Kabiyuk's rescue plan, rising wages and a farewell at Shumen's theatre

Agriculture minister Plamen Abrovski told parliament on Friday that he wants Kabiyuk, the state stud farm on the plain outside Shumen, declared a site of national and cultural significance, with a working group already set up alongside the tourism and culture ministries. He called the enterprise 'a pearl in the crown' of the state for preserving the national gene pool, and described what has happened to it as a crime whose authors, in his words, will answer for it.

The numbers behind the rhetoric are stark. When the current management board took over at the end of April it found roughly 12,000 euros of liquid funds against total liabilities of about 1.68 million euros: unpaid suppliers, a ceded debt to the state development bank, tax and social security arrears, and staff who had gone four months without wages. Signals have since gone to the food safety authorities and Shumen police over the protection of the animals and the property. For anyone in the province who has taken visitors out to see the horses, the fate of the place is now formally a national question, not a local embarrassment.

The National Statistical Institute's latest batch of indicators, summarised by Shumen Online on Friday, sketches an economy pulling in two directions. Industrial output fell 4.1% year on year in April, dragged down by a 33.8% slump in mining and quarrying, while construction rose 6.6% and building work specifically jumped 12.5%. Retail turnover climbed 7.4%.

For most readers the personal columns matter more: the average gross monthly wage reached 1,475 euros in March, up 12.9% on a year earlier, unemployment sits at 3.2%, and annual inflation ran at 6.9% in May, with restaurants, hotels, alcohol and transport the fastest-rising categories. If you are paid locally, the raise is probably outrunning the till receipts; if your income arrives from the UK in sterling, the same 6.9% is simply your costs going up. First-quarter GDP came to 27.33 billion euros, or 4,262 euros per person.

The appeal court in Varna has placed a 38-year-old Shumen woman under house arrest, overturning the custody order of the Shumen district court. She is charged with attempting to murder her terminally ill husband, an act prosecutors class as domestic violence against a person in a helpless state, together with a lesser charge of light bodily harm. Her lawyers do not dispute that she injured the man but insist she never intended to kill him, and argued for house arrest partly so she can care for the couple's young child. At the hearing the prosecution disclosed that the man has since died, which the court weighed against the fact that the child now has one living parent.

The same BTA report carries a figure worth sitting with: Shumen police registered 81 domestic violence cases in 2025, up 18% from 66 the year before.

The Ivan Radov community library in Novi Pazar has a summer programme that deserves a note on the fridge if you have children in that corner of the province. A photography exhibition of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast is already up in the foyer, the children's reading room is open for books, games and drawing, and on 14 July a creative writing workshop marks the 200th anniversary of the town's clock tower, taking participants through the archaeological collection, the tower itself and the Petar Persengiev municipal gallery before they write pieces inspired by what they have seen. 17 July brings a World Emoji Day session out in the village of Zaychino Oreshe, and the month closes with an Evening of the Arts in which twelve painters take on the clock tower under the gallery director's guidance, with poetry in between.

The Shumen Drama and Puppet Theatre has announced the death of actor Valentin Chenkov, known to colleagues and audiences simply as Cheno. In the theatre's words, he was 'a man with a big heart, a colleague with a sense of humour, and an actor with a striking presence on stage', who left his mark on dozens of productions over the years. The funeral is on Sunday 5 July at 11:00 at the Shumen cemetery park.