Bulgaria public radio chief sacked in free speech row

Bulgaria's media watchdog sacked the chief of national radio on Thursday in a free speech row that saw the station briefly taken off the air.

The five-member Council for Electronic Media voted unanimously to oust Bulgarian National Radio chief Svetoslav Kostov over last month's unprecedented outage, saying it represented "a grave violation of the media law".

The law requires the public broadcaster to remain on air at all times to inform the public about natural disasters, security and other threats.

The watchdog also lambasted Kostov, who has headed the radio since late June, for temporarily suspending prominent anchor Silviya Velikova and taking her off the judiciary beat a day before the outage.

Kostov has vowed to challenge his ousting in court.

He had accused Velikova -- an outspoken critic of the single nominee to become Bulgaria's chief prosecutor -- of urging people to take part in protests against the candidate, something Velikova denies.

In a wave of solidarity, Velikova's ...