See also: March 1-15 and April 1-30 (View all)
Totally random, but here are two extended newscasts from 1997 about the political turmoil in Albania. I experienced it directly when living there as a Peace Corps volunteer between 1995-7. (I have written about those times here and here .
PBS newshour had 2 excellent segments on March 10 1997 and March 14 1997. On Sunday March 10 I was living with my host family going through a “practice evacuation” which none of us took seriously. Two days later (either Monday night or Tuesday night), they ordered us to report the next morning to the Peace Corps compound to be evacuated. We ended up staying inside the compound for 2 days while waiting for the situation to clear. As it happened, the rebels had already reached the capital, there was nonstop shooting around town, the airport was closed and the so-called emergency evacuation at the football field was cancelled because it was right next door to a military armory! But then early on either Thursday morning or Friday morning, they hustled us to the US embassy by bus to be picked up by the US military helicopters to a battleship and then eventually to the Brindisi airport in Italy (and eventually to Bucharest, Romania).
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