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Bulgaria, situated in the eastern Balkans, has been undergoing a slow and painful transition to a market economy since the end of Communist rule in 1991.

Throughout the early 1990s Bulgaria was wracked by political instability and strikes. The former communists were a powerful influence. Although the end of the decade was more stable, there was little tangible progress with economic reform.

Under Bulgaria's former king, Simeon II, who was prime minister between 2001 and 2005, the country pressed ahead with market reforms designed to meet EU economic targets.

It achieved growth, saw unemployment fall from highs of nearly 20% and inflation come under control, but incomes and living standards remained low.

Bulgaria was not among the countries invited to join the EU in 2004. However, it signed an EU accession treaty in April 2005 and joined in January 2007.

EU officials set tough entry requirements, reflecting their concerns about corruption and organised crime. After a series of reports found that the Bulgarian government had failed to tackle these issues effectively, the EU announced in July 2008 that it was suspending aid worth hundreds of millions of euros.

In September 2010, the EU again called on Bulgaria to take urgent action to tackle crime and corruption, and later in the year France and Germany announced that they would block Bulgaria from joining the Schengen passport-free zone until the country had made "irreversible progress" in this area.

Another cause of friction has been the Kozloduy nuclear power plant, which supplies over a third of Bulgaria's electricity.

Amid concerns over the safety of communist-era nuclear facilities, four of Kozloduy's six reactors were shut down as a price for Bulgaria's EU membership, two of them closing just minutes before the country joined the EU.

In a bid to offset the loss of production at Kozloduy and restore its position as a major power exporter in the Balkans, Bulgaria revived plans for a second nuclear power plant, though these were later put on hold because of a lack of funds.

Bulgaria is also involved in two rival gas pipeline projects: Russia's South Stream pipeline and the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline.

Has China's top leadership been split by the purging of rising star Bo Xilai and the political waves that has caused?

And is it now covering up to preserve a facade of unity ahead of the major leadership change due this autumn?

The machinations of the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the nine people who run China day to day, are always kept secret to ensure a sense of stability in this country of 1.3 billion.

For the Communist Party that's especially important now, ahead of the power handover – a time deemed highly sensitive.

But today no fewer than four newspapers, including the Legal Daily, carry lengthy front page reports about a speech given by China's hugely powerful security chief Zhou Yongkang. The Communist Party's mouthpiece the People's Daily covers it on page two.

In it Mr Zhou, long seen as a hardliner, speaks of the dangers of Western, democratic influences undermining the rule of the Communist Party, saying "we must have a clear head and a clear-cut stand to confidently boycott those trains of thoughts that attempt to Westernise China, separate China and bring chaos to China".

What's interesting is not so much the content of the speech, which isn't new, but the prominence it is given. Photographs of Mr Zhou, one of the members of the Standing Committee, appear on the qq news website.

Observers of China sometimes point to a variant of the old adage "there's no smoke without a fire". They say if the propaganda chiefs insist something is the case, and go to great lengths to do so, then the opposite may be what's happening.

So is this propaganda offensive designed to give the impression that Mr Zhou is still very much an active player in the Standing Committee? And is the truth that he has lost his fight for political survival?

The rumour mill in Beijing has been churning for weeks with suggestions that Mr Zhou has been locked in a power struggle.

The Financial Times said on 20 April that "numerous sources… believe Mr Zhou is fighting for his job". I wrote about how there were even rumours of an attempted coup by Zhou Yongkang and supporters of Bo Xilai.

At the weekend the Financial Times reported that, according to three senior Communist Party members and diplomats, Mr Zhou has now been stripped of his role overseeing internal security because he was the only one of the Standing Committee members to have argued in favour of Bo Xilai.

The paper says he will not officially be fired as he is due to step down with the majority of the other senior leaders in a few months and the Communist Party does not want to be seen to be divided.

So Mr Zhou may have fallen, we don't know. But what is the significance if he has?

The Financial Times says one of its sources has "characterised the current political strife and the purge of Mr Bo as 'a symptom of the ideological struggle caused by disagreement over which direction the country should go in'. Some officials within the party, including Premier Wen Jiabao, are trying to push through political reforms that would move China towards Western-style democracy while hardliners, including Mr Zhou, are opposed to such a move."

That's an optimistic reading. But the informative Sinocism blog gives a useful antidote "for those who think this somehow means a victory for the oft-referenced, rarely (never?) seen liberals/reformers/softliners". It points to analysis by the long-time China watcher Willy Lam that prospects for political or legal reform are dim.

In the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief Mr Lam catalogues how China's vast law-enforcement apparatus amassed huge power under Zhou Yongkang, especially since the 2008 Olympics and the unrest in Tibetan areas that year.

As Chair of the Political and Legal Commission, Mr Zhou has been in control of the police, the secret police, the prosecutors and the courts, and a giant network of informants. He also shared joint control over militia and paramilitary forces with military authorities.

Willy Lam points out that China's internal security forces now have a bigger published budget than China's military does. The budget has grown from 514.0bn yuan ($81.3bn) in 2010 to 701.7bn yuan ($111.1bn) this year. China's senior leaders oversaw and approved the build-up.

Mr Lam goes on to say that all the signs are that this focus on internal security and stability will continue to be one of the Communist Party's main priorities.

He writes: "As things stand, there seems to be a strong consensus among the Standing Committee members – including Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, who are expected to form the axis of the upcoming Fifth-Generation leadership – that they must pull out all the stops to boost security and stability."

If you want evidence for this, he says, look no further than the crackdown now taking place on any who may have helped the blind activist Chen Guangcheng escape his house arrest and flee to the US embassy last month, causing huge embarrassment for China's internal security forces.

After lurching from one military coup to another, Nigeria now has an elected leadership. But the government faces the growing challenge of preventing Africa's most populous country from breaking apart along ethnic and religious lines.

The former British colony is one of the world's largest oil producers, but the industry has produced unwanted side effects.

The trade in stolen oil has fuelled violence and corruption in the Niger delta – the home of the industry. Few Nigerians, including those in oil-producing areas, have benefited from the oil wealth.

In 2004, Niger Delta activists demanding a greater share of oil income for locals began a campaign of violence against the oil infrastructure, threatening Nigeria's most important economic lifeline.

Nigeria is keen to attract foreign investment but is hindered in this quest by security concerns as well as by a shaky infrastructure troubled by power cuts.

Story By: Talk of the Nation

Read Michael Jacobides’ Piece, ‘A Uniquely Greek Tragedy‘

Markets around the world continue to fall, after losing ground for several days in a row, as the political stalemate drags on in Greece. London Business School professor Michael Jacobides, writing in The Huffington Post, says several factors unique to Greece explain the country’s fall.

More than a thousand years ago, Viking raids on the coasts of Britain and France were commonplace. The Vikings also mounted expeditions to the coast of North America.

Later, the Norwegians began to trade. Originally, the coastal waters provided fish for export. Today, Norway is among the world's largest exporters of fuels and fuel products.

Norway registered objections to the 1986 International Whaling Commission (IWC) ban on whaling and resumed the practice on a commercial basis in 1993. It argues that whaling is no more cruel than fishing and that stocks are sufficient to allow it to continue. Conservationists disagree.

While Clinton Cards has gone into administration, the UK is actually sending more greeting cards than ever. But the type of cards is slowly changing.

"People love edgy humour," Scribbler chief executive John Procter argues. "Rude cards do very well for us – it's one of our USPs. We like to be a bit near the knuckle."

Funny photography and knitted animals are also popular, making up another 20% of Scribbler's sales, while retro humour, featuring old photographs, is 20% again.

Despite their popularity, rude cards do not fare well at the Henries, the industry awards, named after Sir Henry Cole, held each October at The Lancaster Hotel in London.

Organiser Jakki Brown, who edits Progressive Greetings, the monthly industry magazine, says: "The rude cards don't get very far with us, they don't tend to win. Quirky humour is popular, not the rude, not the risque."

"The Henries are the Oscars of the greetings card industry. We had 14,000 cards entered last year."

Brown is so passionate about greetings cards that she once spent £12,000 at auction on an original Sir Henry Cole Christmas card. It is one of only nine still in existence.

There are 20 categories at the Henries, including cutest cards, funniest, best design and best sentiment, as well as the Henry Cole Honorary Achievement award, which last year went to Giles Andreae, the man behind Purple Ronnie and Edward Monkton.

With the internet rife with cat-related memes, it is perhaps no surprise that the physical greetings card industry has some of the same content.

"Britain and Japan go crazy for cute cards. One that won last year was a rather angry-looking cat dressed in a little denim outfit."

Duncan Cox is a card designer at Urban Graphic, the company behind the angry cat.

"That cat divided the office, but sometimes you see a picture that is so bizarre you just have to go for it.

"Quotations cards do really well for us. We had a card that said 'the older you get, the better you get, unless you're a banana'. That was a massive seller.

"Animals-wise, it's obviously cats and dogs that do best – animals people can relate to. After that, you're going down the road of monkeys and bears."

The greetings cards industry is massive in the US, but the custom is not uniformly observed everywhere.

"Sending cards is a very British thing," Little says. "I have a few French friends who think we're all a bit potty for doing it, but it's engrained in our social culture – it's what we do."

Gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy in Manila, the demonstrators waved Philippine flags and held up banners displaying slogans like “Stop China’s aggression now.”

The protest follows a string of signals from China this week suggesting that the Asian economic and military giant is losing patience with its smaller neighbor’s insistence that it has sovereignty over the contested area, the Scarborough Shoal.

China suspends Philippines travel

The PLA Daily, the official Chinese military newspaper, has warned that the country’s armed forces would not allow anyone to challenge China’s sovereignty over the tiny island outcrop, which Beijing calls Huangyan Island and Manila calls Panatag Shoal.

“We want to say that anyone’s attempt to take away China’s sovereignty over Huangyan Island will not be allowed by the Chinese government, people and armed forces,” the newspaper said, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

The planned protests in the Philippines prompted China to advise its citizens there to remain indoors, state media reported.

“The Philippines has been repeatedly making strong-worded remarks over the Huangyan Island,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei.

“China hopes the Philippines will not take any actions to magnify the dispute in a way that may affect the relationship between the two countries.”

Chinese travel agencies have suspended tours to the Philippines, according to state media, and China’s Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying said earlier this week that she was not optimistic about the situation in the South China Sea after meeting Philippine officials.

Raul Hernandez, a spokesman for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, said that officials “are endeavoring to undertake a new diplomatic initiative, which we hope will help defuse the situation.”

The standoff over the lagoon, some 130 miles (200 kilometers) from the Philippine island of Luzon, began last month when Manila sent its largest naval vessel to the area to investigate Chinese fishing boats it says were illegally fishing there.

Chinese surveillance vessels then arrived on the scene, preventing the Philippine navy sailors from arresting the fishermen and starting the tense maritime deadlock. China says the fishing boats were just seeking shelter in the lagoon.

Both countries have since shuffled different vessels in and out of the area, saying they want a diplomatic solution to the problem. But neither side is willing to back down altogether.

Analysts believe the area is rich in mineral resources, natural gas and oil — providing a strong economic subtext to the diplomatic wrangling.

Beijing and Manila are adamant that their territorial arguments are justified.

“They both have claims,” said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the North East Asia project director and China adviser for the International Crisis Group. “China goes back centuries, but the Philippines also says it has maps from the 18th century showing it belongs them.”

Philippine officials say they want to resolve the dispute through international negotiation. That approach was among the calls from the demonstrators in Manila on Friday.

“We hope that these actions will convince the Chinese government to sit down at a multilateral platform,” said Risa Hontiveros, a spokeswoman for the Akbayan Party who participated in the protest.

But China rejects this because it has a long-standing distrust of Western-dominated international mediators, Kleine-Ahlbrandt said.

“There are a dozen ships in a standoff there right now,” she said. “Both sides are really using this for all it is worth, whipping up nationalistic sentiment — what is needed is something to de-escalate the situation.”

The standoff comes against the backdrop of the political scandal in China surrounding the former high-ranking Communist Party official Bo Xilai and ahead of a once-in-a-decade leadership transition due later this year.

CNN’s Jethro Mullen, Stan Grant and Paul Armstrong contributed to this report.

Story By: by The Associated Press

Syrian soldiers check a burned truck in front of a damaged military intelligence building where two bombs exploded, at Qazaz neighborhood in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Thursday.

Two strong explosions ripped through the Syrian capital Thursday, killing 55 people and leaving scenes of carnage in the streets in an assault against a center of government power, officials said.

Syria’s state-run TV said 170 people were wounded in what one official said may have been the most powerful of a series of blasts that have hit the capital this year.

The explosions, which ripped the facade off a military intelligence building, happened at about 7:50 a.m. when employees are usually arriving at work. The building is part of a broader military compound for a feared section of the intelligence services known as the Palestine Branch.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said paramedics wearing rubber gloves were collecting human remains from the streets after the explosions. Heavily damaged cars and pickup trucks stood smoldering in the area. The outer wall of the headquarters collapsed and some walls crumbled, although the basic structure inside appeared intact.

The Syrian government blamed “terrorists” and said dozens were killed or wounded, most of them civilians.

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of the U.N. observer team in the country, toured the site and said the Syrian people do not deserve this “terrible violence.”

“It is not going to solve any problems,” he said, when asked what his message was to those who are carrying out such attacks. “It is only going to create more suffering for women and children.”

Central Damascus is tightly under the control of forces loyal to President Bashar Assad but has been struck by several bomb attacks, often targeting security installations or convoys. The latest major explosion in the capital occurred on April 27 when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt near members of the security forces, killing at least nine people and wounding 26.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi posted a message on his Facebook page urging people to go to hospitals to donate blood, saying that Thursday’s blast “might be the strongest” of a wave of explosions that have hit Damascus since late December.

The explosions left two craters at the gate of the military compound, one of them 10 feet deep and 20 feet wide. Residents said the two explosions quickly followed each other: first a smaller blast, then a massive one.

“The house shook like it was an earthquake,” said housewife Maha Hijazi, who appeared shaken as she stood outside her house across the street from the targeted compound.

Syria’s conflict started in March 2011 with mass protests calling for political reform. The government swiftly cracked down, dispatching tanks, troops, snipers and pro-government thugs to quash dissent, and many members of the opposition took up arms to defend themselves and attack government troops. Many soldiers also switched sides.

There was no claim of responsibility for Thursday’s blasts. But an al-Qaida-inspired group has claimed responsibility for several past explosions, raising fears that terrorist groups are entering the fray and exploiting the chaos.

The U.N said weeks ago that more than 9,000 people had been killed. Hundreds more have died since.