A private plane with a pilot and a passenger on board nearly crashed near the western Latvian town of Tukums on April 27. Both the aircraft and people emerged relatively unharmed from the accident. Police spokeswoman Ieva Reksna told the Baltic News Service that the plane made an emergency landing in an airfield after its "chassis got jammed." "We received information that the landing was not particularly smooth, but nothing serious has happened and everybody is safe and sound," the police representative said. The plane was piloted by a 54 year-old man, and his passenger was a 29-year old woman. Latvian public television reported in the evening that both the pilot and the passenger were taken to the hospital.
Police yet again detained two Irish tourists in downtown Riga for desecrating the Freedom Monument on April 25. One of them was posing with his private parts exposed while the other took photos. The 22-year old tourist was heavily drunk but the 26-year old man who took pictures had not consumed any alcohol, police representatives said. Both visitors were from Ireland and were delivered to a short-term detention station after the incident. The offense may be punished by two years in jail, arrest, compulsory work or a fine up to fifty minimum monthly wages (8,000 lats or 11,383 euros). Ten foreigners have been caught stripping and urinating at the Monument of Freedom since 2006. Most of the offenders were British nationals.
Aleksejs Loskutovs, the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, asked the Prosecutor's Office to review remarks made by embattled Ventspils Mayor Aivars Lembergs in an interview with Klubs magazine. Lembergs, who is currently under investigation for a number of serious crimes, said that the anti-corruption chief tipped him off about his impending arrest. Loskutovs denied the charges in an interview with TV3, where he said that he had neither the motive nor the opportunity to inform the mayor of his arrest. The anti-corruption chief said he has only met Lembergs twice, once before he was made the chief of the anti-corruption bureau and once when Lembergs begged him to reverse his decision on firing one of his staff members.
Edgars Sins, chairman of the board of the Latio real estate company, said that about 40,000 families are on the verge of bankruptcy due to falling real estate prices. Sins noted that about one fifth of the 200,000 families that have taken out loans in the country are in imminent danger of bankruptcy. He said that during the recent "crazy period" in the housing market, families that could only afford to pay 500 lats per square meter on a home were forced to pay as much as 1,400 lats. "Either we continue to fall rapidly and attempt to get back to the point we were in a period of several years, or we implement some sort of methods to not allow such a rapid decrease in the price of real-estate," Sins said in an interview with Lietiska Diena.
