PASSING THROUGH
Interior Minister Mihail Mikov dismissed a police official working at the Bulgarian-Greek Koulata border checkpoint for helping a person cross the border who had been banned from leaving Bulgaria.

PARKING ISSUES
The area used by Sofia city hall to impound vehicles of transgressing drivers does not abide by current legislation and will be closed down, Bulgarian-language Monitor daily said. However, the legislation in question did not exist back in 1989, when the car park between Evlogi Georgiev and Yanko Sakuzov boulevards was first built. Sofia city hall hopes that this will provide a legal basis to fight the shutdown that was ordered by the National Construction Control Directorate’s Sofia branch.

TAXI FARES UP?
We will have to wait until the end of September to know whether taxi fares will increase, Roumen Kroumov, head of National Union of Carriers, told Bulgarian news agency BTA. Kroumov said that increased fares would likely follow the hike in fuel prices. Kroumov also pointed out that taxi fares have not risen since September 2007. The price per kilometre would probably increase by 0.05 to 0.06 leva, he said.

E-TAXES
Taxpayers will be able to pay their local taxes online by the end of the year on egov.bg website, Monitor daily said.

LIAR, LIAR
Lawyer Georgi Stefanov, who tipped off the State Agency for National Security (SANS) that Varna-based judge Anelia Tsvetkova had asked him for a bribe, has changed his testimony, according to Bulgarian-language daily 24 Chassa.
Tsvetkova was arrested on July 17 after allegedly receiving marked banknotes from Stefanov’s father, Stefan, who served as the messenger. A month after her arrest Georgi Stefanov now says that SANS asked him to lie about Tsvetkova’s demand for a bribe. Stefan Stefanov described his son’s recent statements as “nonsense”.

SCHEDULED EXPLOSIONS
It could take the army at least two years to destroy all the ammunition in the warehouse in the village of Chelopechene outside Sofia, Bulgarian news agency Focus quoted an army official as saying. The warehouse, a storage area for cartridges and shells, exploded on July 3, causing alarm among Sofians, hundreds of whom had to be evacuated for the day. Following the explosions – in which no one was hurt and only buildings incurred damage – the army began destroying the remaining ammunition.

SEE NO EVIL
Krassimir Dimov, head of the regional police department in the Black Sea town of Primorsko, did not remember anything about a murder that allegedly happened in his presence, Bulgarian BGNes news agency said. Prosecutors claim that Dimov witnessed a murder on August 5 but fled the scene without doing anything about it. Allegedly, the murderer and Dimov were close friends, BGNes said. Dimov filed his resignation because of the case but it was refused and an investigation was launched against him. He is currently in hospital, with high blood pressure.

LEGAL MUSIC
Plovdiv city hall decided to licence all Roma music orchestras in an attempt to cope with a problem emerging from Roma weddings. For quite some time, city hall has been getting complaints from citizens about the loud music played by the wedding orchestras. Traditionally, live Roma music is a must at Roma weddings. The problem was that the city hall had no grounds to control the orchestras because the city hall did not have an ordinance on live music orchestras playing outdoors. Now orchestras will have to pay 20 leva a month to the municipality and if they violate noise level norms, their licences will be revoked.