A committee investigating allegations that military hardware was being transported when the Estonia ferry sank has completed its report. The government was likely to discuss the report 's drawn up by representatives of the Prosecutor's Office, the security police and the information board 's no sooner than March 16 and would then decide any further action.
Center Party Chairman Edgar Savisaar said the party would win next year's parliamentary elections by a wide margin. In his report to the party's policy-making extended board, Savisaar, who is economy minister, said that the party had won the last two parliamentary and local elections. "It is clear to any dimwit that we're going to win the elections also this time," he said, adding that the Center Party was going to achieve its all-time best result at the parliamentary elections next March. "The bar has been raised high. The aim of the Center Party in March 2007 is to clear the bar first and by a wide margin."
The government is planning to increase its contribution to the United Nations Central Emergency Relief Fund. "For Estonia, support to the victims of humanitarian crises is a matter of both conscience and international solidarity," the country's permanent representative to the United Nations, Tiina Intelmann, said at the opening function of the renewed CERF, which was attended by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The Justice Ministry intends to increase the number of convicts released on parole and use an electronic surveillance system to monitor their activities. The head of the ministry's probation supervision service, Rait Kuuse, explained that convicts currently considered as an excessive flight risk would have to wear an electronic monitoring device. Joining the program will be voluntary for prisoners. Initially, first-generation equipment would be used for monitoring, which allows the authorities to track the person's movement within a radius of about 50 meters.
Irish customs officers captured a 26-year-old Estonian at the Dublin Airport who had more than half a kilo of cocaine on him. The man was carrying 60 small packages of the drug, which weighed 600 grams in all, the Irish newspaper Evening Echo reported. The street value of such a quantity of cocaine is around 42,000 euros.
Police in Baden-Wuerttemberg, a German state, apprehended in January a gang of Estonian car thieves that had stolen roughly 100 million kroons' (6.4 million euros) worth of vehicles. Police chief superintendent Karl Grossmann told TV3 news that the group stole at least 60 cars in Germany. In addition, six members of the gang have been detained in Spain in connection with the theft of 20 cars. Police also captured the alleged leader of the gang, Teet Hildebrandt, the younger brother of Andre Hildebrandt, who became famous by escaping from Estonia to Finland in a rubber raft during Soviet rule.
