Plans for a gay pride march in Sofia on June 28 2008 have met a sharp backlash from political conservatives and some Bulgarian Orthodox Church leaders.

In the issue of The Sofia Echo published on June 27, we outline the stances taken in the controversy.

The newspaper has a feature-length report by Petar Kostadinov and Svetlana Guineva giving an update on developments in the Mogilino children’s home saga, in the aftermath of the BBC report that exposed serious shortcomings in the treatment of children at the home.

Elsewhere, Spasena Baramova tunes in to the European Union countries’ responses to the Irish “no” vote in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and tracks the likely path ahead.

The business section has stories on the rights of European Union consumers in regard to utility services, opinions in the banking sector on future inflation in Bulgaria, the continuing debate about CO2 emissions, as well as The Sofia Echo’s regular coverage of property and tourism matters.

In the features section, Mark Thomas examines in depth the question of whether Bulgaria would be capable of hosting the Euro 2016 football championships, while David Clark abandons his car to embark on an odyssey of public transport from town to town in Bulgaria.

Other features include details of the nominees for the Bulgarian novel of the year, Pavel Ivanov’s film review of The Happening, as well as our regular items such as The Sofia Echo’s columnists, venue and restaurant reviews, social photographs and cinema and television listings.

Our sports pages have a wide range of stories, from Wimbledon to Euro 2008 and the Bulgarian shottist fired from the Olympic team after allegedly having tested positive for cocaine.

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