These are some of the top headlines in Bulgarian newspapers on May 9 2008. The Sofia Echo has not verified these stories and cannot vouch for their accuracy.

Politics

- Probes against former Interior Minister Roumen Petkov and former head of National Investigative Service Angel Alexandrov will be launched soon, Troud daily said. Alexandrov is alleged to have disclosed state secrets, while Petkov could find himself investigated within a week for revealing the identity of secret agent.

- The state would take up part of the health and pension insurance, starting 2009, according to the updated governance of the Cabinet, Sega daily said. The council of the tripartite coalition would most probably approve the plan at its summit on May 10-11.

- The Cabinet abolished restrictions on ownership of pharmacies, Dnevnik daily said. Until now, only experts with a master degree in pharmacy could own a drug store. From now on, anyone willing to open a pharmacy could do so, as long as the manager is a master in pharmacy.

Society

- Macedonians become Bulgarian citizens within three months, Monitor daily said. Macedonian companies and private entities had come up with a system in which intermediaries can help obtain identity documents for whoever wants it. The intermediaries widely promote their activity, the newspaper said.

- The European Commission (EC) would sue nearly half of the European Union for not recognising Bulgarian and Romanian university diplomas, Standart daily quoted Romanian news agency NewsIn as saying. The countries to be sued were Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Spain, the UK and Portugal.

Economy

- Bulgaria’s telecommunications market reached 3.9 billion leva in 2007, preliminary data of the annual marketing research of the telecoms watchdog showed. Within only a year, the telecommunications sector had increased by nearly 30 per cent, Vesselin Bozhkov, head of the commission, said, as quoted by Dnevnik.

- ArcelorMittal was ready to pay between $400 and $700 million to acquire Bulgaria’s steel mill Kremikovtzi, Dnevnik said. The exact sum to be offered depended on the hidden debts, which may emerge at the finalisation of the deal.

- The budget surplus reached new record-breaking levels, Sega said. It reached 1.66 billion leva in the first three months of the year alone, a report by Finance Ministry showed.