Biology

Switzerland is to ban imports of live pigs and pork from several EU countries, including Bulgaria, in a bid to stop an African swine fever outbreak from reaching the country.

Imports from Bulgaria and Romania and some parts of Latvia and Croatia will be banned as of Wednesday, Swiss food safety authorities said on Tuesday.

BELGRADE – With the May flooding and high humidity in Serbia providing mosquitoes with favorable breeding conditions, the latest report by Belgrade’s Institute for Biocides and Medical Ecology gives no confirmation about mosquitoes in Serbia carrying West Nile virus (WNV).

Chickens contaminated with Salmonella have been found in the grocery stores in Bulgaria's city of Plovdiv after an inspection by the Regional Directorate for Food Safety.

The contaminated meat was a part of a batch produced and imported from Poland, BGNES informs. The batch has been distributed in 17 cardboard boxes.

Dan Vodnar, a young scientist of the Romanian city Cluj-Napoca the inventor of anti-microbial packaging derived from gastropod shell, algae and other natural ingredients has become the first Romanian to receive the Danubius Young Scientist Award, the 2014 edition.

Residents of Kovin fear the Vest Nile virus Mosquito plague even prevents them from going to the store

KOVIN: Residents of Kovin haven’t been able to leave their homes for days, because they are afraid of mosquitoes, which are besieging the town in swarms. Mosquito spraying hasn’t been organized yet.

Staying cool is not easy these days. The summer heat is at times suffocating, the political agenda maddening, and it seems that the summer will get more and more heated with the upcoming Presidential elections. It will be hard to remain as cool as a cucumber when the political discourse gets more vicious.

Two men who disrupted a lecture by Nobelist James Watson at the University of Patra in April 2011 were convicted on Wednesday.

One was handed a 13-month jail sentence, suspended for three years, after being found guilty of using an illegal weapon and causing bodily harm. The other received a three-month term, also suspended for three years, for illegal use of violence.

Russia's federal veterinary and phytosanitary control authority (Rosselkhoznadzor) has banned imports of bovine cattle, beef and by-products from Romania over an outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, the Russian ITAR-TASS reads.

A Chinese venture is planning to invest in production of probiotics and synbiotics in the Bulgarian town of Karlovo, municipal officials have revealed.

Local authorities signed on June 6 a preliminary agreement with the consortium, and details are due to be clarified later this month, Karlovo Municipal Council Chairman Stoyo Karagenski was quoted by Dariknews.bg as saying.

A stork brought a bra to his nest in Simitli and his mate left him, reports the BGNES agency. 

According to the report, the bra – large size, white and somewhat dirty, has been dangling from the nest since the spring, when the male stork brought it to repair the nest.