More than 100, including 4 Bulgarians, arrested for human trafficking in Hungary in 2015: Hungarian Prosecutor’s Office is investigating 105 cases of human smuggling in the time period between January 1 and September 22, 2015, Hungarian newspaper Magyar Hírlap reported.
116 people have been detained, most of whom Hungarians (38) and Romanians (33). There are also 7 Syrians, 7 Australians, 5 Serbs, 5 Russians and 4 Bulgarians.
74 of the detainees ended up in prison, 4 were put under home arrest, while 2 were banned from staying on the territory of Hungary.

Bulgaria to share its experience with Mongolia for metro construction: Bulgaria will share its experience with the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar for construction of a metro, Kyrgyzstan’s AKIpress reported.
The intention was voiced upon agreement between Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev and his Mongolian counterpart Tsakhia Elbegdorj.
For this purpose, the mayor of Ulaanbaatar will arrive on a visit to Sofia to get acquainted with the building its metro.
The Bulgarian President also presented the willingness to build up the bilateral relations with Mongolia in the fields of mining, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, energy, agriculture, information and communication technology, defence.

6,500-Year-Old Graves Unearthed in Bulgaria: Archaeology in Bulgaria reports that 6,500-year-old graves of three adults and one child have been discovered underneath a former school yard in northeast Bulgaria, Archaeology.org writes.
Earlier this year, the team of archaeologists, led by Yavor Boyadzhiev of the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology, Dimitar Chernakov of the Ruse Regional Museum of History, and Dilen Dilov of the Razgrad Regional Museum of History, found a flint-tool workshop from the same time period near the newly discovered necropolis.
Pottery and flint tools were found in the graves, and the child’s grave contained three beads made from Spondylus shells, which suggest that the residents had a trading relationship with people living near the Mediterranean Sea.
Flint bowls painted with black, red, and white were found in one of the adult graves.

The European refugee crisis: Bulgaria’s wake-up call? Over the last few weeks the refugee crisis has reached fever pitch in Europe. Countries on the frontline such as Italy, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria have found themselves increasingly scrutinised over their policies and practices towards refugees, Alice Nicolov whites in an article published by openDemocracy.
The crisis has also forced European member states to take a long, hard look at themselves and respond to the calls of both the public and other European leaders to deal with the situation. Bulgaria has been no exception.
Over the last two years Bulgaria has seen an influx of refugees from its border with Turkey. As one of the poorest members of the European Union, Bulgaria’s immigration authorities are badly underfunded and underprepared for dealing with refugees.
Up until now Bulgaria has not been the route of choice for refugees travelling from the Middle East via Turkey to Europe. Instead, most choose to travel via Greece and Macedonia and on into western Europe. This is for a number of reasons: the reception of refugees, the conditions in Bulgaria, the implications of the Dublin agreement for those arriving in Bulgaria and the physical practicalities of crossing the border.
Now, however, it seems as though increasing numbers of refugees are choosing to cross into Europe by land via Bulgaria rather than sea because due to the lower smuggling costs, the horror stories of drownings and because the amenable summer conditions for sea travel are on the turn.
The issue of the refugees has not been something the Bulgarian popular press has given much time to until this summer and until recently there was little sympathy for refugees amongst the Bulgarian people. The public was not really aware of the massive scale of the refugee crisis outside of its borders because Bulgarian media had neither the interest nor the funds to send reporters to Syria. This isolation has fed into the fears of what is, for the most part, a largely insular society.
The fact that the majority of Syrian refugees are Muslim is also issue for ethnic Bulgarians. Bulgaria has a 10% Turkish-Muslim minority in a country with a population of around 7 million (and shrinking) and there is little desire to increase the Muslim presence there.
Furthermore, Bulgaria, as one of the poorest nations within the EU has two economic issues to consider with regards to the refugees. On the one hand it was, and still is, felt that Bulgaria should not be taking in refugees and supporting them when the country is barely able to provide its existing citizens with the welfare they need.

Crimea better than Bulgaria. And cheaper! Number of residents of the Russian town of Novosibirsk, who went on a holiday abroad, has seriously decreased, while at the same time there is a five-time increase of the tourists going on a holiday in Crimea, Russian Chestnoe slovo newspaper, issues in Novosibirsk, writes.
“Number of tourists that went on a holiday abroad this summer has decreased with 38%. There is only a slight increase in the trips to Egypt but other popular destinations reported drops, such as Turkey – 30%, Thailand – 43%, Bulgaria – 54%.
The number of Novosibirsk tourists, who travelled to the Schengen member states, on the other hand, has decreased by more than 60%,” the local tourism association in Novosibirsk announced.
“Novosibirsk tourists replace the foreign tourism with domestic one. There is five-time increase of the visits to Crimea – up to 34,000 people. There is also double increase of the tourists that preferred Sochi,” the association said further.

Bulgaria, Turkey came out with common idea on refugee crisis at EU summit: In the frames of the extraordinary EU summit in Brussels on Wednesday Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov discussed the proposal of Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu to establish a security zone in North Syria with the purpose to prevent the mass refugee flow, Hungarian HVG.hu reported.
“Together with my Turkish counterpart we discussed the idea about a security zone in North Syria. We think that it will be best for the refugees to stay close to their home and receive aid there,” Mr Borisov said ahead of the summit.
According to Mr Borisov, if no such security zone is established, there will be a flow of seven million Syrian citizens towards Europe, which will worsen the material and political consequences of the humanitarian crisis.

Bulgaria insists on opening special refugee registration centre: At an extraordinary EU summit the leaders of the member states decided to open special refugee registration centres in the countries along the EU external borders – Greece and Italy, by the end of November. Bulgaria insisted on such centre to be opened on its territory, too, German Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper wrote.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel explained that the hot points would register the newly-arrived refugees and take their fingerprints, after which they would be relocated to the inner part of the EU or deported, in case they had no grounds to apply for asylum.

More and more migrants cross Bulgarian-Serbian border: More and more migrants enter Serbia through the border to Bulgaria, Serbian N1 TV reported.
According to the media, the route is preferred by the refugees coming from Turkey through Bulgaria despite the fact that the Bulgarian authorities erected a fence at the border to Turkey.
The television commented further that the refugees were crossing the border in the region of Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad, while their number reached several hundreds.

More and more foreigners, including Bulgarians, work in vines in Turenne: Since 2000 more and more vine-growers in the French province of Turenne are hiring foreign workers during the grape-gathering so as to tackle the manpower deficit in the region, French France Bleu reported.
The vine-growers explained that the foreign workers were responding to the job advertisements offered by the employment offices.
“They come like all the rest. They have to pass an interview and if everything is fine, we hire them,” explained a local vine-grower, who hired four foreign nationals – two Bulgarians and two Spaniards, this year.
49-year-old Ilmikar is one of the Bulgarian workers there.
“I love to work in the vines, in the French nature. Vine-growing is a real passion for me,” he said proudly.
He first came to work as grape-picker in France back in 2009. Since then he spends six months in France every year.
“The minimum salary in France is good, one can earn a living with it, which is not the case in Bulgaria,” Ilmikar said.
Vine-growers in the French province of Turenne find it hard to find and hire serious seasonal workers.
“It is hard to find reliable workers,” said a representative of a Bulgarian intermediary company, which helps the farmers find workers. He added that there were labour inspections every week and the work was legal and well-guaranteed. In addition, when the job is found through an agency, the workers get higher payment – around EUR 15 – EUR 16 per hour.

Bulgarian traffickers make a killing in EU migrant crisis: The truck with 71 dead migrants abandoned in August on an Austrian motorway had Hungarian plates and a Slovakian poultry firm's livery. But five of the six suspects since arrested are Bulgarians.
To detectives probing the dark business of human trafficking, this was no surprise.
Organised criminals in Bulgaria are major players in the lucrative trade in human cargo - and often have scant regard for whether their freight lives or dies, AFP writes.
Bulgaria, a member of the European Union, is the bridge between Turkey and the rest of the EU.
Its gangs came to the 2015 migration crisis with a wealth of smuggling experience, transporting everything from heroin to fake Gucci bags.
The latest Trafficking in Persons report by the US State Department calls Bulgaria "one of the primary source countries" - and also a transit country - of men, women and children sold into sex slavery and forced labour.
With corrupt officials turning a blind eye, women and children are shipped worldwide, disabled people are forced into begging on Europe's streets and labourers find themselves stuck as far away as Zambia, the report said.
The flow of people fleeing war, persecution and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa has offered even bigger pickings.
Armed with their EU passports, know-how, equipment and contacts, the Bulgarian gangs have become the go-to organisations for the desperate.
"It has been easy to transform the paths forged by traffickers into channels for smuggling migrants, who are vulnerable and ready to take risks," Kamelia Dimitrova, head of a Bulgarian government commission tackling human trafficking, told AFP.

Austria says it has sent over 5,000 migrants back to other EU countries, including Bulgaria: Austria has sent back more than 5,000 migrants to EU countries that they had crossed on their way to Austria, its interior minister said on Thursday, Reuters reported.
Three weeks ago, Austria and Germany temporarily exempted people fleeing the Syrian war from EU rules requiring refugees to request asylum at the point where they enter the bloc. The move angered neighbors such as Hungary, who said it would merely encourage more migrants to come.
"If I remember rightly, we have sent more than 5,000 or 5,500 back from Austria, especially to Bulgaria and Romania among others," Johanna Mikl-Leitner told journalists at a meeting in Germany of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.
"For a functioning asylum system, you need an effective return policy, and there's still a lot of work to do on this, especially with regard to north African countries," she said.

Bulgaria's Postbank sees more consolidation, risks from migrant crisis: Bulgaria's Postbank, a unit of Greece's Eurobank, expects to see further consolidation in the Bulgarian banking sector and warned that Europe's migrant crisis could hamper growth in the economy, Reuters reported.
Chief Executive Petia Dimitrova, in an interview for the Reuters Eastern Europe Investment Summit on Thursday, also played down the impact of the Greek crisis on Greek-owned lenders in Bulgaria and said Eurobank had no plans to sell its Bulgarian operations.
Bulgaria's government recently raised its economic growth forecast for this year to 2 percent, and Dimitrova said the economy would accelerate next year and Postbank's lending could increase by 3-5 percent in 2016. Lending in the first half of the year was flat, in line with the whole banking system because of weak demand.