DPS party

The nationalist coalition Patriotic Front (PF) will insist on a social debate on whether the capital punishment should be reintroduced, its co-leader Valeri Simeonov has said.

PF, which back the current Bulgarian government, has stressed the need for the country to overcome a looming "ethnic crisis" and tackle hundreds of cases of "robberies and beatings" on pensioners.

The state prosecution has dropped charges of attempted murder against the man who attacked the DPS party's honorary chair Ahmed Dogan in 2013.

Oktay Enimehdemov was sentenced in February to three-and-a-half years of imprisonment after found guilty of death threat, but was acquitted of attempted murder. The Sofia Appellate Court in October upheld the sentence.

FM signs book of condolences for Montenegrin official

BELGRADE -- Ivica Dačić signed on Thursday the book of condolences opened at the Montenegrin embassy in Belgrade following the death of Željko Šturanović.

The director of MANS, Vanja Calovic, along with activists Dejan Milovac and Vuk Maras, said they were assaulted on Tuesday by a municipal election commission officer to whom they were attempting to hand over complaints about alleged irregularities at the polls on Sunday.

Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, ALDE, has failed to convince its Bulgarian sister party, the mainly ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, DPS, not to put Peevski forward in the lists for the upcoming European elections, EurActiv reported.