Off the wire

UP IN SMOKES: Estonian border guards early on June 21 confiscated a large quantity of contraband cigarettes and religious icons in a vehicle entering the country from Russia at a border crossing near Narva. A border guard spokesman said that the truck, driven by a Narva resident, contained approximately 4.8 million Neva Primo cigarettes and five large parcels of icons. The driver claimed the truck had a cargo of macaroni, but a check by border guards revealed 400 boxes containing 12,000 cigarettes each hidden behind bags of pasta. Border guards detained both the truck and its driver. The bust was the second major haul of contraband cigarettes seized in two days. On June 20, during a joint operation with customs officials and police, border guards seized 3.6 million cigarettes in a truck that entered Estonia through the Luhamaa checkpoint in the south.

PUBLISHER BOMBED: Police are investigating a June 26 bombing at the office of a controversial Riga publishing house that organized a youth essay contest asking how best to protect Latvian rights and language. The explosion tore a 15-centimeter-wide hole in the front door of the Vieda publishing house. Police believe the explosive device contained the equivalent of 100 grams of TNT. One of the suggested essay topics in the contest organized by Vieda was deporting Russians. About 75 essays were published in a book on June 13. The publishing house was vilified in the Russian-language press. The leading Russian language daily Chas pressed law enforcement authorities to investigate the contest as inciting racial hatred. Authorities ruled that the contest was within the bounds of free speech. Aivars Garda of Vieda said he believed the bomb was related to the book's publication.

I DO: The first ever underwater wedding in Lithuania is being planned at the bottom of a lake near the capital, Vilnius. The submarine ceremony is being offered as a prize to the lucky couple that wins a contest sponsored by Lithuania's Lietus radio station. Couples judged to have the most interesting story of how they met will compete in further contests to win the chance to be the first ever to take their vows amid a planned underwater wooden sculpture park in Galves Lake in Trakai, the ancient Lithuanian capital just outside Vilnius. The final round in the contest to win the watery wedding will take place July 30. The winning couple will take diving courses until they take the plunge on August 25.

SINKING RECONSIDERED: Immediately before the sinking of the car and passenger ferry Estonia in 1994, Russian officials were preparing, with the help of Estonian intermediaries, a sale to the West of the highly valuable metal osmium, which may have sealed the fate of the ferry, the Russian-language business daily Delovyie Vedomosti reported. The paper writes that Russian officials planned to sell $2 billion worth of osmium 187 to the United States. The deal was to be brokered by Gary-John Ltd., a Swedish company that had representation in Tallinn at the time. Manager Kari Holmsten said after the ferry disaster that the Estonia was carrying very expensive cargo, but later retracted, admitting however that he had been in talks over buying precious metal from Russia, the paper reports. Holmsten was doing business in Moscow with then Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets and later was introduced to the then-President of Russia Boris Yeltsin. Holmsten said he would have preferred to transport the metal by air, but entrusted the final choice of means of shipping to the seller.

SAD PARADE: Lithuanian diplomats will not be attending a military parade in Minsk organized by Viktor Uskhopchik, a suspect in the case of the January 13, 1991 attempted coup in Lithuania. The country's ambassador in Minsk, Jonas Paslauskas, said on June 25 that "for obvious reasons" he would not participate in the July 3 Rupublic Day event. The celebration will be headed by Uskhopchik, the Belarusian defense vice-minister, who is wanted by the Lithuanian police for the leading part he played in the 1991 Soviet plot against Lithuania's newly restored independence. The office of the Lithuanian prosecutor general has been trying to extradite him for several years.

ROAD KILLER?: Lithuanian law enforcement officials have detained a 60-year-old man suspected of murdering several young women who went missing hitchhiking on the highway connecting Vilnius and Kaunas, the Respublika daily said. According to the newspaper, a search of the man's home turned up incriminating evidence that he was related to the murder of at least one of student - 21-year-old Jurgita Steinaite. The police found several items belonging to Steinate and a rope similar to the one used to tie her to a tree. Steinate's body was found in a forest close to the highway in May, near the area where another body was discovered about two months ago. Respublika wrote that the suspect denied all accusations. Lithuanian authorities are in possession of information suggesting that the suspected killer began kidnapping girls along the Vilnius-Klaipeda highway last summer. During the period, two women were murdered and another went missing.

LEAVING LATVIA: Latvian MP Janis Leja on June 26 gave $1,000 to an ethnic Russian family in Latvia who agreed to move to St. Petersburg, in what he hopes will encourage other ethnic Russians to leave. Leja, an MP from the Social Democratic Workers' Party, congratulated a couple and their two children, the Pimanovs, and asked them to write to lawmakers to keep them advised of their well-being. "Allocation of money is my eternal protest against criticism of repatriation of people to their ethnic homeland, because there is nothing bad about people that want to leave," he said. Another MP, outspoken right-winger Juris Vidins, said he hopes that wealthy people in Latvia would be willing to help those that want to leave Latvia. Mr. Pimanov told reporters that his family wanted to leave for Russia in order to feel like full-fledged members of a society and that he leaves Latvia with no ill will. Vidins and Leja and a handful of other MPs have formed a group to support people who want to leave but lack the money to do so. There are currently about 551,000 non-citizens in Latvia and most are ethnic Russian.