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Following the confirmation of African swine fever in wild boar (ASF) in mainland Italy (in the northwestern region of Ovada in the province of Alessandria) in early January 2022, there is now the first confirmed outbreak of ASF in domestic pigs in northern Macedonia, in a backyard in the village of Dramche (Delchevo region), near the Bulgarian border. As mentioned earlier in our information, this is the first case of ASF in mainland Italy from Genotype II of the virus and is about 800 km from the closest case in wild boar in Germany. Frequent outbreaks in domestic pigs in Moldova, Romania, Russia and Ukraine continue to be reported by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). The ASF virus continues to circulate among the wild boar population throughout Europe. As mentioned above, Italy reported the presence of ASF genotype II for the first time in wilds. The case was confirmed in the carcass of a wild boar in northern Italy in the province of Ovada, province of Alessandria (Piedmont region) in mainland Italy. As there is still no system for requiring certificates for products of animal origin from previously free areas, there is no information on whether there have been recent imports. However, given that cases of domestic pigs have been registered in the region, the new restrictions of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/605 will prevent further imports from this infected region. The same regulation covers prohibitions, derogations and certification requirements from each ASF-affected region for the dispatch of live pigs or pig products or related animal by-products to EU Member States and third countries. ASF genotype I has been endemic to the Italian island of Sardinia since 1978. The risk of ASF for Bulgaria remains HIGH due to the ubiquitous spread of the disease in the wild boar population in Europe, and especially the severe epidemiological situation in neighboring Romania. BG; docx; EFSAfocalpoint@mzh.government.bg

The use of food colours is regulated in European legislation by Regulation (EC) № 1333/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on food additives. Food additives, which include food colours, must be safe for human health and used in food for the necessary technological purpose. Colours used in the food industry are used for the purpose of colouring food or restoring the original appearance of food, which has been lost during some of the preparation, storage or other processing. In order to ensure their safety before authorization for use in food, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) carries out a scientific assessment of food colours and establishes an acceptable daily intake (ADI) when sufficient information is available. In order to assess the risk to the health of children in Bulgaria, and with the help of the food additives assessment tool for chronic exposure (FAIM), the chronic exposure to artificial food colours (Tartrazine E 102, Quinoline yellow E 104, Sunset yellow FCF E 110, Azorubin, carmoisin E 122, Ponceau 4R E 124 and Alura red AC E 129) was assessed for different food groups for which the relevant colours are authorized, according to Regulation (EC) № 1333/2008. The results of the exposure assessment to artificial colours are based on the mean and maximum value of the dietary exposure of two groups of children (toddlers aged 12-35 months and other children age of 36 months - 9 years) and show that the values are below the respective ADI for both medium consumers and high consumers. Therefore, the current levels of exposure to artificial colours added to food, (only for those foods for which there is an established legislative level of use) do not represent a concern for the health of Bulgarian children. Despite these results, it should be noted that exposures were calculated for a single colour in different food groups and compared to the ADI for the respective colours used. The risk has been assessed for a scenario in which a child of the respective age group of children consumes a certain amount of food from all the food groups involved in the assessment, with the maximum permitted amount of food colouring inserted. Due to the lack of sufficient studies on mixtures of colours and the derivation of a reference point for comparison and risk monitoring, it is not possible to compare the results of the total exposure of a mixture of colours with the ADI of a single colour. BG; docx; EFSAfocalpoint@mzh.government.bg

Scientific Evaluation and estimation of the contribution to the development of the respective research domain or field of practice of the ���Stavanger Declaration Concerning the Future of Reading��� published in January 2019 (COST E-READ, Stavanger Declaration Concerning the Future of Reading. 2019. One of the main findings is that as screen use continues to grow, it will be one of the urgent challenges to discover ways in which to facilitate deep reading of long-form texts in a screen environment. In the light of the findings and the recommendations for future research on the reading and the readers, formulated in the Declaration, the author propose two directions for future research: Is our susceptibility to disinformation and misinformation digital publications and so-called ���deep fakes��� amplified by overconfidence in our basic reading skills? Is the communication theory of reading is responsible for the correction of all mistakes during the preparation of the future reader, for removal of the ���contaminations���, as well as the maintaining of ���cleanliness��� in all reading practices? The publication contains a translation of the Stavanger Declaration into Bulgarian. {"references": ["COST E-READ (2019). Stavanger Declaration Concerning the Future of Reading. Available from: http://ereadcost.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/StavangerDeclaration.pdf", "Tsvetkova, Milena (2018). The revival of long reading: A new multimodal narrative format. Postmodernism problems, Vol. 8, No 2, pp. 246\u2013275."]} This publication was made possible by a grant from the Sofia University Science Fund through the Grant Number 80-10-205/17.04.2019.