Provinces of Bulgaria

US-based companies AES and ContourGlobal, which own two of Bulgaria's largest thermal-power plants, have submitted declarations that they are leaving one of the key employers' organizations in the country.

Both were, until now, members of the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria, or CEIBG (also increasingly known as KRIB).

Bulgarian Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova has turned down a proposal by employers' organizations that potential investors should be sought to replace AES and ContourGlobal as shareholders at thermal power plants.

Bulgaria's state-owned gas transmission system operator Bulgartransgaz EAD has been issued an act for establishment of the construction works' fitness for operation (Act 16) for the Dobrich - Silistra gas pipeline.

Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said on Facebook that he had been informed about the development by Bulgargaz late on Monday.

Novinite is republishing with an abridgement a second (after the one about Lakatnik) story by our reader Leon de Leeuw, who visited the area of Lakatnik, a place not far from Bulgaria's capital Sofia which has much to offer to hikers and nature lovers.

Salaries in the emergency healthcare sector will increase by 20% as of January 2015, according to Deputy Health Minister Vanyo Sharkov.

In a Tuesday interview for Nova TV he made clear that the aim was to introduce 20% pay hikes on an annual basis until a 100% increase is achieved in 2020.

The National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH) to the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAN) issued a red code over considerable rainfall and strong winds in the province of Burgas.

According to the forecast, considerable rainfall up to 60-70 litres per square metre and a strong northern wind is expected on Tuesday.

Novinite is republishing a story by our reader Leon de Leeuw, who visited the area of Lakatnik, a place not far from Bulgaria's capital Sofia which has much to offer to hikers and nature lovers.

Fifty migrants have been detained near the southwestern town of Pernik, not far from Bulgaria's capital Sofia, local officials say.

District governor Irena Sokolova told Focus News Agency the migrants were found traveling in the carriage of a truck with a Pernik license plate en route to Kyustendil, another town located close to Bulgaria's borders with both Macedonia and Serbia.

Bulgaria celebrates on Tuesday the 107th anniversary of its independence from the Ottoman Empire, which was declared in the medieval capital of Veliko Tarnovo on 22 September 1908.

This was the third important act towards the restoration of the independent Bulgarian state after it had fallen under Ottoman rule at the end of the fourteenth century.

There have been at least 485 200 tourists arriving in Bulgaria's capital Sofia over the first six months of this year.

This is 5.7% up compared to 2014, official data shows.

Some 284 000 of them were non-Bulgarian citizens, while the rest came from the country, the Bulgarian News Agency reports, citing a state-owned tourism company.