Government allows beached ship to depart...
RIGA - In an unusual display of grit, government ministers first threatened to bar the Mona Lisa cruise ship, which ran aground off Latvia’s northwestern coast earlier this month, from leaving the dock in Ventspils and then permitted it to do so. Both Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis and Defense Minister Vinets Veldre had said that they would not allow the ship to leave Ventspils port until the owner paid the hefty rescue bill that the state had incurred. Godmanis said the port would hold the ship until he received confirmation that insurers were willing to cover the cost of the evacuation, which totaled some 135,000 lats (192,000 euros). Veldre, meanwhile, said that the coast guard and...

  Latvian, Lithuanian lawmakers pass Lisbon Treaty...
VILNIUS-RIGA - Latvia and Lithuania’s parliaments have both ratified the Lisbon Treaty, making them the 12th and 13th countries to approve the historic document that aims to reshape and simplify how the EU works. The two Baltic states’ approval of the treaty came on May 8 and will have to be signed by their presidents, which should take two or three weeks. In Latvia, the treaty was passed with an overwhelming majority. The vote passed its second reading with 70 MPs in favor and only three against. There was one abstention in the 100-seat Parliament. In Lithuania, however, the vote was preceded by a heated debate over whether the country was ceding too much power to Brussels at a time wh...

  Police attack protesting cyclists...
RIGA - A video posted on the Internet has revealed what appears to be a police officer deliberately running down a bicycle rider during a large cyclist rights protest. The video – which was posted on YouTube,  the popular Internet home video Web site – shows a motorcycle policeman swerving to hit a cyclist during a “critical mass” event on May 1. “The police made a break to go at one of the riders. They were very aggressive… thankfully she is okay, but she was quite scared,” Maris Zommers, who recorded the video and posted it on the Web site, told The Baltic Times. Zommers said he managed to capture the video despite police’s efforts to confiscate cameras and video-recorders at ...

  Record turnout at Independence Day celebrations...
RIGA - The May 4 Independence Day celebrations were a surprising success, event planners and participants said. “We were all very pleased and surprised that so many people turned out. Not only did the day fall on a free day when many people go out of town, but the weather also wasn’t the greatest,” director of the Idea Institute Project, Sandija Martinsone, said. The success of the event was surprising considering that last week a survey was released stating that the Latvian population was reluctant to take part in national holidays – especially the May 4 events – but far more likely to celebrate pagan and traditional holidays. Representatives of both the Ministry of Culture and the I...

  Cruise ship undergoes emergency evacuation...
RIGA - More than 660 people, mostly older German tourists, were evacuated from a massive cruise ship that ran aground not far from Latvia’s northwestern coast. The Bahamas-registered Mona Lisa got stuck in a sand bank in the Irbe Strait, which runs between the Latvian coast and the Estonian island of Saaremaa, approximately 18 kilometers from Ventspils  on May 4. None of the 984 people on board were injured in the incident. The captain of the Mona Lisa, a Greek national, gave the order to evacuate the ship after four tugboats failed to dislodge it from the sand bank late May 4 and early the next morning. Apparently the captain had wanted to keep trying the tugboats, but with win...

  Kalvitis blasts prosecutor over missing money...
Former Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis lashed out at the chief prosecutor over the latter’s inability to foresee a recent scandal in the anti-corruption bureau involving a large sum of stolen cash. “We ordered [the Prosecutor’s Office] to perform the probe. By law it is their duty to control the operative activities of KNAB [the anti-corruption bureau]. Now it shows  the Prosecutor’s Office has inspected nothing there for five years,” Kalvitis told the Neatkariga Rita Avize daily in an interview. Kalvitis’ government fell at the end of last year after it had tried to remove KNAB’s chief over bookkeeping irregularities. But thousands of people took to the streets in support of Alekse...

  OSCE official clashes with politicians...
RIGA - A high commissioner from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an ad hoc United Nations body, took Latvian officials to task for not improving the situation for minorities in the country. OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Knut Vollebaek, who completed a three-day working visit to Latvia on April 23, said the country needs to improve the naturalization process. “The number of non-citizens still is high – about 372,000 I am told – and I intend to discuss with the Latvian government ways that I can help speed up the naturalization process,” Vollebaek told reporters on the first day of his visit. “It is my firm position that the Latvian gover...