CSKA Sofia to return 'exiled' players

CSKA president: the players apologised sincerely for their actions and will be reinstated back into the first team.

CSKA Sofia players sacked from first team following defeat

Nine CSKA Sofia first-team players barred from training over allegedly breaking curfew before 2-0 league defeat to Litex Lovech.

Sofia mayoral candidate’s pledges on traffic, taxes and street dogs

Seen by pollsters as leading in the field of 18 candidates to be elected mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandukova says she will work to draw EU funds to the city, not increase local taxes, and deal with Sofia’s worst problems – traffic, public transport, street repairs and stray dogs.

Derry City 1-1 CSKA Sofia

CSKA continues with a 2-1 aggregate score

Lawyer Tsetska Tsacheva elected Speaker of 41st Parliament

What people expect from us is more work and, most of all, self-discipline, Tsacheva says.

Гран Торино/Gran Torino

Gran Torino is defiantly over-the-top and unashamedly simple to a level where many other films boasting such attributes would be slain without mercy by today’s cynical and spectacle-hungry movie-going crowds. Yet when constructed by an old master on top of his trade such a film can be strangely and hauntingly affecting.

Здрач / Twilight

The closest challenger to the Harry Potter series of books makes its screen debut, with mixed success

FILM REVIEW: RocknRolla / Рокенрола

It has been six years that we've been hoping for another good Guy Ritchie movie. His 2002 collaboration with his wife (yes, Madonna) on Swept Away was not what the audiences wanted, to put it mildly, while 2005's Revolver was incomprehensible and pretentious beyond the point of tolerance. With that in mind, RocknRolla is saddled with the unwanted and unenviable task of either showing that Ritchie is still a filmmaker with plenty of energy and flair, or proving that he has finally lost it. Luckily, the former is the case and the wait for a new, good Ritchie film is finally over.

FILM REVIEW: Four Christmases/Четири Коледи

If everything else fails, there is one sure way to find out that the holidays season is getting closer: come Christmas time, studios are churning out their thematic ballast like clockwork. Quality is never a part of the production equation - the movie can be as bad as hell as long as it fixes issues in a dysfunctional family, is nominally a comedy, has the words "Christmas", "Santa" or "Claus" in its title and, well, is simply there on the screen.

FILM REVIEW: Body of Lies/Мрежа от лъжи

Watching a film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott is always going to be a mouthwatering prospect, but this comes with a more demanding yardstick as to what the end result has to offer. In the case of Body of Lies, this more rigorous standard is not very kind or forgiving. The film is smart, but not smart enough; it begs to be taken seriously, yet puts its protagonist in a series of situations even James Bond would have trouble surviving.

FILM REVIEW: Never Back Down/Никога не се предавай

Recycling ideas from 20 years ago in any chosen genre and dressing them up for the current fashion has always been a dependable moneymaking formula for Hollywood. After milking the best out of teen comedies, musicals and various 70s and 80s cult TV series, the studios are confident enough to put together a picture revolving around angry young men, revenge and martial arts and the result on display here is as refreshing as it is predictable.

FILM REVIEW: Mirrors/Огледала

Ironically, remaking Asian horror movies in Hollywood has come to develop a genre in itself, just as it is in danger of outstaying its welcome. True, at its onset it gave us arguably the most potent onscreen scares in recent memory (The Ring immediately comes to mind), but the most recent offerings charging from the Hollywood production line yield alarmingly diminishing returns - Mirrors, the latest American remake of a South Korean horror flick, is a fine case in point.

FILM REVIEW: Quantum of Solace/Спектър на утехата

The leanest and meanest version of the longest-serving MI6 agent in cinema returns to the screens in the leanest and meanest Bond film ever. Four minutes shorter than Dr. No, and 39 minutes shorter than Casino Royale, its immediate predecessor, Quantum of Solace, is a breathless, and even, at times, tiring, chain of hugely impressive action sequences packed in a plot about a relentless revenge mission. Bond is after the men and the organisation that took Vesper Lynd away from him in Casino Royale and he is in no mood to take prisoners, either onscreen or in the packed rows of seats in theatres.

Foreign lawyers in Bulgaria lack their quantum of solace - The Sofia Echo reports

Foreign lawyers, led by practitioners from the UK and Austria, are complaining to the European Commission about Bulgarian law that they say deprives them of a level playing field to practice in the field. The issue of The Sofia Echo published on November 14 2008 has the full details.

FILM REVIEW: Pineapple Express/Ананас експрес

Pineapple Express, the blend, is a marijuana so sublime that smoking it "is like killing a unicorn", the dealer who sells it exclusively observes. It can also get you in a lot of trouble, get you hunted, bring you a couple of bullets in the stomach and cost you a precious part of your ear. Pineapple Express, the movie, on the other hand, is a deranged and unexpectedly sweet ode to male friendship, which is hilarious, bizarre

Nationalist party leader found not guilty of perjury

Volen Siderov, leader of ultra-nationalist Ataka party, and his wife Kapka Siderova were found not guilty by a panel of Sofia City Court on charges of perjury and pressuring a witness to commit the same. The court ruled on October 20 2008 that there was no proof against Siderov and his wife, news agencies reported.. Siderov was accused by the prosecution of giving false testimonies in relation to an incident that happened on April 7 2006 on Trakia Highway. On that day, the vehicle Siderov was driving, collided with a vehicle driven by Emil Ivanov, who claimed that he was assaulted after a quarrel with Siderov and Ataka member of Parliament Pavel Chernev.

FILM REVIEW: Disaster Movie/Бедствие и други катастрофи

Disaster Movie is well on the way to being a self-fulfilling prophecy: a movie it is not, but a disaster - most definitely. It is an artless, cheerless, humourless insult to the parody genre, which I fear, has forgotten its job to be entertaining. We are left pining for the long lost days of Blazing Saddles, Airplane, The Naked Gun or Hot Shots; this is the age of Scary Movie, Epic Movie,

FILM REVIEW: Eagle Eye/Орлово око

Eagle Eye reportedly started as an idea of Steven Spielberg's, but ended up being an insult to the intelligence even of those who deliberately switch their brains off when entering the theatre. Preposterous is too benign a word for what passes for a plot here and the chaotic action crammed together, which passes for a suspense surrogate. That a movie is preposterously implausible is not always a

FILM REVIEW: Cashback/ Живот на пауза

It seems that female nudity, after having been gradually banished from movies over the last 15 years or so in a quest for favorable ratings, is getting big again as it manages to break through the barriers of studios' self-imposed piousness. It is hardly a surprise then that Cashback has treated itself to a helping of hilarious notoriety by having the cheek to flaunt an assortment of naked bodies, though there is hardly anything erotic about them onscreen.

The new look of The Sofia Echo

The Sofia Echo published on September 19 has plenty of new stories to tell - all set in the new-look redesign of Bulgaria's national English-language newspaper. Friday's issue takes a bold leap into the trend for visual journalism, and boasts a better design, with new typefaces, more space and new visual elements that will help you read more easily. What we have not changed are the core values of The Sofia Echo: first

FILM REVIEW: Mamma mia! / Мама миа!

If there ever was a sure bet for a film of feel-good onscreen exuberance, something to put a smile on a willing viewer's face, it has got to be Mamma Mia!. The stage version has reportedly sold 30 million tickets over the years and raked up more than $2 billion in revenues with its gambit of shoehorning all of ABBA's best-loved hits in a story of sorts. The cinematic adaptation of this monster of a stage hit is doing

FILM REVIEW: You Don't Mess With the Zohan / Зохан: Стилист от запаса

In a summer season totally dominated by comic book-based and superhero movies, one thinks that, at least, Adam Sandler would offer some guilty-pleasure respite for movie-goers battered into submission by cool do-gooders in outrageous costumes performing impossible feats. Oddly enough, Sandler's latest screen creation is also prone to displaying the odd superhuman stunt - swimming like a dolphin or

Berbatov, Markov and Kassabova - the people in The Sofia Echo

More so than ever, Dimitar Berbatov is the talk of the sporting world after the drama and the spectacular price surrounding his acquisition by Manchester United. In the issue of The Sofia Echo appearing on September 5, we have full details of the story. September 11 sees the expiry of the statute of limitations on the communist-era "umbrella murder" of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978. Dnevnik daily has the scoop on secret documents about the murder, and The Sofia Echo reprints the story in its latest issue.

FILM REVIEW: The X-Files: I Want to Believe/Досиетата Х: Искам да повярвам

The X-Files: I Want to Believe is an oddly timed attempt at re-launching a moderately profitable franchise, but it serves as a sad final nail in the coffin of this once hugely influential TV series. It is meant as a stand-alone thriller that does not require any previous knowledge of The X-Files, and, in a way, it is. There is a mystery to piece together and moments of palpable tension and dread, but something is decidedly

FILM REVIEW: The Mummy

I, for one, cannot fathom the need for extending a franchise about mummies nurturing resentment and wrath for millennia on end, but I suspect I am in the minority. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor will be considered by some a cluttering of chaotic special effects irritatingly proud of how expensive they are. Those who want to see a mummy, a tomb, a dragon and an emperor spearheading two hours of

FILM REVIEW: Hancock

With the blockbuster season gathering momentum, it is somewhat depressing that the comic book adaptations and protagonists dominate every Friday's marquee with faculties out of dreamland, but we can't blame Hollywood for milking its favourite cash cow. Hancock, this week's addition to the genre, presents us with a hero who will be frowned upon at the posh club for champions of good, clad in bizarre tight

The Sofia Echo on protestants in Bulgaria

This week's issue of The Sofia Echo, due August 8, will include a three-page reading room dedicated to the history of protestantism in Bulgaria. Anastasia Vassieva delves into the subject. In the news section, Petar Kostadinov presents the results of a survey that describes Bulgarian SMEs as having lost interest in applying for European Union funding. And The Sofia Echo presents a brief look at

FILM REVIEW: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

The floodgates seem to have cracked for good and comic book and superhero movies are now competing only with themselves. No week passes without a loud hurrah accompanying the release of yet another fantastic adventure. At first glance this one is no different, yet when it comes to summer entertainment, it offers a lovable and unorthodox threat with a twist.

FILM REVIEW: The Dark Knight

No week passes without the marquee domination of yet another comic book or superhero film. Yet despite this overwhelming and even numbing regularity in moviegoers' diet, bizarrely, this summer seems to be one when quantity is indeed matched by quality. We've now had the unusual warmth, conflict and humanity of Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man; we've had the glorious return of Hellboy amid Guillermo Del Toro's

The Sofia Echo on the EC report on Bulgaria

The July 23 2008 report by the European Commission on Bulgaria, with its stark criticism of the country's shortcomings in the fight against organised crime and corruption, fuelled Bulgaria's domestic political drama and gave ammunition to Sofia's critics abroad. In the issue of The Sofia Echo published on July 25, there are full details of the key points of the report along with a summary of reaction.