An Italian navy ship has taken back to Italy the first 12 migrants from newly opened asylum processing centers in Albania following a highly-debated court decision in Rome.

Opposition supporters in Albania have protested again and demanded that the government be replaced by a technocratic caretaker Cabinet before next year’s parliamentary election.

The U.N. refugee agency has agreed to monitor the first three months of a contentious accord between Italy and Albania to process migrants' asylum requests at two centers in Albania.

The Italian health ministry has placed 12 cities under the most severe heat warning as a wave of hot air from Africa is baking southern Europe.

Spain changed almost its entire lineup but kept up its victorious start to Euro 2024 with a 1-0 win over Albania, which is eliminated from the tournament.

The Albanian soccer federation says UEFA banned its player Mirlind Daku on Sunday for two games at the European Championships after leading fans in nationalist chants.

Croatia and Albania drew 2-2 at Euro 2024 in the first-ever competitive match between the two Balkan teams.

It’s Day 3 of the U.N. General Assembly high-level meeting that brings world leaders together at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says the U.K. government will house hundreds more asylum-seekers on barges.

Serbian state television says that a man's body has been pulled out of a swollen river in a southwestern town and rescuers are searching for another man.

Albania’s last brown bear in captivity has been rescued by an international animal welfare organization and taken to a sanctuary in Austria.

EU leaders and their counterparts in the Western Balkans have worked to strengthen their partnership during a summit in Albania as Russia's war in Ukraine threatens to reshape the geopolitical balance in the region.

Anticipating a tough winter in light of the war in Ukraine, three Balkan states have agreed to help each other with potential food or energy shortages.

European Council President Charles Michel is visiting North Macedonia.

Albania’s parliament elected its top military official as the country’s new president.

The office of Albania's prime minister says the country has offered to NATO a naval base in an effort to highlight the tiny country’s value in the alliance “in these difficult times."

Albanian police say dozens of soccer fans have been deported back to Italy following violent clashes in Tirana ahead of Wednesday’s Europa Conference League final.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief has reaffirmed the 27-country bloc’s desire to integrate the Western Balkans, saying it’s a “strategic priority.”.

Afghan evacuees in Albania have opened an exhibition on their impressions on the tiny Western Balkan country.

The U.N. Security Council has five new members.

Kosovo has postponed the beginning of the school year for students up through high school by two weeks following a surge of infections due to the delta variant.

Authorities in several southeast European countries have issued weather warnings ahead of a heat wave in the region.

Albanian electoral officials say the left-wing Socialist Party has secured its third consecutive mandate in a parliamentary election, winning nearly one in two votes and enough seats in parliament to govern alone.

A man receives a dose of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine in Tirana, Albania, Sunday, March 28, 2021. Albania started a mass vaccination campaign trying to inoculate half a million people opening the way to a more relaxed incoming summer tourism season. (AP Photo/Hektor Pustina)TIRANA – Albania started a mass inoculation campaign Sunday ahead of the summer tourism season after acquiring 192,000 doses of Chinese coronavirus vaccine Sinovac earlier this week. AdEarlier this week, Prime Minister Edi Rama went to Turkey and brought back the 192,000 Sinovac doses. The remainder of the 500,000 Sinovac doses Albania is due to receive will come in two months.

___ROME — Police in Italy have been cracking down on violators of ordinances aimed at reining in what has been weeks of stubbornly high incidences of COVID-19 cases. North Macedonia has recorded more than 126,000 coronavirus cases and more than 3,600 deaths. ___TIRANA — Albania started a mass inoculation campaign Sunday ahead of the summer tourism season after acquiring 192,000 doses of Chinese coronavirus vaccine Sinovac earlier this week. The church drew media attention after reports it had opened the service to its entire congregation despite a tough coronavirus lockdown and sharply rising infection rate in the Netherlands. ___MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s government is acknowledging that the country’s true death toll from the coronavirus pandemic now stands above 321,000.

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of over 6.0 struck central Greece on Wednesday, March 3, 2021. ATHENS – Fearful of returning to their homes, thousands of people in central Greece were spending the night outdoors late Wednesday after a powerful earthquake, felt across the region, damaged homes and public buildings. The shallow, magnitude-6.0 quake struck near the central city of Larissa. In 1999, an earthquake near Athens killed 143 people. Ad___ Elena Becatoros and Theodora Tongas in Athens, Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed.

Stranded residents try to reach their cars in the flooded street, following heavy rain and snowfall in Fushe Kosove, Kosovo on Monday, Jan. 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)BELGRADE – Days of heavy rain and snow across the Balkans left homes and fields flooded Monday, disrupted traffic on highways and at ports and caused power outages. In central and eastern Serbia, thousands of people were left without electricity as heavy snow collapsed distribution lines. Authorities urged drivers not to take to the road unless absolutely necessary because of heavy snow. Floods were reported in Albania and Kosovo, where days of heavy rain mixed with snowy weather.

Israeli Ambassador in Albania Noah Gal Gendler speaks during the inauguration of a memorial in Tirana , on Thursday, July 9, 2020. A memorial to the six million Jews murdered during the World War II and for the Albanians who protected them from the Nazis was inaugurated Thursday in the capital. (Xhulio Hajdari /Tirana City Hall via AP)

Serbia went from having very strict lockdown measures to a near-total lifting of the government's emergency rules. Serbia reported 71 new confirmed cases of infections on Thursday, compared to 18 new cases on June 1. The total number of confirmed cases in the country with about 2.1 million people stands at 3,364, including 164 deaths. Authorities in Albania reported reported 44 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest daily number so far and the third consecutive day with an increase. As of Wednesday, Albania had a total of 35 virus-related deaths and 1,385 confirmed cases.

Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama talks for the media during a joint news conference, following the Western Balkan leaders' meeting in the southwestern town of Ohrid, North Macedonia, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2019. Western Balkan leaders say they are committed to work closely and to remove administrative barriers for free movement of goods and people between their countries. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)OHRID Leaders in the Western Balkans say they are committed to working closely together to remove barriers on the free movement of goods and people between their countries. Zaev said the initiative aims to create a completely different Balkans that will make it a better place to live. Relations among Western Balkan countries still remain tense after the wars amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

BERLIN The incoming head of the European Union's executive branch is pressing for the bloc to open membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania after its leaders failed to agree last month on launching the negotiations. Ursula von der Leyen said in Berlin Friday that the EU demanded a great deal from the two countries "and they fulfilled it all." She added: "Now we also must stand by our word and make membership talks possible." French President Emmanuel Macron was the most vocal opponent of membership talks at last month's EU summit, arguing that enlargement procedures should first be improved. Von der Leyen said that if Europe doesn't offer prospects to the western Balkans, "then others will push into this gap, be it China or Russia or Turkey or Saudi Arabia."

WATCH IN FULL: Un-Wanted: The Deportation of an Immigrant Michigan Family's American DreamMikie, a 10th grader, tells his father that he is traumatized. A star pupil in her school near her Sterling Heights, Michigan home, she is not a top student in Albania. She tells her father she feels lost and misses him, her grandmother and her friends back in the United States. She is a woman learning to live a new normal -- life without her husband. The children are learning to live a new normal -- life as Albanians -- giving up their birthright to their own homeland because of the DNA of their parents.