Member states of La Francophonie

Representatives of the Tourist Board of Morocco and of Bulgarian touroperators are discussing the setting up of regular charter flights between Sofia and Rabat, reports Dnevnik.bg.

The main goal is to ease the travel between the two countries, according to Khalid Mimi, head of the organisation for Eastern Europe. 

The wreckage of the Air Algerie airliner carrying 116 people that disappeared early on Thursday has been found in a semidesert area in Mali near the border with Burkina Faso.

A statement from the Elysée Palace in Paris said the aircraft had been “clearly identified in a state of disintegration” and there were no survivors among the 110 passengers and six crew members.

A prosecutor on Tuesday brought multiple charges of theft against a 37-year-old man alleged to have stolen votive offerings from two churches in the region of Kastoria, northern Greece, and to have sold them in neighboring Albania for 1,600 euros.

The man was caught in the act of breaking into the collection box at Aghia Paraskevi Church in the village of Vasileiada on Sunday.

The defense ministers of Bulgaria and Macedonia have expressed their mutual desire and will for cooperation between the armed forces of the two countries.

Macedonian Defense Minister Zoran Jolevski met with his Bulgarian counterpart on Tuesday as part of an official visit to Bulgaria.

Balkan armies promise greater co-operation in catastrophes

The Ministry of Defense has announced the building of a fence designed to curb the influx of migrants at Bulgaria's border with Turkey has finished.

Over the next days, the Chief Directorate Border Police is take over all sections of the installation, the construction of which had been assigned to the Defense Ministry.

Macedonia's main ruling party, VMRO DPMNE, says Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski has launched a new initiative to end the years-long stalemate over a national headcount.

The Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, said it will file amendments to the proposed constitutional changes in a bid to ensure greater use of the Albanian language and national symbols in the country.

The DPA said it would make its case at the start of the parliamentary session on government’s constitutional changes on Tuesday.

Bulgaria has the highest mortality rate in the EU, shows data of Eurostat. 

It has a mortality rate of 14.4 per mill and a negative population increase rate of -5.2 per mill.

Bulgaria is in the top position among the 13 EU countries with negative population growth. 

It is not necessary to boost healthcare expenditure for 2014, Bulgarian Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski said Wednesday.

Oresharski told the Bulgarian National Television he had looked at "numbers" and found the deficit at the National Health Insurance Fund (NZOK) for this year was the same as that for the previous one.