2014 Lazarat Drug Raid
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2014 Lazarat Drug Raid
On 16 June 2014, around 800 heavily armed Albanian police officers began a large scale raid in the mountain village of Lazarat, targeting cannabis growers, as part of a nation-wide operation to quell illegal cannabis plantations. Armed drug gang members responded with fire from automatic rifles, RPG-7s and mortars. After a four-day siege, the police captured Lazarat and its surrounding fields. Fourteen villagers and mafiosos were arrested. No fatalities were reported. Following the capture of the village, the police destroyed around 91,000 cannabis plants. Albania had for a long time been the largest producer of cannabis in Europe, which had hindered the country's effort to join the European Union. As a result of Albania's EU aspirations, Prime Minister Edi Rama initiated a country wide crackdown on illegal cannabis cultivation. Background Lazarat is a village in southern Albania. It sits south of the city Gjirokastër. After the fall of the People's Socialist Republic of ...
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People's Socialist Republic Of Albania
The People's Socialist Republic of Albania, () was the Marxist-Leninist state that existed in Albania from 10 January 1946 to the 29 April 1991. Originally founded as the People's Republic of Albania from 1946 to 1976, it was governed by the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) had a constitutionally enshrined monopoly on state power, which it enforced by colonising the state and other mass organisations, and by controlling Albania's supreme organ of state power, the People's Assembly. Communist Albania was established after the end of World War II, succeeding the communist-dominated National Liberation Movement-led (or LANÇ) Democratic Government of Albania. Under the leadership of the PLA and especially Enver Hoxha, Albania pursued an anti-revisionist Stalinist form of Marxism-Leninism, which led to the Albanian-Soviet split in 1956 and then the Sino-Albanian split in 1978. The state was first led by Enver Hoxha from 1946 to 1985, and then by Ramiz Alia from 1985 to 199 ...
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Balkan Insight
''Balkan Insight'' is a website of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) that focuses on news, socio-political analysis, commentary, and investigative reporting from Southeastern Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a geographical sub-region of Europe, consisting primarily of the region of the Balkans, as well as adjacent regions and Archipelago, archipelagos. There are overlapping and conflicting definitions of t .... It is run by journalists in southeast Europe. BIRN was founded in 2004 as a network of non-governmental organizations to promote a strong, independent, and free media in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. ''Balkan Insight'' is the successor of BIRN's "Balkan Crisis Report" newsletter. It reports from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Moldova, Romania, and Serbia. Reception ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' reported that ''Balkan Insight'' is a "highly regarded Internet portal" and BIRN is "val ...
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Deutsche Welle
(; "German Wave"), commonly shortened to DW (), is a German state-funded television network, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the Federal Government of Germany. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service consists of channels in English, Spanish, and Arabic. The work of DW is regulated by the Act, stating that content is intended to be independent of government influence. DW is a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). DW offers regularly updated articles on its news website and runs its own centre for international media development, DW Akademie. The broadcaster's stated goals are to produce reliable news coverage, provide access to the German language, and promote understanding between peoples. It is also a provider of live streaming world news, which, like all DW programs, can be viewed and listened via its website, YouTube, satellite, rebroadcasting and various apps and digital media players. DW has been ...
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Federal Ministry For The Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety And Consumer Protection
The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (; abbreviated BMUKN) is a German Cabinet, cabinet-level ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has branches in Bonn and Berlin. The ministry was established on 6 June 1986 in response to the Chernobyl disaster. The second Kohl cabinet, then Federal Government wanted to combine environmental authority under a new minister in order to face new environmental challenges more effectively. Furthermore Alliance 90/The Greens, The Greens had been formed a few years prior in part as an anti-nuclear environmentalism, environmentalist party and had achieved federal representation 1983 German federal election, in 1983 and Joschka Fischer had been appointed minister of the environment for Hesse the previous year, marking the first state level red-green coalition in Germany. Thus the CDU/CSU intended to project a message of taking the environment seriously in an era in which the Greens we ...
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Accession Of Albania To The European Union
Albania is on the current agenda for future enlargement of the European Union (EU). It applied for EU membership on 28 April 2009, and has since June 2014 been an official candidate for accession. The Council of the European Union decided in March 2020 to open accession negotiations with Albania. However, the country did not start accession negotiations because its candidacy was linked to that of North Macedonia, which was vetoed by Bulgaria. On 24 June 2022, Bulgaria's parliament approved lifting the country's veto on opening EU accession talks with North Macedonia. On 16 July 2022, the Assembly of North Macedonia also approved the revised French proposal, allowing accession negotiations to begin. The start of negotiations was officially launched on 19 July 2022. , Albania aims to be ready for accession by 2030, a timeline acknowledged by Prime Minister Edi Rama as "very ambitious." After the 2025 Albanian parliamentary elections which led to the victory of Edi Rama's party, ...
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Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was established in London in 1851 by Paul Reuter. The Thomson Corporation of Canada acquired the agency in a 2008 corporate merger, resulting in the formation of the Thomson Reuters Corporation. In December 2024, Reuters was ranked as the 27th most visited news site in the world, with over 105 million monthly readers. History 19th century Paul Julius Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of the Revolutions of 1848. These publications brought much attention to Reuter, who in 1850 developed a prototype news service in Aachen using homing pigeons and electric telegraphy from 1851 on, in order to transmit messages between Brussels and Aachen, in what today is Aa ...
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Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma
The Airbus Helicopters H215 (formerly Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma) is a four-bladed, twin-engined, medium-sized, utility helicopter developed and initially produced by French aerospace company Aérospatiale. It has been subsequently manufactured by the successor companies Eurocopter and Airbus Helicopters. The Super Puma is a re-engined and larger version of the original Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma. Development of the Super Puma was carried out during the 1970s, based on the successful SA 330 Puma. While retaining a similar layout, the fuselage was redesigned to increase its damage tolerance and crashworthiness, while composite materials were also more extensively used. Furthermore, a pair of more powerful Turbomeca Makila turboshaft engines was also adopted, along with a more streamlined nose, amongst other changes. Two distinct fuselage lengths, a shortened and stretched form, were developed from the onset. On 5 September 1977, the ''SA 331'' preproduction prototype performe ...
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Saimir Tahiri
Saimir Tahiri is a convicted Albanian politician, who served as the Minister of Interior Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama from 2013 to 2017. In 2019 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, reduced to 3 years and 4 months due to the abbreviated trial on charges of abuse of office. He was suspected as involved in organized crime and of helping his cousins in international drug smuggling while serving as Minister of Interiors. In June 2023 his detention was changed to house arrest due to health problems. Early life and education Tahiri was born in Tirana, on October 30, 1979. He holds a master's degree in public law from the University of Tirana, Faculty of Law, and has a bachelor's degree in law from University of Tirana, Faculty of Law. He has been awarded the title of lawyer since 2008. In 2006 to 2008, he was a part-time lecturer at the Faculty of Law and several other higher education institutions. Political career In 2009, he was elected Member of the A ...
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Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are distributed to its members, major U.S. daily newspapers and radio and television broadcasters. Since the award was established in 1917, the AP has earned 59 Pulitzer Prizes, including 36 for photography. The AP is also known for its widely used ''AP Stylebook'', its AP polls tracking National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA sports, sponsoring the National Football League's annual awards, and its election polls and results during Elections in the United States, US elections. By 2016, news collected by the AP was published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters. The AP operates 235 news bureaus in 94 countries, and publishes in English, Spanish, and Arabic. It also operates the AP Radio Network, which provides twice ...
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RENEA Operator ALMEX 2010
The Department of Neutralization of Armed Elements () commonly known by its acronym RENEA, is the main Albanian counter-terrorist and critical incident response unit. The force was constituted in the early 1990s in response to the growing crime levels in the country after the fall of communism. RENEA's responsibilities are rescue operations, hostage situations, counter-terrorism and response to particularly violent forms of crime. Since 1990, the unit has lost four men in action and more than forty wounded. Their skills are highly regarded and well thought-of inside Albania and in the West, they are reported to have one of the highest OPTEMPOs (frequency of deployments) in all of Europe and they have been trained by GSG 9. Background Following the emergence of capitalism in Albania after 1990 and in order to eradicate all semblances to and associations with the communist state, many investigators, attorneys and police officers were simply dismissed. This confused situation soon a ...
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