Troops serving in Iraq ran into an ambush Oct. 15 on the outskirts of Basra. Nobody was injured during the attack, although the armored vehicle the LITCON-6 troops were traveling in was slightly damaged. The troops, along with other Danish Battalion servicemen, were performing security tasks in a controlled area during the referendum in Iraq. An explosive controlled by a remote detonator was set off on the roadside, while the troops were returning from their task.
Thirty tents and 10 heaters will be sent to the victims of Pakistan's earthquake, the Fire and Rescue Department reported. The European Commission's Monitoring and Information Centre in Brussels, which coordinates international aid from EU states, encouraged the donation. The shipment will be flown to Pakistan by a NATO plane.
Parliament was scheduled to debate the controversial possibility of outlawing certain types abortions this week. Valdemar Tomaszevski, a member of the ruling Farmers' Party faction and leader of Lithuanian Poles, initiated the legislation, which calls for banning the termination of life in a prenatal embryo with scarce exceptions. Pursuant to the amendments, pregnancy can be terminated only when there is a threat to the life or the health of the pregnant woman. The MP suggests that the termination of a pregnancy without authorization by a court should entail prosecution for the individual terminating the pregnancy rather than for the mother of the unborn child.
U.S. fighters performing in a NATO policing mission in the Baltic states were called to identify an airspace violator over the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. The F-16 fighters were informed of the violation by radar, and upon reaching the site they established that a civil aircraft that had been flying from Minsk to Riga entered the no-flying zone unintentionally. The pilots took no engagement action.
According to a 2004 poll of women serving jail sentences, carried out in nine European countries, Lithuania's inmates are most satisfied with prison conditions. The results of the research, funded by the AGIS program of the European Commission's Directorate General for Justice and Home Affairs, were presented at a conference in Vilnius on Oct. 14. The Panevezys women's penitentiary is the only place in the country where women serve sentences. There were 190 women in the penitentiary when the poll was conducted, 149 of whom were questioned.
