By Benet Koleka TIRANA (Reuters) - The European Union urged Albania on Tuesday to restore the trust of its people in an election in June, after the government shrugged off warnings from the West and reshuffled the state electoral body. Albania, a member of NATO, has yet to hold an election deemed free and fair by international monitors in more than two decades since its transition to democracy from the Stalinist rule of late dictator Enver Hoxha.

Albania's Democratic Party government won the votes of three former disgruntled opposition lawmakers, managing to shore up a majority in parliament on Thursday after its key ally quit their coalition.Hailing the vote as "historic," Prime Minister Sali Berisha thanked the lawmakers after three new ministers and a deputy premier from his own Democratic Party were confirmed with 72 votes in the 140-seat chamber.The outgoing Socialist Integration Movement (SIM) party had signaled it would not try to unseat the government and its lawmakers abstained, but Berisha accused the opposi

By Benet Koleka TIRANA (Reuters) - Albanians who resisted the policies of paranoid dictator Enver Hoxha are now trying to preserve part of his most notorious jail - to remind the country's young elite of the dangers of power. Ex-dissident Fatos Lubonja and artist Ardian Isufi have built an installation that includes a piece of the Berlin Wall, pillars from a forced labour mine, and one of 750,000 bunkers that Hoxha built against an invasion that never came.