From: ttonchev@athena.mit.edu (Theodore G Tonchev)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bulgaria
Subject: Another source of daily news
Date: 6 Sep 92 01:50:52 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology


	I am sorry if the following text contains something trivial-
I am just a new reader of this conference.
	In article <vassil.715396302@cs.wisc.edu> vassil@mary-ann.cs.wisc.edu 
(Vassil Peytchev) writes about the RFE/RL daily report as a source of information
about Bulgaria. However, there is another one - the conference 
<clari.news.gov.international> offers official dayly news from the whole world 
incl. Bulgaria. For example one of the two most recent informations is 
the following:

In article <bulgaria-zhivkovU2S4315pe@clarinet.com>, clarinews@clarinet.com 
(VLADIMIR ZHELYAZKOV) writes:
|> 	SOFIA, Bulgaria (UPI) -- Bulgaria's former communist leader, Todor
|> Zhivkov, was found guilty Friday by the Supreme Court of both abusing
|> the powers of his office and of embezzlement. He was sentenced to seven
|> years in prison.
|> 	The 81-year-old Zhivkov, who ruled Bulgaria for 34 years until the
|> collapse of his government in November 1989, was the first of the
|> communist leaders in Eastern Europe to face a regular trial.
|> 	Prosecutors had demanded 10 to 20 years imprisonment for Zhivkov,
|> contending he ordered the sales of huge apartments and luxury cars to
|> top Communist officials and relatives and friends at artificially low
|> prices.
|> 	As a result, the prosecution said Zhivkov had stolen 26 million leva
|> from the state -- an amount currently equal to $1.2 million but the
|> equivalent of about $26 million at the time Zhivkov was in office.
|> 	Following the 18-month trial, the court found Zhivkov guilty of
|> embezzlement and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment. The court
|> also ruled he should deposit this sum into the state budget.
|> 	Zhivkov's co-defendent and former No. 2 man, Milko Balev, 70, was
|> sentenced to two years imprisonment for fraud.
|> 	The two men have the right to appeal the sentence and may await the
|> outcome while under house arrest.
|> 	Zhivkov, who looks remarkably well for his age, stood impassively and
|> calmly while the presiding judge read the verdict. Immediately afterward
|> he was whisked off under heavy police escort to his granddaughter's
|> luxurious suburban villa, where he has been held under house arrest
|> since being charged in 1990 except for a brief spell in jail.
|> 	Zhivkov has spent the past 2 1/2 years walking in the large garden
|> surrounding the villa, taking care of his great-granddaughter and
|> meeting journalists to assert his innocence. He has been claiming the
|> trial is political and that the ruling Union of Democratic Forces has
|> been exerting undue pressure on the court to find him guilty.
|> 	Zhivkov also faces separate charges of inciting ethnic hatred against
|> Bulgaria's Turkish minority, and of unlawfully ordering between 1959 and
|> 1987 the transfer of more than $9 million into a secret Moscow fund used
|> to subsidize communist parties in the Western countries.
|> 	His co-defendents in these cases are 11 former top communist
|> officials, including three former prime ministers, all of them awaiting
|> trial in jail.

Check out the other one as well!