Tirana

The Albanian government is organizing a donor conference on Friday to support the International Commission on Missing People, ICMP, in its attempts to find the around 6,000 remains of people who were executed or died in Communist camps and prisons in the country.

Albania will impose a 10-year moratorium from January 2016 that will ban logging in all forests and the export of timber.

The draft law prepared by the environmental ministry is likely to be approved by parliament in December and will allow only municipality representatives to cut down trees to meet the needs of people who burn wood for winter fuel.

Tirana and Skopje have reached an agreement aimed at ending an ongoing dispute over lengthy phytosanitary checks on Albanian fresh produce at the Macedonian border, following intense diplomatic negotiations over the past two days.

The municipal government in Tirana has begun demolishing buildings and house extensions that are blocking deep drainage systems following widespread flooding over the weekend.

Municipality workers have identified four of the city's 24 wards as priority areas for demolitions as part of a series of expected flood prevention measures.

One person has been killed and another is missing after heavy rainfall triggered widespread flooding across Albania over the weekend.

Viktor Gjergji, from the northern town of Lezha, drowned on Sunday while fishing on the Kune lagoon as the weather worsened. A worker from the Dibra hydropower plant, also in the north of the country, is still missing.

Albania has said it is ready to play its part in the European Union plan for accommodating 100,000 refugees in the Balkans, but Tirana also fears that the country could be used as a new route to Western Europe for incoming migrants.

The board of the Albanian Public Broadcaster has failed to appoint a new director, avoiding the vote on Wednesday when the topic was excluded from the formal meeting agenda.

RTSH, which is financed by Albanian taxpayers, failed to appoint a top manager after three previous attempts failed in the last four years.

The son of the Albanian Macedonian businessman Remzi Hoxha, disappeared 20 years ago after being abducted by four Albanian Secret Service, SHISH, agents, has urged Prime Minister Edi Rama to put those responsible behind bars and help the family find out where his remains are.

Albania on Monday celebrated the 12th anniversary of Mother Teresa's Beatification through activities that aimed to revive the spirit of voluntarism and charity.

At a conference held in the honour of the  Nobel Prize-winning Catholic nun and missionary, the goverment launched an initiative to adopt a special volunteerism law.

The delegation of lawmakers from the Albanian parliamentary education commission announced on Wednesday that it would make an informal visit to Presevo in southern Serbia at the start of next month in an attempt to help ethnic Albanian youngsters who are lacking the schoolbooks they need for their studies.