Kosovo

PRISTINA, Dec 30 (Reuters) - A court in Albania on Saturday ordered that former president and prime minister Sali Berisha be placed under house arrest following corruption charges relating to his time in office.

Prosecutors accuse Berisha, 79, of using his influence while premier between 2005 and 2009 to favor his daughter's husband in the privatization of a state land. Berisha has denied any wrongdoing.

Berisha now heads Albania's largest opposition party, the Democratic Party.

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s interior minister on Thursday accused Serbia of direct involvement in weekend clashes and was investigating the possibility of Russian involvement in the violence that left four people dead and further strained relations between the former wartime foes.

One Kosovo police officer and three gunmen were killed in Sunday’s shootout between Serb insurgents and Kosovo police. Eight people were initially arrested, but four of them have been released from custody because of a lack of evidence.

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s prime minister on Sunday said one police officer was killed and another wounded in an attack he blamed on support from neighboring Serbia, increasing tensions between the two former war foes at a delicate moment in their European Union-facilitated dialogue to normalize ties.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti said “masked professionals armed with heavy weapons” opened fire on a police patrol in the village of Banjska, in Leposavic municipality, 55 kilometers (35 miles) north of the capital Pristina at 3 a.m. (01:00 GMT).

PRISTINA, Sept 21 (Reuters) - At a cafe in Kosovo's capital Pristina, staff have given up checking whether the 2-euro coins people use to pay are genuine, as such a high proportion are fake and as the high quality of some counterfeits makes it almost impossible to tell.

"At the beginning everyone was worried and was checking if the 2-euro coins were fake or not," said waiter Endrit.

He and his colleagues would hold coins up to the light to examine them or plunk them down on a table to see how they sounded.

PRISTINA, July 16 (Reuters) - Kosovo has bought a batch of Turkish-made Bayraktar drones, its leader said on Sunday, at a time when it faces unrest in the north where ethnic Serbs refuse to recognise Pristina authorities.

In a Facebook post showing him in front of a drone with his defence minister, Prime Minister Albin Kurti said latest security spending was making the country safer.

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s prime minister offered Thursday to hold new mayoral elections in four Serb-majority municipalities and reduce police there in an effort to defuse tensions with neighboring Serbia that flared anew last month.

Ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo boycotted mayoral elections in the four municipalities in April as part of a campaign for greater autonomy, and they now object to the ethnic Albanian mayors chosen in the polls. Neighboring Serbia has backed calls for the mayors to step down.

PRISTINA/BELGRADE, June 14 (Reuters) - Three Kosovo police officers were detained by Serbian forces on Wednesday but officials from Kosovo and Serbia gave different locations for the arrest, accusing each other of crossing the border illegally.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti demanded the release of the three officers. He said they had been arrested 300 metres inside Kosovan territory, near the border with Serbia.

"The entry of Serbian forces into the territory of Kosovo is aggression and aimed at escalation and destabilization," Kurti wrote on his Facebook page.

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo’s prime minister on Thursday complained of bias against his country from the United States and the European Union and tolerance of what he called Serbia’s authoritarian regime.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti said his Cabinet took a different stance. “We insist that behaving well with an autocrat doesn’t make him behave better. On the contrary,” he said.

PRISTINA, Kosovo June 7 (Reuters) - Kosovo could trigger new elections in Serb-majority municipalities rocked by violent protests if 20% of voters sign a petition asking for them, the president told Reuters.

In an exclusive interview in her office, President Vjosa Osmani said she believed a petition was the most "democratic way" to proceed to new elections.

"In this way, I think we would ensure the participation of Serbs because the request would have come from them to begin with, from citizens," she said.

ZVECAN, Kosovo (AP) — The NATO-led peacekeeping force said on Monday that 25 of its troops were injured in clashes with ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo after they tried to take over the offices of one of the municipalities where ethnic Albanian mayors took up their posts last week.