Professor Kurtev founded Bulgaria's colon cancer screening program, and he basically said people will show up for testing when they get clear info about what it does and why it matters. The problem is the government has not committed resources or political will to make screening happen at scale, which means there is more reason to worry than to feel optimistic about where things are headed. He wants the occult blood test added to standard preventive care for people between 50 and 74 because early detection saves lives and costs way less than treating advanced cancer.
Bulgarians tend to assume they are fine if nothing hurts, but that mindset gets people killed because colon cancer symptoms barely show up until the disease reaches late...
A bunch of SUVs with Pleven plates just shut down Dondukov Boulevard by the Opera House, and the whole area turned into a parking lot. Trams are stacked up in both directions, and cars are gridlocked because the vehicles blocking traffic are apparently heavy enough that cops cannot move them without equipment. Word on the street is this might be a stunt pulled by either Velichy or SWORD, which are opposition parties in parliament.
Witnesses are saying more jeeps showed up near the National Assembly building, and police have the scene locked down hard. The Interior Ministry is keeping quiet about what is actually happening, but people at the scene confirm there are officers everywhere trying to figure out how to clear the blockade.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party is threatening to bail on the government if anyone messes with the social benefits packed into next year's budget. Ivan Takov from BSP confirmed the party will walk if the income policy gets touched after GERB leader Boyko Borisov yanked the 2026 budget following protests. BSP chairman Atanas Zafirov already said the socialists are against changing what they're calling the most socially-friendly budget the country has ever put together.
Takov said BSP is drawing a hard line on income-related stuff and explained the dividend tax was just a small piece of their bigger tax vision anyway. He also mentioned that Sofia parking prices and zones will stay frozen starting next year, and he wants the city to try...
Former Bulgarian president Rosen Plevneliev said Boyko Borisov made the smart call by pulling the 2026 budget after protests hit the Triangle of Power area. The ex-leader watched the whole thing go down and noticed most of the crowd was legit young people showing up for real reasons, even though some folks were just tossing beer bottles around after getting drunk.
Plevneliev thinks Bulgaria has three big things coming up next year: joining the Economic Cooperation Organization around mid-June, finishing off the remaining 6 billion from the recovery plan, and keeping the country's reputation intact. He basically said Bulgaria is limping into the eurozone, beat up and broken, which matters for the next generation. The former president...
Bulgaria is about to get slammed with one of the wildest winter stretches in 15 years, and weather nerds at Meteo Balkans are pointing at the polar vortex split as the main culprit. Early parts of the month are looking dry but cold, with fog sitting heavy over the plains and temps barely scraping past freezing in some spots. Mid-month is when things get spicy because Arctic air is going to barrel into Eastern Europe and dump snow across the mountains and northwest regions.
The holiday stretch might actually deliver a legit white Christmas since conditions are lining up better than usual, with temps potentially dropping to minus 10 Celsius in lowland areas. Forecasters are saying Christmas itself will be cloudy and foggy, but the New...
Bulgaria's parliament is about to vote on whether to accept another EUR 250 million loan from the European Investment Bank, and the cash is basically going straight into covering the country's share of EU-funded projects. The money gets split across transport infrastructure, environmental programs, regional development, business competition stuff, and tech innovation projects that are part of the 2021-2027 funding cycle.
This loan is the second chunk from a EUR 1 billion credit line the EIB set up for Bulgaria, and the first EUR 250 million tranche from last year has already got burned through. The bank has been doing this for Bulgaria since 2007, dropping EUR 447 million in the first round and EUR 500 million in the second round to...
ITU and Senegal's telecom regulator just locked in a deal at the big telecoms conference in Baku to help young women get into digital commerce. Cosmas Zavazava from ITU and Dahirou Thiam from ARTP signed off on the partnership, which sets up training programs and digital tools for women entrepreneurs trying to break into online business. The project needs internal sign-off at ARTP before it kicks off, but the framework is ready to go.
Thiam said ARTP is basically the engine behind this thing, and the whole point is getting Senegalese women the skills they need to compete in digital trade. Other countries at the conference were apparently taking notes because Senegal's approach seems to be working. The government is treating...
UNICEF and TECNO Mobile are back for round two of their Learning Passport thing in Nigeria, and this time they're scaling up teacher training across six states. The whole point is getting educators comfortable with digital tools so kids can actually learn something useful instead of just staring at screens.
The partnership is basically trying to fix how teachers use tech in classrooms by giving them proper training and resources. TECNO's throwing hardware and support at the problem while UNICEF handles the education framework, and they're hoping it sticks this time around.
Mastercard teamed up with AXIAN Group to roll out virtual cards, physical cards, and merchant payment tools across Tanzania, Madagascar, Togo, Comoros, and Senegal through the Mixx and MVola apps. The setup lets people pay from their phones, check live exchange rates, and cancel sketchy transactions on the fly without needing traditional bank accounts.
AXIAN is betting this partnership puts financial tools in the hands of small business owners and regular consumers who got shut out of formal banking. The whole thing is supposed to make cross-border payments less of a pain while expanding access to digital money services across countries where banking infrastructure has been weak.
