Off the wire

GROUNDED BY SMOKE: At Riga International Airport a flight to Zagreb by RAF-Avia Airlines had to be canceled on Aug. 7 as the plane filled up with smoke shortly before take-off, an airport spokesman confirmed. The plane was already on the runway when the passenger area started filling up with the smoke, which appeared when the air conditioning system was turned on. The Estonian soccer team FC Flora had chartered this flight to Zagreb for a UEFA Cup qualifier. The team's spokesman said FC Flora has terminated its agreement with the airline. The Estonian soccer players will return to Tallinn by flying via Copenhagen. Eyewitnesses reported that the smoke was so thick that they were not able to see each other.

SUMMIT IN SIGHT: A group of Latvian mountaineers led by one-armed Rihards Valands conquered the Alpine summit of Mount Blanc on Aug. 4. Valands, the head of a Latvian club for the disabled, reported the news himself, adding that not all of the group actually made it to the top. Armands Skudra, who is blind, reached a height of 4,300 meters on the mountain before stopping his ascent. Eleven of the climbers went on to reach the summit. The ascent on Mont Blanc began in France on July 30. If Skudra had reached the top of the mountain, he would be the fifth person with a sight impairment to reach the top of one of the world's highest mountains.

TOP WAR COURSE: The first-ever officers course at the Baltic Defense College based in the southern Estonian city of Tartu kicked off on Aug. 6. The 11-month course is centered on participants enhancing their command, planning and analysis capabilities. Meant for field grade officers, from senior majors to colonels, it will focus much more than the normal war college course on developing the students' abilities to lead a large planning and development project in a joint services environment, the college says on its webpage. Taking part in the test project are one officer apiece from Lithuania, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Estonia and two from Latvia.

MEDIA MURDER: Estonia's central criminal police have detained two Lithuanian nationals suspected of killing the media businessman Vitaly Khaitov in March. A 33-year-old Lithuanian man was seized on July 30 and the other, also 33, on July 31. Both detainees were, with a court's sanction, taken into custody for 10 days. But the investigator of the murder intends to bring formal charges soon and seek their detention for a longer period. A spokesman for the police department said police have at this point no grounds to suspect the men of killing the media mogul's son, Marian, in the spring of 2000. Vitaly Khaitov, 56, was killed with two shots to the head while sitting in his car in the yard of his home on March 10. Khaitov was general director of the Vesti publishing house from 1995 onwards and the publisher of Estoniya, the largest Russian-language newspaper in Estonia, as well as the weekly Vesti Nedelya Plus.

CITIZEN MILOSZ: Nobel laureate poet Czeslav Milosz received the honorary citizen's regalia of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius in his Krakow home on Aug. 4. The ceremony took place in the poet's home, as Milosz could not come to Vilnius due to his poor health, said Vilnius Mayor Arturas Zuokas, who personally presented the regalia to the famous poet. Milosz told the mayor he was charmed with such unexpected attention and that he would from now on consider himself a true citizen of Vilnius. He in turn presented Zuokas with a photo album he is currently preparing on the Lithuanian capital. Milosz, who celebrated his 90th birthday in June, was born in Sateiniai near Lithuania's central town of Kedainiai. A museum has been opened in the village, where Milosz spent the first years of his life. He wrote his first poems in Vilnius and was forced to emigrate to the United States following World War II. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1980. After the collapse of socialism, Milosz returned to Poland and has been living in Krakow ever since.

LAND SALE DELAYED: A special Lithuanian parliamentary commission on the drafting of constitutional amendments has been unable to reach a final consensus on legal amendments to liberalize the land market in the country. The Parliament's various political factions have only agreed on the procedures for debating the amendments, said Liberal MP Dalia Kutraite-Giedraitiene, who is resigning as chairman of the commission, on Aug. 3. The amendments to article 47 are to allow companies, as well as foreign citizens after Lithuania's European Union accession, to acquire land in Lithuania. Representatives of all the parliamentary factions have agreed that the respective amendment to the constitution should be presented for discussion to the public. Only then can the amendment be debated in the Parliament.

RACIST FINALLY ARRESTED: A Vilnius court has warranted a 10-day arrest of a Lithuanian citizen suspected of insulting a Senegalese resident. The arrested resident of the country's seaport city of Klaipeda is known for his racist attacks against foreigners. Police have said that a group of young men were spotted in central Vilnius on Aug. 3 insulting a 22-year-old citizen of Senegal and beating him. Among those taken to the police station was Vidmantas Gulbinas, who is also believed to be responsible for battering two chefs of a Chinese restaurant in Klaipeda. Gulbinas, the leader of Klaipeda's Nazi youth, is also suspected of spray-painting a swastika and insulting German-language slogans on a fence around a Jewish cemetery in 1995. He is thought to have been the leader of a gang that beat up a Japanese man in Vilnius later that year; injuring two Russians with a knife and beating them in a Vilnius nightclub in 1996; and pushing a Korean national into the Dane River in Klaipeda several months later.