Our Man in Tirana

The Washington Post has a lengthy article on the phenomenon of sworn virgins . Elvira Dones , an Albanian born author and journalist has recently made a film on this theme. Also looking at women in Albanian society, Nicole Itano reports for Women's eNews on the experience of Roma women . MSNBC carries an FT report on the problems facing small businesses in Albania trying to cope with hours-long power cuts every day. The report quotes the Prime Minister's claims that Albania has reached a 'turning point' and that within four years the country will be exporting electricity. The Economist has a piece on President Topi . The author believes that the President will support measures to limit the term of office for the Chief Prosecutor, thus dealing with the Sollaku issue. In contrast to the Prime Minister's optimism, the Economist reports that 'plans for private investors to build new power plants are way behind schedule.' Forbes carries an AP story on US attemp...

I was hanging around in the street watching the world go by when I heard a crunch. In a very Albanian kind of collision one of the pony-drawn carts that the Roma use had run into the back of a Volkswagen Golf parked nearby. The front right of the cart had hit the back left of the car damaging the bumper and the side panel. After a brief inspection of the damage the 'driver' of the cart climbed back up and took off as fast as he could, leaving the unfortunate owner of the car to deal with the consequences. This was bad, but what was really bad was that the policeman who was standing not 20 feet from me and no more than 60 feet from where the crash happened did absolutely nothing - he didn't go to the scene, he didn't talk to the man with the pony and cart, he didn't call anyone on his radio, nothing. Only when the pony man was a dot in the distance did he wander down to the car and have a look at the damage, though as far as I could see his interest was driven by cur...