* The Central Electoral Commission will announce whether there are State Security collaborators among the six candidate presidential couples by the end of the week, representatives of the commission announced.


* The Southeastern Economic Forum starts on October 16. It is organized by the Bulgarian Economic Forum. The Bulgarian Prime Minister Saxe-Coburg will open the forum.

* `The journalists will be able to ask questions before the Thursday regular weekly meeting of the Cabinet as the old set of rules stated,` Stoyan Ganev, Chief of the Prime Minister`s Cabinet announced. Last week, the journalists were not allowed to ask questions before the Cabinet`s meeting and that caused major dissatisfaction.

* The Sofia municipality issued BGN 100,000 for the construction of facilities for disabled people.

* The health of the Bulgarians got worse during the past four years, statistical data shows. According to the figures, every fourth Bulgarian is hypertonic. The number of women who smoke and drink alcohol increases steadily, according to the survey. 30% of the women smoke and 68% drink alcoholic beverages. Bulgaria is at one of the first places as far as the people who suffer from heart diseases are concerned.

* `There is no increase in the number of the refugees to Bulgaria after the start of the war in Afghanistan,` Daniela Veleva, press attache of the Bulgarian Agency for Refugees told Info Radio. `Since 1993, over 600 refugees from Afghanistan have received refugee status in Bulgaria,` she added.

* `A `brain` center, in which journalists, political scientists and sociologists will participate, is to deal with the media policy of the ruling majority,` Dilyana Grozdanova, MP from the Simeon II National Movement announced. A web site of the Simeon II National Movement and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms is to be launched very soon. The web site will publish information on the work of the parliamentary majority. The web address of the site will be www.novotovreme.bg.

* `The price of the cooking oil may go up to BGN 2 because of the poor sunflower crop,` Vassil Simov, Executive Director of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange forecasted.

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