Bosnia, Intl Donors Launch $7.0 Mln Anti-Bird Flu Project

The Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century to write texts in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language. The alphabet that was originally created by St. Cyril and St. Methodius is known as the Glagolithic alphabet (Glagolica). One of their disciples, Clement of Ohrid (Kliment Ohridski), simplified the Glagolica into a new alphabet which was called Cyrillic. In the following centuries this alphabet was adopted by other Slav peoples - Russians, Croats, Serbs, Belarusians and Ukrainians. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on January 1, 2007 the Cyrillic alphabet became the third official alphabet of the EU.