International relations

Bulgarian Sports Totalizator has rendered BGN 26,938,000 to the Ministry of Youth and Sports in 2013, a total of BGN 4M more than in 2012.

The increase was primarily due to changes in the Totalizator's regulations, namely a 17% cost reduction, and 18% of revenues allocated to sports, Dnevnik informs.

European Parliament is to announce on Wednesday the winner of European Tree of the Year contest.

Switzerland has decided to freeze talks on a trade deal with Russia as a result of the Crimea crisis, its economy minister said on Wednesday.

Johann Schneider-Ammann said the talks with Moscow and its ex-Soviet customs union partners Belarus and Kazakhstan had been put on hold "in such a situation of uncertainty." 

A huge fire has broken out in Macedonia only 1 km away from the Bulgarian border, Wednesday afternoon.

The fire was located close to the border checkpoint of Stanke Lisichkovo near Bulgaria's Blagoevgrad.

Bulgaria's Pazadrzhik regional court found all 13 imams guilty of propagating anti-democratic ideology. 

E-Government in Bulgaria might be complete before 2020, Transport Minister Danail Papazov announced Wednesday.

Papazov, who is also in charge of the information technologies sector, considers it possible that Bulgaria reaches a "medium level" compared to EU countries in terms of electronic governance.

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev has backed the proposal of Drug Enforcement Administration deputy chief Thomas Harrigan to discuss creating special joint teams.

Harrigan and Yovchev met Wednesday as part of a working visit of the Bulgarian delegation to the US, according to the press office of the Interior Ministry.

State employees are to stage on Wednesday a new nationwide strike in Greece.

They are demanding that the government in Athens abandon plans for fresh mass layoffs within the state sector which are a condition of the international bailout program, Dnevnik.bg has reported.

Prices of electricity might go up if power distributors can prove their expenses have increased.

The minister said Albania had already “consolidated legal framework on the environment, but criminal sentences for those who break the law should be increased.

“The current measures are not enough,” he told an international conference on the environment held in Tirana.