TIRANA (AFP) – The leader of Albania’s opposition Socialist Party, Edi Rama, won re-election as the mayor of the capital Tirana in weekend municipal polls, estimates showed yesterday. The Central Electoral Commission said the vote count from a number of polling stations was slow, delaying the pronouncement of the official results of Sunday’s polls. But Rama seemed set to win his third consecutive mandate as Tirana mayor with 55.5 percent of the vote, well ahead of Sokol Alldashi from Prime Minister Sali Berisha’s Democratic Party with 43.8 percent, poll observers ECA said.

BUCHAREST (AP) –A Bucharest court has ruled that the country’s wartime pro-Nazi leader, Ion Antonescu, was not responsible for waging war on the Soviet Union in 1941 because the neighboring country had occupied parts of Romania a year earlier. Antonescu was sentenced to death in 1946 by a people’s tribunal on charges including war crimes, deporting hundreds of thousands of people to death camps and crimes against peace by joining the Germans in attacking the Soviet Union. He was executed that year, along with several cabinet members. In a ruling published yesterday, the court cleared Antonescu and 19 members of his cabinet solely on the charge referring to the attack on the Soviet Union, noting that the action was legitimate as a response to the Soviet occupation.

Police said yesterday they had broken up a criminal gang that stole dozens of cars in Western Europe and smuggled them to neighboring Albania. Ten citizens of Montenegro, including two ethnic Albanians, were arrested in a police sweep last week, as well as one Serbian and one Albanian national, police spokeswoman Tamara Popovic said. The suspects include three customs officers who allegedly issued documents for the vehicles to make them appear legal, Popovic said, adding that arrest warrants had been issued for another Montenegrin and three Albanians. AP)

Rescue workers yesterday recovered the body of a miner killed in a mudslide in eastern Serbia, a day after surging water and mud flooded a pit where he and seven others had been working, authorities said. The other seven miners were recovering in a hospital in the eastern town of Bor, 150 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Belgrade. A total of 15 miners had been on duty in the shaft at the time of the accident on Monday. (AP)