Yordanka

The Vitosha station on line 2 of the underground in the Bulgarian capital will be opened on July 31.

This was announced by the mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova, who inspected the progress of construction of the new station on Tueday.

At present construction works have been completed at 75 %, daily Dnevnik informs.

Sofia Municipality imposes BGN 600 000 fines on the contractors of the project for the renovation of the area around the National Palace of Culture (NDK), said Yordanka Fandakova, Mayor of Bulgaria's capital Sofia in an interview for bTV.

The major reason is that the contractors have been returning up to seven times in order to finish renovation of the park area in front of NDK.

According to preliminary figures of the National Statistical Institute (NSI) released on Tuesday, Georgi and Maria continued to be most common Bulgarian names in 2015.

At the end of 2015, there were nearly 69 000 different personal names of people permanently residing in Bulgaria.

Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova has announced that work on the third subway line of Bulgaria's capital is to start in the spring of 2016.

In an interview with the Bulgarian National Television, she has warned this will cause traffic disruptions across the capital, with locations of new metro stations (or connections to existing lines) set on a number of venues in downtown Sofia.

The lights of the Christmas tree in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia will be illuminated on Tuesday evening.

The Christmas tree is located in the garden, which is situated between Rila hotel and Alabin street in downtown Sofia.

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov is supportive of plans to turn the country's capital Sofia and the Chinese city of Shanghai into sister cities, the government's press office has said.

Borisov is on a five-day visit to China alongside seven ministers to attend a summit of Central and Eastern European leaders and a bilateral investment forum.

Bulgarian citizens and officials commemorated the victims of Friday's attacks in Paris by laying flowers and expressing their condolences in front of the French embassy in Sofia on Saturday.

Dozens of violation claims have been submitted to authorities by 10 EET on Sunday morning as a second round of local elections is being held, the Interior Ministry has said. `

Separately, the main ruling GERB party has reported seven breaches of election law, three of them in Sofia.

A run-off vote of Bulgaria's local elections is being held in 1128 villages, towns and cities across the country on Sunday.

In 970 of them voters are picking mayor, while others are to elect district or municipal mayors.

With 75 % of the ballot papers processed, it seems that Bulgaria's main ruling party, GERB, will lose the majority it has enjoyed in the municipal council of Sofia.

Prior to the local elections, which were held in Bulgaria on Sunday, GERB had 33 out of 61 municipal councillors in the capital.