Population

The State Statistical Office has said it is optimistic about successfully wrapping up the nationwide head count, the first since 2002, by the September 30 deadline, having so far registered more than 1.3 million residents in more than 405,000 households.

More than one million citizens have been counted in the Republic of North Macedonia by 3 pm on September 19, the State Statistical Institute reported, MIA news agency reported.

Bulgaria ranks first in Europe in mortality with COVID-19, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. It is as of Thursday (September 2), and mortality is measured as the number of deaths infected with coronavirus per 1 million people in two weeks.

Yet help is just 500 metres away: on the Polish side, a group of activists has been on standby for days, bringing bags with food, water, medicines and thermal blankets (nights are now cold and it had been raining). But a line of Polish border guards constantly blocks access.

Ljubljana – Interior Minister Aleš Hojs met via videolink on Wednesday Roland Sebastian Schilling, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for Central Europe. The pair discussed the situation in Afghanistan, including potential migration and security threats, the ministry said.

On September 7, the national census in Bulgaria begins, which is done every 10 years.

In the first stage, households will be able to fill in the questionnaire online. It takes between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on whether it's one person or several people in the household, Sergei Tsvetarski, chairman of the National Statistical Institute (NSI), told "This Morning".

Turkey will not accept the "irresponsible" decision taken by the United States regarding the resettlement of Afghan refugees, because the plan addresses Turkey as the target country for application of the migration procedures, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgiç said on Aug. 3.

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Turkey's vice president urged the EU on July 6 to open legal migration routes for Syrians as part of the fair burden and responsibility sharing principle.

Fuat Oktay also appealed for member states to activate the voluntary humanitarian admission mechanism with concrete commitments and to increase the settlement quotas for refugees.

The U.N. refugee agency says war, violence, persecution and human rights violations caused nearly 3 million people to flee their homes last year, even though the COVID-19 crisis restricted movement worldwide as countries shut borders and ordered lockdowns.

Bulgaria had the third-highest infant mortality rate in the European Union in 2019, according to figures released on June 4 by EU statistics agency Eurostat.

The infant mortality rate is defined as the ratio of the number of deaths of children under one year of age to the number of live births in the reference year; the value is expressed per 1000 live births.