A fireworks ban, a free harp concert, and a phone hidden in an ad agency

The regional governor will sign an order banning the use of pyrotechnics, at the request of the fire service, with a long stretch of extreme heat ahead. The precedent is local and recent: the pine forest on the Shumen Plateau went up last year, and it started with someone playing with firecrackers.

Commissioner Ivan Ivanov, who heads the fire service in Shumen, expects a difficult season because the grass has run to 60 to 70 cm and higher. If conditions worsen, a second measure follows: a daily ban on working pastures and on baling hay and straw between 11am and 3am.

The forestry directorate flagged access as the weak point, forest tracks need clearing so an engine can reach an outbreak further in. Around 105 km of firebreaks were cut across the province last year and close to 130 km so far this year, with the stated aim of doubling that by the end of the year. Elektrorazpredelenie Sever is putting heavy machinery into the scrub clearance.

The figures put in front of regional governor Georgi Zhekov make the case for the prevention work: 204 grass, scrub and leaf fires across Shumen province in 2023, 171 in 2024, 137 in 2025, and 19 since the start of 2026. Not one fire has broken out in the province's forest territories this year, and of 45 forest fires on the forestry directorate's ground over the last four years, none damaged the forest itself.

Ivan Ivanov of the regional fire safety directorate put it plainly: 'The measures are working.' His worry is the drought, grass dried out to 70 cm, and winds the region does not usually get. Prevention has meant 55 visits to village mayoralties and public meetings in recent months, which matters when 80% of these fires start with human carelessness, most often a dropped cigarette, burning off pasture, or farm machinery.

The forestry and hunting farms hold three vehicles kitted out for a first response. The meeting also set out joint work with the electricity distributor on marking dangerous trees and clearing the strips under power lines before winter. The standing request is the obvious one: call 112 the moment you see smoke.

Shumen topped out at 34 degrees on 4 August. Wednesday brings much the same, sunny and settled for most of it with a chance of a light shower in the afternoon, 19 overnight and 33 by day, and the wind swinging round to the east.

Thursday changes little: sunny to midday, brief showers possible after, and no higher than 35. Friday is mostly sunny, 19 to 35 again.

Shumen Municipality has put a concert billed as 'The Magic Harp of Yana Doynova' into its summer cultural calendar, 12 August at 19:30, in the courtyard of the Pancho Vladigerov Museum Complex. The programme runs from world classics through film themes to rock and pop, with arrangements of Bulgarian folk songs alongside them.

Doynova trained at the Lyubomir Pipkov National School of Music in Sofia and took a bachelor's and a master's in harp at the National Academy of Music. Once she has finished playing, anyone who fancies it can handle the Celtic harp and have a go at a glissando. Entry is free.

The Stiliyan Chilingirov regional library's summer children's art workshop, now in its twentieth year, sent 15 children aged 6 to 11 into the Elena Karamihaylova Art Gallery to make postcards, under gallery lecturer Desislava Doseva and workshop head Beta Haralanova.

Doseva said they picked up the basics of composition, and learned how a gallery stores its collection and how much responsibility that carries. They also went round the second-floor show of well-known Shumen artists: Nikola Mihaylov, Elena Karamihaylova, Aleksandar Mutafov and Stefan Petrov. Haralanova noted that for some of them it was the first time through the door. The sessions carry on into the following week.

A mobile phone was reported stolen from a shop on Aleksandar Stamboliyski Square around midday, and it was back with its owner by the afternoon. Officers went through the CCTV, picked out the man on it and traced him: 78 years old, from Shumen.

He had stashed the phone in the office of an advertising agency, and handed it over voluntarily. Hristiyan Stanchev and Hasan Hasan returned it to the owner, a 59-year-old woman from the city, who thanked them for the speed of it.