Sofia - Police officers in Bulgaria on Sunday staged a second demonstration in a week for higher pay and better gear.

More than 500 officers gathered in front of the Interior Ministry in Sofia alone.

Heeding a call via the internet to "drink water," they carried bottles of mineral water.

Some officers displayed their worn boots to highlight their demand for better winter clothing.

Similar protests took place in other cities, such as Pleven and Silistra in the north, as well as Haskovo and Smoljan in the south.

Their demands follow a first protest that saw Christmas pay of 280 dollars being pledged.

Sofia - German energy giant RWE launched a joint venture Friday with the Bulgarian NEK to develop the Balkan country's second nuclear power plant.

The Essen-based company would invest 1.275 billion euros (1.84 billion dollars) for a 49-per-cent stake in the venture, the government in Sofia said.

The project with RWE would have an "enormous" impact for Bulgaria in context of the global financial crisis, Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev said after the contract was signed.

Bulgaria appointed RWE as the strategic partner in the development of the plant at Belene on the Danube.

Sofia  - Bulgarian officials complained how the European Union stole their Christmas when it cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies because of fraud, but instead of putting thieves in prison, they blamed the global financial crisis.

After repeated warnings to its poorest member-state that subsidies aimed at improving the life of Bulgarians were being drained as a result of fraud, the EU in July suspended the payment of 486 million euros for various projects and demanded action from Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev's cabinet.

SOFIA, Bulgaria, Dec. 5 - Bulgaria is experiencing its first economic crisis as a capitalist country, Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev said Thursday.

Stanishev suggested that Bulgaria's problems are actually less severe than those of other members of the European Union, the Sofia News Agency reported. He said, for example, that the banking system is not in the kind of crisis that other countries face as a result of the collapse of the credit bubble.

But the country is not immune to the difficulties facing its economic partners, he added.

Sofia - A Sofia court late Monday sentenced two officials from the Bulgarian road agency for corruption, providing a legal epilogue to one of the scandals which deprived the poorest European Union member state of development funds in 2008.

The court sentenced Lybomir Lilev, the man who was in charge of distributing EU funds, and his subordinate Ivan Vladimirov for demanding a bribe to implement a project.