Nikolov

Ombudsman Diana Kovacheva said on Thursday that she is concerned by the information she has received from struggling households and called on Bulgaria's interim government to focus on swift action to financially support domestic customers of natural gas and companies using gas to heat residential buildings.

Bulgarian police arrested a Russian citizen and two Lithuanians on suspicion of exporting "sensitive information" from the Arsenal military plant in Kazanlak.

"If we continue to behave like the idiots of Europe, we will deal a terrible blow to our economy and tourism," said Chief Health Inspector Angel Kunchev, who proposes restrictive measures against COVID-19 in the country.

Bulgaria is pushing for an end to "discrimination" against the Bulgarian minority in North Macedonia, with Bulgarian Rumen Radev discussing the topic with his Austrian counterpart Alexander Van der Belen on Monday in Vienna.

The agreement with the Bulgarian Prosecutor's Office for the appointment of 10 delegated European prosecutors is still in force and the issue is not up for discussion, the EU's new Chief Prosecutor Laura Kövesi was quoted as saying Thursday by the Bulgarian justice ministry. Kövesi is set to speak to the press on Friday.

The visit of the mostly Turkish-Bulgarian Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) representatives to Turkey, where they also met with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has provoked serious tensions in Bulgaria one month before the elections in parliament.

Bulgaria can achieve collective immunity against COVID-19 within 63 days if the current rate of vaccination is maintained, government health adviser Nikolay Vitanov said on Thursday.

Bulgaria has been able to vaccinate about 0.5% of its population per day this week after it received more than 1 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.