Closing Thought–11Oct18

My blog, In Saner Thought, has at least one loyal daily visitor from Bulgaria….I try to keep up with the news in the countries of my loyal visitors……..

A little info for those that may not know much about this country…..a country that not many Americans know much about these days……

The Bulgars, a Central Asian Turkic tribe, merged with the local Slavic inhabitants in the late 7th century to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantine Empire to assert its place in the Balkans, but by the end of the 14th century the country was overrun by the Ottoman Turks. Northern Bulgaria attained autonomy in 1878 and all of Bulgaria became independent from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Having fought on the losing side in both World Wars, Bulgaria fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and became a People’s Republic in 1946. Communist domination ended in 1990, when Bulgaria held its first multiparty election since World War II and began the contentious process of moving toward political democracy and a market economy while combating inflation, unemployment, corruption, and crime. The country joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007.

Bulgarian television reporter Viktoria Marinova has become the third journalist to be murdered in the European Union in the last year and the fourth since the start of 2017.

The 30-year-old’s body was found dumped near the Danube River in the town of Ruse, northern Bulgaria, on Saturday. Police said she had been beaten, raped and strangled.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/08/bulgarias-viktoria-marinova-third-journalist-murdered-eu-last-year/1563296002/

A person has been arrested for the crime……

A suspect in the rape and killing of a Bulgarian television journalist whose work highlighted corruption in the East European country has been arrested in Germany, officials said Wednesday. Bulgaria’s prosecutor general, Sotir Tsatsarov, confirmed the arrest of Severin Krassimirov, a 21-year-old Bulgarian citizen, but gave no further details of his location, the AP reports. German authorities were not immediately available. “We are currently following a European arrest procedure. The German prosecutor has arrested the suspect, they will then assess how to proceed,” Tsatsarov said. He said evidence suggested it was “a spontaneous attack, not premeditated.”

Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said investigators had found DNA evidence on the clothes and body of Viktoria Marinova, who was raped and strangled on Saturday in the northern town of Ruse. “There is physical evidence to link to the murder,” Marinov said Wednesday. He said Krasimirov, a resident of Ruse, had a criminal record for scrap metal theft. The minister said investigators had spoken to Marinova’s family and friends and “there is no apparent link to her work.” Marinova hosted a show last month featuring two investigative journalists who were detained for their work on suspected fraud involving European Union funds—a sensitive subject in Bulgaria, where corruption is endemic

TO my followers in Bulgaria…If the any information that I am missing please let me know and I will update my readers.