Voting has ended in Albania’s parliamentary election after a boisterous campaign dominated by the country’s uphill effort to join the European Union and Prime Minister Edi Rama’s bid for a fourth term.

U.S. President Donald Trump said from the White House on Thursday that his government has reached a trade agreement with the United Kingdom.

Albania’s main opposition leader has hired Trump-linked campaign consultants and a lobbying firm to help him in the country's May 11 parliamentary election.

Opposition supporters in Albania have protested again and demanded that the government be replaced by a technocratic caretaker Cabinet before next year’s parliamentary election.

Preliminary results show Albania's governing Socialist Party candidate Vangjel Tavo has won the mayoral election in the southwestern town of Himara.

Albanian opposition lawmakers have disrupted the Parliament’s session again to protest what they say is increasingly authoritarian rule by the governing Socialists.

Albania’s prime minister has denied that he bribed or gave preferential treatment to a former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official who has been indicted in the U.S. Edi Rama told Parliament Thursday that the opposition wanted “to politically exploit a legal process in the USA that has no links at all to Albania, the government or me personally.

Thousands of Albanian opposition supporters have protested the country's cost of living crisis, which they blame on the center-left government.

Albania says former President Bujar Nishani has died at 55 following a serious health problem.

Albanian police have intervened to move away protesters at the headquarters of the country’s main opposition party.

The United States has sanctioned former Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha for alleged “significant corruption” and barred him and his wife and children from entering the U_S_ U_S_ Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that during Berisha’s 2005-2013 tenure as prime minister, the politician was involved in the misappropriation of public funds and used his power "for his own benefit and to enrich his political allies and his family members.”.