Bulgarian National Radio

Over 1 ton of heroin worth over EUR 30 M was seized Friday near Athens  in a joint operation of Greek police and coast guard and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

A large amount of money has been stolen in Bulgaria's capital city of Sofia district Mladost, Friday afternoon.

The robbery took place near a bank, Bulgarian National Radio reports. Two men waylaid employees carrying two bags of cash to the bank and attacked them, according to local media reports.

The amount of money stolen is still unknown.

Bulgaria's Finance Minister has said that the state budget can afford spending of BGN 25 M on potential snap elections by end-214.

Bulgaria struck a financial agreement with Russia alongside a secret deal on the construction of South Stream, a Reformist Bloc representative said Friday.

Martin Dimitrov's comments come a day after other bloc members alleged that they had gained access to evidence of a "secret deal" with Gazprom on the South Stream project.

The construction of the third line of the Sofia metro may be delayed, due to the lack of funding, the city mayor Yordanka Fandakova told Bulgarian National Radio.

Currently, there is no approval of funding or an agreement between the Bulgarian state and the European Commission, Fandakova said.

Bulgarian Parliament Speaker Mihail Mikov argued Prime Minister Oresharski had been misinterpreted when speaking about South Stream.

Mikov told the Bulgarian National Radio the construction of the pipeline had not been halted. He added that Plamen Oresharski could not have stopped the project, as he does not possess the competences to do so with a private company like South Stream.

Bulgarian MPs are to discuss two proposals for a national referendum.

Rumen Yonchev, a former socialist lawmaker and now officially independent, has introduced a bill envisaging election legislation amendments that favour mandatory voting.

His move comes after the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP)'s leader Sergey Stanishev voiced his proposal that Bulgaria make it compulsory for its citizens to cast a ballot.

Orlin Todorov, former director of the anti-mafia unit in Veliko Tarnovo, has been handed a one-year suspended sentence with three years of probation and a fine of BGN 2000.

Deputy Prime Minister Daniela Bobeva has insisted that Bulgaria is not plagued by an economic crisis, despite the allegations of the opposition.

She assured that the country had not been stricken by apocalypse, as the opposition claimed.