Euobserver.com

Albanians will cast their vote in a general election on Sunday. Will it be a third mandate for the current government of prime minister Edi Rama, or he will be replaced by opposition nominee Lulzim Basha?

The global dominance of European football is a cultural asset contributing to Europe's 'soft power' by cultivating an international fanbase for top clubs. But European values of free speech get lost in pursuit of pleasing autocratic regimes gatekeeping their markets.

Voting on Syria at the world's chemical-weapons watchdog has shed light on its friends - and the geopolitics of its 10-year old conflict.

Chinese, Russian, and Saudi millionaires bought EU passports from Malta using loopholes to avoid having a "genuine link" to the country, according to leaked documents from Henley & Partners, a London-based firm which designed Malta's golden-passport industry. Many passport-buyers spent less than three weeks in Malta and left letterbox-type residences empty most of the time, the leaked files, exposed by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, an NGO, showed.

India has set a world record of new cases, with 314,835 being recorded on Wednesday, and 1m cases in just four days, The Guardian writes. It surpassed the previous record of just under 300,000 set by the US in January. It comes as fears mount over oxygen supplies and hospital beds in some areas of India, as the surge of cases puts enormous pressure on the health system.

US president Joe Biden is expected to formally recognise the killing of Armenians by Turkey in 1915 as "genocide", US officials have told the AP news agency, in a potential rift with Nato ally and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who denies it. Biden might do it in a speech on Armenia's Day of Remembrance on 24 April, AP said, after over 100 congressmen urged him to "tell the truth".

Russia should pay "costs" for its 2014 bomb attack in the Czech Republic, the US has said, as Nato and the EU face a "crucial test" of diplomacy.

The West would face an "asymmetrical, rapid, and harsh" strike if it crossed a "red line", Russian president Vladimir Putin said in a speech Wednesday, which focused on coronavirus and the economy. "We'll decide for ourselves ... where the red line is," he said. He accused Western powers of plotting a coup in Belarus. His Cold-War rhetoric came amid a military build-up around Ukraine and redoubled opposition protests in Russia.

Japan is poised to declare a state of emergency in the capital, Tokyo, plus two other regions, amid a fourth coronavirus wave, just three months before the start of the Olympic Games, The Guardian reports. Domestic media said the government was considering tougher measures for Tokyo, Osaka prefecture and neighbouring Hyogo prefecture, as experts warned that mutant strains of the virus were driving new outbreaks and straining health services.

UN human rights experts called on Russia to allow jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be medically evacuated and treated abroad, saying they believed his life was at risk, Reuters reports. The UN experts said: "We believe Navalny's life is in serious danger," adding "We are deeply troubled that Navalny is being kept in conditions that could amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Syria's voting rights in the international anti-chemical weapons body were suspended Wednesday, after 87 member states voted in favour of the sanctions, 15 against, and 34 abstained at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Proof Syria has been gassing its own people was "irrefutable", Luis Vassy, France's OPCW ambassador, who introduced the motion, said. The suspension was the first-ever in the OPCW's 24-year history.

Hungary's government plans to tweak laws that underpinned its attacks on foreign-funded universities and civil society organisations, which the EU's top court struck down for breaking EU rules, Bloomberg reported. One draft amendment would scrap provisions that the European Court of Justice said placed "discriminatory and unjustified restrictions" on foreign donations to NGOs. Another would amend rules that effectively forced the George Soros-funded Central European University to move to Vienna.

Germany's Constitutional Court gave the green light to approve legislation ratifying the European Union's recovery fund, as it dismissed legal challenges against the debt-financed investment plan, Deutsche Welle writes. The decision is key to launching the bloc's €750bn recovery spending to mitigate the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the ruling does not mark final approval in the case, as the court still has to make a definitive judgment.

Angela Merkel also said that the EU should better take into consideration the different experiences of eastern European countries - which are becoming increasingly confident and do not necessarily want an 'ever-closer union'.

The European Commission unveiled the first-ever legal framework to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in Europe - banning 'social scoring' systems and facial recognition for law enforcement in public spaces, with narrow exceptions.

The European Commission has laid out rules classifying industrial logging and the burning of trees and crops for energy as 'sustainable' investments. Decisions on whether to also list gas and nuclear energy as 'sustainable' investments will be made later.

Romania's problem with waste and illegal imports has come under increased public scrutiny after such incidents picked up significantly over the past 18 months - particularly after China, the world's primary importer of waste, implemented a plastics ban.

Together with several other central and eastern European (CEE) countries, we do not support the introduction of a single EU carbon price for all sectors - because this could significantly increase the overhead costs for CEE households.

The European Parliament and the European Council reached an agreement on the first-ever EU climate law - raising the current 2030 emission-reduction target from 40 percent to around 55 percent (including carbon sinks).

Fighting in Ethiopia is "dire", with ongoing ethnic cleansing and sexual violence, Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto has said after visiting the conflict zone in Tigray.