Gjirokastër

Dublin-based low-cost giant Ryanair recently announced it was adding Albania to its roster for the first time as its 37th country destination, with new flights from Edinburgh, London Stansted and Manchester, alongside a host of European cities.

As MPs in Parliament overwhelmingly ratified a new law giving Greeks abroad the right to vote in national elections here back in December 2019, no one had imagined that the uptake would be as disheartening as it is today.

Work is continuing on a bypass road in the UNESCO-protected city of Gjirokastra in southern Albania despite a call in July from the UN body for its urgent suspension to assess the risk to the renowned "stone city".

The task of some 71 officers was to crack down on the illegal migration of Albanians to Greece, but they have seized a significant amount of cannabis too, forcing traffickers to vary their tactics and seek out new routes, according to BIRN's findings. Some have abandoned the use of donkeys, preferring to hire young locals as couriers to carry small quantities of drugs on their backs.

Pharmaceutical supplies and medical equipment were sent on Wednesday to ethnic Greeks in Albania by the Attica Regional Authority and the association representing relatives of soldiers that died on the Albanian front during World War II.
The supplies were handed by the Consul General of Greece in Gjirokaster, southern Albania, to the medical center of the municipality of Dropull.

Twelve Greeks detained on Thursday by Albanian authorities at a police station in the town of Gjirokaster before the funeral of an ethnic Greek were released early Friday morning, state-run news agency ANA-MPA said.

An Athens prosecutor is to launch an investigation into the circumstances that led to the fatal shooting of an ethnic Greek man by police in southern Albania on Sunday after it emerged that the 35-year-old had Greek citizenship. 

An Albanian archaeological site and post-Byzantine churches, Bulgaria's UFO-like communist monument and an abandoned casino in the Romanian city of Constanta have been selected among the 12 finalists for the pan-European "7 Most Endangered Programme 2018".

Greece sends demarche to Albania

ATHENS -- The Greek government has announced that a demarche had been delivered to the Albanian foreign minister because of attacks against members of the Greek minority.

Members of the ethnic Greek minority at the village of Dervicani, in Albania's region of Gjirokaster (Argyrokastro in Greek), were targeted by Albanian nationalists late Tuesday, Kathimerini understands.