NesE SKlikon nuk hapet !
Friday, September 20, 2013
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Fireman saves a woman
A woman from China is very sad. She wants to die. She wants to jump from a window.
The woman is in the window. From time to time, she shouts something. Her family tells her to go home. But she is still in the window. Firemen put a big air bag on the ground. The bag will catch the woman.
But the bag is not used. A fireman goes to the woman. He catches her. He saves her life. The woman goes to the hospital.
Difficult words: from time to time (sometimes), shout (say something loudly).
Read more: http://www.newsinlevels.com/products/fireman-saves-a-woman-level-1/
Chemical attack in Syria
There is an attack in Syria. It is probably a chemical attack. Some people film it.
The video is very sad. It shows dead people. The people are lying between destroyed buildings.
People find a missile. The missile brings the chemicals. Experts say that this missile is a chemical attack. But they don't know the type of poison.
Many people died in the attack. But we don't know how many. It can be hundreds or even thousands.
Difficult words: destroyed (broken), missile (rocket), poison (something that can kill you).
Read more: http://www.newsinlevels.com/products/chemical-attack-in-syria-level-1/
Big Russian ship
People from Russia are on a beach. The people are sunbathing. But something not normal happens. A ship goes on the beach.
The ship is very big. It is a military ship. It goes fast. Many people run away. But everybody is fine.
Russia says that this situation is normal. It is a normal training.
Difficult words: sunbathe (lie in the sun and get brown), military (army has it), training (learning to do something)
Read more: http://www.newsinlevels.com/products/big-russian-ship-level-1/
First photos of Prince George (28th August, 2013)
Britain's royal family released the first official photos of Prince George on Sunday. The photos are a little different because a royal photographer didn't take them. The photos came from the private family album of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (William and Kate). George's grandfather Michael Middleton took the pictures. One photo shows one-month-old George with his happy parents. They are all standing under a tree. Another snap includes the family dog. Portraits of royal babies have always been taken in royal palaces by professional photographers. The photographer makes a special studio and background. Prince George's photos break this tradition.
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130828-prince_george.html#ixzz2dJ288Txp
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130828-prince_george.html#ixzz2dJ288Txp
Good grammar means more money (20th August, 2013)
Most people think big companies use grammar very well. Many people wondered about Apple's use of grammar with its "Think Different" advertising campaign in the late 1990s. A new study shows that big companies make grammar mistakes. The proofreading website Grammarly.com looked at the writing of six of the world's most famous companies. It found that they all made mistakes. It also found that the companies who made the fewest mistakes made the most money. Grammarly compared the comments made by the companies on the social network site LinkedIn.com. It looked at the spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in 400 words of text from each company.
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130820-grammar.html#ixzz2dJ1xbLvu
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130820-grammar.html#ixzz2dJ1xbLvu
One Direction's movie premieres in London (22nd August, 2013)
The British boy band One Direction created a frenzy in the heart of London when thousands of adoring fans turned up to see their heart-throbs at the premiere of their first movie, "This Is Us". Some die-hard fans had been camping in London's Leicester Square for three days for the chance to catch a glimpse of the band. The first 200 fans were guaranteed tickets for a front-row, red-carpet experience. Event organisers encouraged many fans to go home and watch the premiere live. They said: "We would like to remind fans that the red carpet is being streamed live all over the world, so they can get the best views from the comfort of their own homes."
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130822-one_direction.html#ixzz2dJ1qhB4c
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130822-one_direction.html#ixzz2dJ1qhB4c
1 million Syrian child refugees (24th August, 2013)
There are now over one million child refugees because of the war in Syria. The United Nations called this number "a shameful milestone". The children were forced to leave Syria because it is too dangerous for them to stay in the country. Most of them are in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. They have recently started escaping to Europe and North Africa. The United Nations said: "This one millionth child refugee is not just another number. This is a real child ripped from home, maybe even from a family, facing horrors we can only begin to comprehend." Another 2 million children in Syria have no home. Half of Syria's 2 million refugees are children. Over 740,000 of these are under the age of eleven.
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130824-refugees.html#ixzz2dJ1h8OEd
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130824-refugees.html#ixzz2dJ1h8OEd
Volunteering helps you live longer (26th August, 2013)
Volunteering can make you happier and help you live longer, according to a new study. A research paper published on Friday in the journal BMC Public Health says doing good deeds for others boosts your mental health and increases your longevity. Researchers from the UK's University of Exeter reviewed 40 academic papers into the effects of volunteerism on our health. They found that volunteers had lower rates of depression, an increased sense of well-being, and a 22 per cent reduction in the chances of dying within the next seven years. Australians lead the way in volunteering, with an estimated 36 per cent of the population lending a hand.
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130826-volunteering.html#ixzz2dJ1bnMeE
Read more:http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1308/130826-volunteering.html#ixzz2dJ1bnMeE
On Speedboats, Albania’s Sex Trade Could Flare
VLORE, Albania — It was only after her trafficker sealed her mouth with electrical tape, drugged her and threatened to kill her family that the childlike woman, now 27, says she realized that the man she had planned to marry had seduced her with a terrible lie.
Her journey at age 18 from an Albanian village to a London brothel, where she said she spent five years working as a prostitute, began with a gold engagement ring, the promise of a better life abroad and — like many before her — a speedboat trip to Italy under the cover of night.
So many women, men and children had been trafficked abroad to work as prostitutes, forced laborers or beggars that the Albanian government three years ago barred all Albanian citizens from using speedboats, the favored transportation used by traffickers to get people out of the country.
This drastic measure, coupled with stricter border controls and revenge killings of traffickers by victims’ families, had a significant effect, reducing trafficking by more than half and all but ending Albania’s role as a major transit point for people trafficked to Western Europe from eastern and southern parts of the Continent, say experts who follow trafficking.
But the ban prompted loud protests from fishermen and people in the tourism industry, and in May it was reversed. Law enforcement and human rights officials are concerned that as a result, human trafficking may explode anew — at an especially difficult time.
The financial crisis, many experts said, could increase human trafficking around the world. A United States State Department report in June warned of the potential risk, saying that the crisis is causing “a shrinking demand for labor and a growing supply of workers willing to take ever greater risks for economic opportunities.”
In the case of Albania, a poor, southern Balkan country that joined NATO in April and seeks to join the European Union, the government’s ability to fight trafficking is viewed as a critical test.
For victims like the woman from the small village, ensnared by the false promises of her trafficker, that fight is a matter of survival.
“I was in love with him, I dreamed of living my life with him, but it was all a big lie,” she said in a recent interview at a shelter for trafficking victims. “I wanted to run away, but in the eyes of the law, I was a prostitute with fake documents. Where was I to go?”
She said the man who abducted her had gained her trust over months, then locked her in a room and took her passport and cellphone. She said he beat her and cut her with a penknife, a warning of what he would do if she tried to escape. She said she was forced to be a prostitute in London and in Antwerp, Belgium. To cover their tracks, the man’s family had called her parents and said that the couple had moved to neighboring Kosovo.
The woman would not provide her name for fear of retribution from the trafficker, making it impossible to corroborate her story with the police report she said she had filed against the man. But the coordinator and director of the shelter where she is staying have reviewed the details of her case and vouched for her credibility.
At the height of the trafficking, experts estimate, thousands of women, men and children were taken to nearby Greece and Italy and elsewhere for sexual exploitation or forced labor.
The United Nations estimates that 12.3 million people globally are employed in sexual servitude or forced labor. Many are lured by fake engagements, real marriages or false job offers. In some cases, victims have been sold by their families. Others go voluntarily.
Even with the speedboat ban last year, the State Department said in its June report that in 2008, Albania did not comply with “the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking,” although it made “significant efforts to do so.” The report said corruption remained pervasive.
In June 2007, the Ministry of Interior arrested 12 police officers accused of human trafficking in three cases, including six officers with direct responsibility for anti-trafficking enforcement.
Albanian law enforcement officials say that help from other countries in getting evidence to convict traffickers is often lacking. Iva Zajmi, the anti-trafficking coordinator at the Ministry of Interior, stressed that as a result of legal or tolerated prostitution in countries like Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, many trafficked women were not identified as victims in those countries.
“The legalization of prostitution has created a wall behind which traffickers can hide and repress victims,” she said.
Trafficking took root in Albania in 1991, in the aftermath of the fall of Communism, and for nearly 10 years, traffickers worked with impunity in the absence of trafficking laws. The problem peaked in 1997 as a financial pyramid scheme shook Albania and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
“Albanians were selling their sisters for money,” said Ilir Yzeiri, an Albanian writer who made a documentary on human trafficking.
In 2004, the government created courts to try trafficking cases and passed tough trafficking laws, including prison sentences of up to 15 years for traffickers.
In Albanian Feuds, Isolation Engulfs Families
SHKODER, Albania — Christian Luli, a soft-spoken 17-year-old, has spent the past 10 years imprisoned inside his family’s small, spartan house, fearful he will be shot dead if he walks outside the front door.
Multimedia
To pass the time, he plays video games and sketches houses. Since he is unable to attend high school, Christian’s reading level is that of a 12-year-old’s. A girlfriend is out of the question. He would like to become an architect, but he despairs of a future locked inside, staring at the same four walls.
“This is the situation of my life. I have known nothing else since I was a boy,” Christian said, looking plaintively through a window at the forbidden world outside. “I dream of freedom and of going to school. If I was not so afraid, I would walk out the door. Living like this is worse than a prison sentence.”
Christian’s misfortune is to have been born the son of a father who killed a man in this poor northern region of Albania, where the ancient ritual of the blood feud still holds sway.
Under the Kanun, an Albanian code of behavior that has been passed on for more than 500 years, “blood must be paid with blood,” with a victim’s family authorized to avenge a slaying by killing any of the killer’s male relatives. The Kanun’s influence is waning, but it served as the country’s constitution for centuries, with rules governing a variety of issues including property ownership, marriage and murder.
The National Reconciliation Committee, an Albanian nonprofit organization that works to eliminate the practice of blood feuds, estimates that 20,000 people have been ensnared by blood feuds since they resurfaced after the collapse of Communism in 1991, with 9,500 people killed and nearly 1,000 children deprived of schooling because they are locked indoors.
By tradition, any man old enough to wield a hunting rifle is considered a fair target for vengeance, making 17 male members of Christian’s family vulnerable. They, too, are stuck in their homes. The sole restriction is that the boundaries of the family home must not be breached. Women and children also have immunity, though some, like Christian, who physically matured at an early age, begin their confinement as boys. Family members of the victim are usually the avengers, though some families outsource the killing to professional contract killers.
Blood feuds have been prevalent in other societies, like mafia vendettas in southern Italy and retaliatory violence between Shiite and Sunni families in Iraq. Appalachian bootleggers in the 19th century also took up arms to defend family honor.
But the phenomenon has been particularly pronounced in Albania, a desperately poor country that is struggling to uphold the rule of law after decades of Stalinist dictatorship.
Blood feuds all but disappeared here during the 40-year rule of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s Communist dictator, who outlawed the practice, sometimes burying alive those who disobeyed in the coffins of their victims. But legal experts in Albania say the feuds erupted again after the fall of Communism ushered in a new period of lawlessness.
Nearly a thousand men involved in feuds have escaped abroad, some of them applying for asylum. But even then, dozens of people have been hunted down outside Albania and killed by avenging families.
Ismet Elezi, a professor of criminal law at the University of Tirana, who advises the government and the police on how to tackle the problem, said recent changes to Albania’s penal code — including sentences of 25 years to life in prison for those who kill in a blood feud and stiff penalties for individuals who threaten to retaliate — had helped diminish the practice. Yet he noted that some still gave greater credence to the Kanun than to the criminal justice system, often with devastating social consequences.
“The younger generation is no longer looking to the older generation’s codes of behavior,” he said. “But blood feuds are still causing misery because the men stuck inside their homes can’t work, the children can’t go to school and entire families are cut off from the outside world.”
Burkle’s Americold Cancels I.P.O. as Markets Slide
Americold Realty Trust, the real estate investment trust controlled by Ron Burkle’s fundYucaipa, on Thursday delayed its $660 million initial public offering, according to Bloomberg data, a day after it cut the pricing for what was set to be the biggest I.P.O. in the United States this year.
On Wednesday, already sensing market weakness, Yucaipa cut the range for the issue from $14 to $16 down to $9 to $11, which would have brought it $28 million less than it initially hoped.
The offering is not the only one to suffer as markets falter around the world. Swire, another real estate company, said Thursday that it had canceled its $2.7 billion I.P.O., which was poised to take place in Hong Kong. And on Wednesday, Reuters reported that Albania’s 400 million euro bond issue had been delayed.
Albania: Protesters Seek Recount
Tens of thousands of people thronged the main square of the capital, Tirana, on Friday, vowing to stay there until the government allowed a partial recount of an election the opposition says involved vote-rigging. The conservative Democrats, led by Prime Minister Sali Berisha, narrowly won the June 28 general election, but the opposition Socialists have been boycotting Parliament for months, demanding the recount of ballots in several districts. The government has called that demand illegal.
WORLD BRIEFING | ASIA; India: Albania Is Denied Mother Teresa’s Remains
India on Tuesday rejected a demand by the Albanian government that the remains of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mother Teresa, now buried in Calcutta, be sent to Albania. Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian nun who was born in what is now Macedonia, was given Indian citizenship in 1951. ”Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen, and she is resting in her own country, her own land,” said Vishnu Prakash, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Intrepid Shoe Executive Casts Lot With Albania
TIRANA, Albania — Donika Mici has braved decades of dictatorship, the burning down of one of her factories, a near civil war and a mother-in-law who thought she would be better off cooking in the kitchen than running a fashion empire.
Matt Lutton for the International Herald Tribune
Qemal Hoxha is the owner of Antik, an upscale fish restaurant in the western port city of Durres.
Matt Lutton for the International Herald Tribune
Francesco Becchetti is one of Albania’s biggest foreign investors.
Now, however, Ms. Mici, 47, chief executive of DoniAnna, the largest shoe manufacturing business in Albania, says the time has come for Albania Inc. to shed its outmoded image and overcome the hurdles of the past.
While other shoe exporters produce at least some of their shoes in nearby Italy for the cachet of a Made in Italy label, Ms. Mici makes shoes only in Albania and proudly insists that a Made in Albania label is no longer an impediment to success.
DoniAnna has an enviable client list of retailers, from mass-market chains like Macy’s and Bata to specialty chains like Aldo and Kenneth Cole. The company had sales of more than 14 million euros, or $20.4 million, in the first half of this year. It employs 1,400 workers and exports to more than a dozen countries, including Italy, the United States and France.
“You have to be very, very tough to succeed in this country, because we started with nothing after Communism fell in 1990,” said Ms. Mici, a down-to-earth mother of one, whose main concessions to fashion are Versace glasses and a train of Chihuahuas following her on DoniAnna’s sprawling factory floor.
“Now, Albania is heading in the right direction to become a modern European country, and there is no turning back,” she said.
Yet that transformation will not be easy. While Albania, a poor southern Balkan country of 3.6 million people, joined NATO in April and aspires to join the European Union, its economy is still struggling to heal the scars left by 40 years of brutal authoritarianism under Enver Hoxha, a Stalinist dictator who fostered a crude socialism that demonized Western capitalism as the enemy.
It is a sign of Albania’s progress that today, Tirana, the capital, overflows with young people loitering at dozens of hip new cafes. Edi Rama, the tall, charismatic former artist who has been mayor for the last eight years, has splashed bright paint on the city’s once-squalid facades, removed 90 tons of garbage and invested heavily in education and health care.
Yet much of the countryside remains in a third world time warp, and the national economy is so underdeveloped that Albania still imports staples like milk and sugar. Transparency International, the Berlin-based anticorruption monitor, ranked Albania among Europe’s 10 most corrupt countries last year. More than 18 percent of the population is estimated to live below the poverty line of $2 a day, according to Amnesty International.
Whether Albania can build a successful economy will help determine whether it can stabilize the Balkans or remain an impoverished backwater.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha, a former heart surgeon who has dominated Albanian politics for decades, argued in an interview that the country was on the right course and had weathered the global financial crisis. Gross domestic product grew 6 percent in the first quarter of the year, and, unlike some of its neighbors, Albania has not needed a bailout.
“The effects of world financial crisis have influenced the Albanian economy, but there is no economic crisis here,” Mr. Berisha said.
Still the governor of Albania’s central bank, Ardian Fullani, warned in August that excessive government spending was threatening the country’s macroeconomic stability. Albania had a run on its banks last October, when the onset of the global economic downturn prompted thousands of Albanians to withdraw their savings. That aggravated a liquidity shortage that some economists fear could, combined with a spiraling budget deficit, unhinge the economy.
Assuming the economy remains relatively stable, Ms. Mici says Albania’s potential resides in a low-cost and hardworking work force that, she argues, makes it an attractive manufacturing center. She added that Albania had the potential to become an outsourcing alternative to China and India.
“We have low wages, and we do not skimp on quality,” she said, rubbing her painted fingernails over a stack of brown cowhide. “And while it can take six months for a manufacturer in Bangalore to fill an order for a European shoe retailer, Albania’s location means it takes only 30 days for my shoes to go from factory floor to a shelf in London or Paris.”
The daughter of an army officer and a chef, Ms. Mici started DoniAnna in 1992 — a time, she said, when Albania was so isolated that microwave ovens were unattainable and she was the only woman who drove a car in Tirana. With no credit available because no banking sector existed, she teamed up with an Italian investor. Within a few years, she was producing a million pairs of shoes a year and exporting across the world.
The stress was unbearable, she recalled, not least because she was a woman in an abidingly macho society. When she arrived for meetings with male suppliers, she said, they would routinely ask to see the boss.
“I’m a pioneer in this country because I was one of the first people, never mind women, to set up a private business after Communism fell,” she said. “My husband’s family were not happy, but I hired a nanny and someone to cook and clean and iron his clothes. I told my husband, ‘The system has changed and these are the new rules.’ ”
Ms. Mici said building an export-oriented company from scratch also proved difficult in a nascent democracy without regulations to govern customs duties and safety, among other things.
In March 2008, when a former military ammunition depot exploded in Gerdec, a village northwest of Tirana, killing 26 people, DoniAnna’s nearby factory burned to the ground, causing more than 1 million euros worth of damage.
“My company could be five times bigger but all of these hurdles slowed me down,” she said. “I have worked day and night. My daughter says: ‘You are not like one man, you are like 10 men. You never give up.’ ”
Business executives note that investing in Albania is not for the fainthearted or risk-averse.
When Francesco Becchetti, one of Albania’s biggest foreign investors, arrived in 1997 from Italy with the idea of exploiting Albania’s hydroelectric potential, he was the only foreigner on the plane, he said. At that time, Albania was on the brink of civil war and tens of thousands of citizens were fleeing. “Everyone was desperate to leave the country,” he said. “People told me I was crazy.”
More than a decade later, his company, the Becchetti Energy Group, is investing a large sum in energy projects, including a sprawling hydroelectric plant on the Vjosa River in Kalivac, in southern Albania. At a time when Europe is seeking to offset its dependence on Russian energy, he argued that Albania, blessed by abundant rivers and at the crossroads of major natural gas lines, could become an important regional energy hub.
Mr. Becchetti said one of the biggest challenges of undertaking large infrastructure projects in Albania was getting financing because of the country’s poor image. Its underdeveloped infrastructure meant he had to finance the construction of a six-mile road in Kalivac to allow him to transport cables, generators and everything else to the hydroelectric site. Because of a brain drain in Albania, the company had to import expensive engineers from Italy, he said.
Still, Mr. Becchetti said Albania’s potential more than compensated for all the obstacles. “In the past people would laugh when I said I was investing in Albania,” he said. “Now, no one is laughing.”
WORLD BRIEFING | THE AMERICAS; Arms Supplier Admits Guilt In Pentagon Contract
An arms dealer in Miami Beach who had extensive business with the Pentagon to supply ordnance for Afghanistan’s security forces pleaded guilty last week to conspiracy. The dealer, Efraim E. Diveroli, left, of AEY Inc., admitted that he had arranged the repackaging of millions of old, made-in-China cartridges for assault rifles, and then had certified that they had been made in Albania. As part of a plea agreement, the government dropped more than 80 other charges. Two other men who worked for AEY on the Afghan contract have also pleaded guilty. A fourth man is awaiting trial. At his sentencing on Nov. 10, Mr. Diveroli, 23, could receive up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Serbs’ Claim of Kosovo Organ Ring Is Investigated
Europe’s leading human rights group began an investigation on Monday into Serb allegations that Serbian civilians were abducted in Kosovo during the Kosovo war of 1998-99 and taken to Albania, where their organs were extracted for sale before they were killed.
The inquiry, by the Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, France, is being led by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, who previously investigated the existence of alleged secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons in Europe used to interrogate terrorist suspects. The Council said Mr. Marty would meet this week with leading war crimes officials and human rights groups in Serbia and Albania.
Distrust between the two groups remains high even a decade after the war, with each side accusing the other of atrocities. Serbian war crimes investigators are now alleging that up to 500 Serbs from Kosovo disappeared during the Kosovo war. Ethnic Albanian guerrillas fought Serb forces under the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in a conflict over control of Kosovo in which 10,000 people were killed, most of them ethnic Albanians.
Ethnic Albanian officials in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, have strenuously denied the allegations, saying they are politically motivated and aimed at undermining Kosovo, which defied Serbia by declaring independence last year. Serbia considers Kosovo its cultural heartland.
Serbian investigators say they have evidence that at least 10 people were abducted by ethnic-Albanian guerrillas as part of an alleged underground trafficking operation in which the guerrillas made use of a network of hidden hospitals in Albania to extract organs, before dumping the bodies of victims into mass graves.
The allegations surfaced publicly last year in a memoir by Carla Del Ponte, the former chief United Nations prosecutor for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. In the book, Ms. Del Ponte claims, based on what she describes as credible witnesses and reports, that after NATO bombed Serbia in 1999, ethnic Albanian guerrillas transported hundreds of Serbian prisoners into Northern Albania, where they were killed and their organs ”harvested” and trafficked out of Tirana, the Albanian capital.
When the book was published, ethnic Albanian officials and many analysts questioned why Ms. Del Ponte had chosen to reveal the allegations five years after her investigators examined the claims. They also noted that the inquiry had failed to provide enough evidence to form a case.
Governing Party in Albania Seeks to Assemble a Coalition
TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Nearly a week after parliamentary elections, Albania’s governing Democratic Party began to assemble a coalition government on Saturday, even as the opposition Socialists decried the move as premature.
Although the electoral commission is still recounting ballots from some polling places, it declared that Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democrats had won enough seats to form a government.
Election officials said late Friday that the Democrats won 47 percent of the vote, giving them 71 seats in the 140-seat Parliament, just enough to form a government.
The Socialists, led by Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana, won 45 percent, or 65 seats. A Socialist splinter party, the Socialist Movement for Integration, came in third, the Central Elections Commission said.
Mr. Berisha, acknowledging that he could at best form a weak government if the results were upheld in the recount, invited the Socialist Movement for Integration to join him in a coalition if the final total confirmed the current count.
The Socialist movement’s leader, former Prime Minister Ilir Meta, accepted the invitation, saying it was “the only one in the country’s interest.”
But the main Socialist Party charged that the Democrats were trying improperly to influence the vote count by declaring victory before all ballots from the election last Sunday were tallied.
The Socialists insisted that the electoral commission, which is recounting ballots from some polling stations after complaints about irregularities, could not declare that the Democrats had won 71 seats while the recounts were pending. They accused Mr. Berisha of trying to sway the electoral commission and threatened to hold street protests.
“I appeal to Berisha to abandon the idea of imposing himself on the Albanian people,” said Gramoz Ruci, a senior Socialist politician, adding, “unless he wants to meet and face the people in the street.”
Albania joined NATO in April and has been under intense international pressure to ensure that the vote was free of the fraud that marred its first six elections held after the Communist government fell in 1990. Both main parties ran on similar platforms, pledging to lift Albania out of poverty and secure its goal of joining the European Union.
Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued preliminary findings saying that there were improvements and fewer irregularities in this year’s voting, but that some violations persisted, like late openings of polling places.
Full final results are expected in days, after all disputed ballots are counted.
Based on the partial count, the election commission said half of Albania’s 3.1 million registered voters had cast ballots.
Albania Stakes E.U. Hopes on Vote
PRAGUE — Prime Minister Sali Berisha, the candidate of the Democratic Party, appeared to be edging ahead Sunday in parliamentary elections viewed as a crucial test of Albania’s democratic credentials and readiness to join the European Union, according to preliminary exit polls.
An exit poll by Gani Bobi, a Kosovo-based research group, showed Mr. Berisha winning 47.5 percent of the vote compared with 38.8 percent for the Socialist Party and its leftist allies, led by Edi Rama, who is mayor of Tirana, the capital. Smaller center-left Socialist Movement for Integration appeared likely to gain 6.5 percent. The exit poll has a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points. Analysts said it remained unclear whether Mr. Berisha’s party would have to form a coalition with other parties to attain a majority in the 140-seat Parliament.
The election pitted Mr. Berisha, a former heart surgeon whose center-right government oversaw Albania’s recent entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, against Mr. Rama, a former painter who had rejuvenated the capital’s once ugly Stalinist sprawl.
Albania, a poor southern Balkan country of 3.6 million people, is still struggling to overcome a culture of corruption and lawlessness following more than four decades of brutal dictatorship. During the election, both candidates vowed to bring Albania into the E.U. and to improve economic prospects. Albania’s gross domestic product per capita is less than $3,500.
Nearly every Albanian election since the fall of communism ushered in multiparty elections in 1991 has been contested. The elections Sunday were marked by an atmosphere of deep mutual distrust between political parties. Even before voting had been completed, the two main parties had already accused each other of electoral manipulation.
The vote — the first since the country joined NATO in April and then applied for E.U. membership — was watched closely by the European Union and the United States as a critical barometer of Albania’s political maturity. The E.U., which is already feeling overextended, is wary of admitting a poor country that it fears could bring lawlessness into the bloc.
Election monitors said it was too early to assess whether the allegations of electoral manipulation were anything more than political posturing. But Robert Bosch, director of Albanian office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is monitoring the election, told Reuters that the vote appeared to have proceeded calmly, with fewer electoral irregularities than in the past.
Nevertheless, independent monitors said there had been sporadic problems at several polling stations, including the intimidation of voters by political parties, a lack of marker ink to make sure people did not vote twice, and men voting for their wives and other family members. Monitors said they were also examining allegations that some Socialist Party officials had used pens with hidden cameras to spy on their Democratic counterparts.
The campaign was marked by isolated cases of violence, including one politician killed in a car explosion and another man fatally shot following an argument over a campaign poster.
Albanians voted for the first time under a new proportional representation system, prompting concerns that a messy and protracted coalition-forming process could plunge the country into crisis. Analysts noted that the real test of Albania’s fragile democracy would come if Mr. Berisha’s Democratic Party was forced to jockey to form a coalition government.
Albanians across the country say their most abiding desire is for the country to join the European Union, the world’s biggest trading bloc. Deprived of E.U. membership, Albanians do not benefit from the E.U.’s borderless travel, and many say they feel alienated and closed in.
Eyes on Europe, Albanians Prepare to Vote
TIRANA, Albania — With parliamentary elections approaching on Sunday, many Albanians are feeling like Hysen Demiraj, a driver and former political prisoner, who was born in a jail cell during this country’s brutal dictatorship and says he still feels imprisoned in a country that is unfairly isolated and ostracized.
Valdrin Xhemaj/European Pressphoto Agency
Supporters of Albanian Socialist Party hold the portrait of their candidate for prime minister, Edi Rama.
The New York Times
“We Albanians are tired of feeling cut off from the world,” Mr. Demiraj, 45, said recently after waiting for hours in a scorching sun for a German visa. “We are the forgotten part of Europe, and it doesn’t feel so good.”
The intense feeling of alienation might seem surprising given that this poor, southern Balkan country joined NATO in April — a moment of enormous symbolic and psychological resonance for a place severed from the West for over 40 years under the Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha.
Yet Albanians clamor for more. Young and old say they want Albania to join the European Union so they can travel freely to neighboring Greece or Italy, without long visa lines or sneaking in under cover of night, as hundreds of thousands have done since 1990.
Others are fed up with life in a country where Amnesty International says more than 18 percent of the population is estimated to live below the poverty line of $2 a day, and adequate health care often depends on a bribe.
Whether the election is peaceful, free and democratic, analysts and diplomats say, will help determine the progress toward international integration.
Albania’s recent application for European Union membership is already facing deep skepticism; the bloc is overextended and fears admitting lawlessness through the back door. Washington, meanwhile, which lobbied hard for Albania’s NATO membership, will be deeply embarrassed if the election goes awry.
Nearly every election here since the fall of Communism in 1991 has been hotly contested, with losers accusing winners of vote-rigging or worse.
Ambassador Audrey Glover, head of election monitoring here for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, noted that the stakes were higher this time because Europe and the United States were watching closely. “Albania needs to prove it has embraced Western democratic standards,” she said. “If it doesn’t go well, it will make things very difficult.”
Albanians could be in for a tumultuous ride. Even before Ms. Glover arrived, the government of Prime Minister Sali Berisha protested her appointment. Mr. Berisha, aides say, is still smarting from the O.S.C.E.’s conclusion in the 1996 elections, when Ms. Glover was head of monitoring, that his Democratic Party had engaged in vote fraud.
Campaigning has taken a bloody turn. Last week, a regional leader for a small Conservative party was killed in a car blast that members of his party labeled a bomb attack. A week earlier, a young supporter of Mr. Berisha was fatally shot by a man, after an argument over a party campaign poster. In May, an opposition lawmaker was killed.
Even if the election itself is peaceful, some Western diplomats are alarmed that hundreds of thousands of rural voters do not yet have the necessary identification documents for voting, potentially disenfranchising them. With little to distinguish the policies of the left and the right, the election has come down to a gladiatorial, personality-driven contest between two men. Slightly ahead in polls is the incumbent Mr. Berisha, a former heart surgeon for the Politburo who has refashioned himself as a rightist reformer. His government has been dogged by corruption charges, and he is campaigning on his success at linking Albania to NATO and thus restoring its stature in the world.
His challenger is Edi Rama, the mercurial, 6-foot-6 Socialist mayor of Tirana for the past eight years, a former artist who has splashed lurid bright paint on the city’s once-dilapidated buildings, removed 90 tons of garbage from a city that was buried in trash, and invested in education and health care. His authoritarian streak has caused some critics to rename the capital, Tirana, as Tirama.
Mr. Rama’s Socialist Party has accused the prime minister of trying to cover up what it says was the government’s complicity in an explosion in March 2008 in a munitions depot in Gerdec that killed 26 people and injured 300. Mr. Berisha, in turn, has accused Mr. Rama, who has refused to resign as mayor and put his name on his party’s list, of cowardice and treachery. Mr. Rama’s aides say he will resign after the Socialists win the election.
“Edi Rama, you are going to go in the garbage,” roared Mr. Berisha at a recent rally in Divjake, a small coastal town. Earlier, he challenged the mayor to fight him like Skanderbeg, the national hero who ousted Ottoman forces for a time in the 15th century.
Altin Raxhimi, an Albanian writer, argued that the election pitted one man who had delivered international prestige against another who was delivering essentials like electricity and clean drinking water. “Rama has turned Tirana into a city that now wears lipstick; he made a once unlivable city livable,” he said. “Albania got into NATO under Berisha, but he is not liked by many Albanians because he is a populist who once brought the country to the brink of civil war.”
Indeed, many still recoil at memories of 1997 when many of Albania’s three million or so people lost their life savings in a pyramid scheme, prompting thousands to loot the country’s arms stockpile. Nearly 1,500 people were killed. Mr. Berisha, who was president at the time, was forced to resign.
“Albania has an image problem in the world and we need to have free and fair elections; otherwise it will drag down the country’s image for years to come,” said Ilir Meta, a former prime minister with the center-left Socialist Movement for Integration. “The whole world will be watching us.”
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