Latvija in brief

  • 2014-07-03

One year after the fire at the Riga Castle, the Prosecutor’s Office has charged three persons in the case, reports LETA. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Riga Court Region has accused two company employees responsible for fire safety in the building. The third person is accused of starting the fire due to negligence on duty, press representative at the Prosecutor General’s Office, Aiga Senberga, said. The two accused have been charged with violations of fire safety rules. The applicable penalty is temporary imprisonment, community service or a fine. The third person is accused of damaging property due to neglect. Such crime is punishable by up to three years in prison, community service or a fine. The criminal proceedings against legal entities in the case are still in progress. The fire broke out at Riga Castle on June 20, 2013.

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Centralized high school exam results indicate that students have earned the lowest scores in the subjects of history and mathematics, with the highest test results in the Russian and French language exams, according to information provided by National Center for Education, reports LETA. The average score for history was 42.6 percent, and for math it was 43.3 percent. Regardless of the poor scores, the overall average score, compared to 2013, has increased by 6.7 percent. The score for the Russian language exam was 70.9 percent, up 6.7 percent compared to 2013. The results for the French language exam show improvement as well: 66.1 percent, which is 3.1 percent higher than in 2013.

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According to the latest study by The Software Alliance (BSA), computer users indicate unlicensed software as the most significant risk in computer security, an issue which enhances the threat of hacker attacks and data loss, reports Nozare.lv. Nevertheless, 52 percent of software used in Latvia is unlicensed, BSA representative Ingrida Veiksa said. The study results demonstrate that users in Asia, Central Europe and Eastern Europe are more concerned about threats that illegal software poses to their computers. They are less concerned about the software developers’ property rights to royalties. The proportion of pirated software in Latvia reached 53 percent, 1 percent less than in 2011. The commercial value of illegal software makes up 21 million euros in Latvia. System administrators all over the world express concerns about the negative impact of unlicensed software, however, less than half of them were unable to account for the legality of software within their own companies. Only 35 percent of companies around the world practice usage policy, which stipulates usage of legal software only. These BSA Global Software Survey findings justify the need for effective computer software management practice. “Company owners ought to follow basic software management principles in order to make sure only legal software is used within their companies,” Veiksa says.