TRANSPORT STRIKE
Sofia City Transport municipal company bus, trolley bus and tram drivers say that they will go on strike on May 15. The protest will have no time limit, Pavel Hristov, head of the strike committee, told Focus news agency on May 7. “We will be on strike until our demands are met,” he said. Their demands include higher salaries and tax relief. At present the average salary is 400 leva. On May 15 only bus lines operated by private companies will be working. Subway trains will be working as well.

IDEALISTS
Close to 400 people tried to stage a rally in support of the legalisation of marijuana on May 5 in Sofia. The demonstrators gathered in the centre of Sofia and demanded to be allowed to proceed with the rally. Police dispersed the demonstration because the organisers had not applied to the municipality for permission for the event.

SWISS ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Sofia municipality will receive help from the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC) to implement an energy efficiency plan in one of Sofia’s neighbourhoods, Zona B5. Heinz Kaufmann, SDC country director for Bulgaria and Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov signed the agreement on May 4.

APPLYING THE LAW
Three police officers from Sofia’s Eighth District police station were beaten up by a group of men on May 3, Bulgarian-language Darik Radio said. The police were attacked while doing a check of a group of men who were dragging a motor vehicle tied to a horse wagon. The police officers were responding to a complaint from residents of the Hadzhi Dimitar neighbourhood. One police officer was admitted to hospital while the other two were treated as out patients. Police later arrested two of the assailants, in an operation in which dozens of police officers stormed a nearby Roma neighborhood and held close to 100 people for questioning. Some of relatives of those detained alleged that the police had assaulted detainees, a claim denied by the police.

BUSH AND SOFIA
According to Bulgarian-language daily Standart, mobile phones in Sofia have been providing irregular service over the past few days, because the US Secret Service and the Bulgarian National Security Service were holding joint practice sessions for president George Bush’s upcoming visit. Bush will be in Sofia on June 10 and 11 and preparations for his visit have already begun. US and Bulgarian experts are checking possible routes for Bush, Standart said. The US officers were experimenting by jamming the signals of all three mobile operators to check the operators’ frequency spans. The aim is to devise a special programme that would jam mobile phone connections minutes before Bush’s convoy passes by.

HOT SEAT
Sofia’s heating utility Toplofikatsia has a new temporary head, Petko Milevski. He is the fourth in the past 12 months. On May 3, Toplofikatsia’s board elected Milevski as the company’s chief executive until a new director is elected.