Now that it appears the power auctions (NOME) will be abolished, private electricity providers are waiting to hear what the government plans to introduce instead, amid uncertainty in the market.

Bulgarian PM Boyko Borissov and his Russian counterpart Dimitri Medvedev discuss energy projects on August 12. Photo: EPA-EFE/VASSIL DONEV.

Prosecutor-general Sotir Tsatsarov told media on Tuesday that Nikolay Malinov has been charged with espionage and that a former senior Russian intelligence officer, Leonid Reshetnikov, has been barred from entering Bulgaria.