The Government’s number two is LAZARAT How Makbule Çeço broke through the encirclement The Government’s number two was trapped with grenades and Kalashnikovs in the frightening village. Why the police did not escort her, and how the village’s old women saved her. The “tough guys” beat up the head of the local SP branch and the area’s candidate. Here are the names of those responsible for the incident. I’m getting wet 3

The place where Vitori Llanaj burned She preached in the streets Harakiri in the middle of Tirana: a woman burns herself with gasoline The woman dressed in red, who preached in the streets of Tirana, ended her life yesterday morning by setting herself on fire with gasoline on the steps of the Avni Rustemi monument. The history of suicides in Tirana was expanded yesterday with a new variant: setting oneself on fire with gasoline in a public place. The images that Albanians have seen on television, in the squares of European capitals, where Kurdish citizens have set themselves on fire with gasoline in ... On page 2

Paradox Edmond Tupja It seems strange when you think about the extent to which the triumph of democracy here has reshaped—or, not to say, devalued—some very simple things or phenomena. Back then—I was still a young lecturer at the Faculty of Foreign Languages—bananas, Coca-Cola, contraceptives, beards and chewing gum, for example, were extremely rare, almost forbidden fruit, objects of dreams and desires deeply repressed in the frightened soul. To be fair, the totalitarian state had no particular prejudice against bananas; their taste and nutritional content did not conflict with the ruling ideology of the time, perhaps ... Continued on page 21

The second list of the names of 240 people who passed the IOM test and must obtain their visas at the Italian Embassy On pages 12–13